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You can lead an Amur tiger to water, but you can't make him swim.

At least not until he is good and ready.

Kazek, Hogle Zoo's Amur tiger, is among a handful of inhabitants getting used to new habitats. It has been a learning process for humans and cats alike.

"We're not able to make them do anything," said Jill VanMilligan, an animal keeper. "They're very wary."

The big cats are prowling the new Asian Highlands exhibit, which opened this summer, while the elephants are stomping around their own relatively new grounds in Elephant Encounter, which opened in 2005. Both of the zoo's newest exhibits, which are designed to provide more natural-looking terrain for the animals, were paid for through a $10 million bond that Salt Lake City voters approved in 2003.

Leopards, tigers and other big cats take time to adjust to new surroundings. When the Asian Highlands exhibit opened, Kazek had an unfortunate encounter with a reflective window, said VanMilligan.

"He wouldn't go past the window," she said of Kazek's first outing. "All he could see was another tiger. He had no idea it was him."

The window was designed to let visitors watch the tiger swim in the water, an event that took weeks to occur.

Zoo staff lowered the water level and left food in the new area to help Kazek acclimate to the new setting. VanMilligan said the tiger has taken a few dips, but he spends most of his time on land.

Hogle's pachyderms also took their time adjusting to their new pool in the Elephant Encounter exhibit.

While the 110,000-gallon pool is deep enough to swim in, the elephants have not taken advantage yet, said Doug Tomkinson, lead elephant keeper.

"To go down in the pool is not a natural thing for an elephant," he said.

In the wild, elephants can swim across rivers. But the elephants here have not chosen to take a dip in the deep end yet.

Staff members have tossed apples in the water to encourage the elephants to wade in the shallow area. The trunk-totin' inhabitants do step in to splash around occasionally.

While swimming might be nice, the pool also serves a function for visitors. Tomkinson said guests have a better view of the elephant across the pool, as opposed to looking through a mesh fence.

Visitors have multiple angles to see the elephants no matter where they roam.

The elephants "explore all over the place all the time," he said.

In the Asian Highlands exhibit, the big cats also have been exploring. A few popular hangouts surprised exhibit designers.

Kazek, the Amur tiger, enjoys parking his striped body right in front of an artificial waterfall.

He inadvertently reroutes the water down the hillside, disrupting nearby soil and other features.

The tiger also managed to cause some mischief for his neighbor, a snow leopard.

In the wild, these two creatures are mortal enemies. At Hogle, their doors to go inside the building are close together.

Kazek would lurk in the corner to taunt the leopard, until the zoo put up visual barriers to prevent such encounters.

The snow leopard took to her new enclosure quickly, but she refused to come inside for two months to be checked. Staffers had to toss her specially made meatballs for meals, VanMilligan said.

Part of the challenge was the leopard could not figure out how to climb a small cliff to reach the door. Keepers had to toss meatballs toward the step-like features to train her to come to the door.

As the big cats settle into their new homes, zoo staffers are excited to see how the inhabitants deal with winter.

VanMilligan said as snow piles up at the zoo, visitors will see a different side of the big cats.

With covered and heated areas for visitors, the Asian Highlands exhibit was designed to lure visitors to the zoo on the coldest of days.

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* GREG LAVINE can be contacted at galvine@sltrib.com or 801-257-8620.