kratt brother tour

Wild Kratts

Get ready for the wild kratts live 2.0 spring 2024 tour.

We’re beyond thrilled to announce that Wild Kratts LIVE 2.0 is hitting the road again for a Spring 2024 tour!

Join the Kratt Brothers for an unforgettable action-packed LIVE Creature Adventure!

Tour Dates & Cities:

Mar 6: San Francisco, CA Mar 7: San Jose, CA Mar 8: Thousand Oaks, CA Mar 9: Anaheim, CA* Mar 10: Escondido, CA May 1: Nashville, TN May 2: Huntsville, AL May 3: Greenville, SC* May 4: Durham, NC* May 5: Atlanta, GA May 30: Eugene, OR May 31: Portland, OR Jun 1: Seattle, WA* Jun 2: Vancouver, BC

*Due to overwhelming demand, we’ve added a second show in Anaheim, CA, Greenville, SC, Durham, NC, and Seattle, WA.

Grab Your Tickets Now!

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to experience the magic of Wild Kratts live on stage. Tickets are selling out fast! Head over to our official events page here and secure your spot in this creature-tastic event!

Gear up, get your creature power discs ready, and join us for an unforgettable adventure. We can’t wait to see all of you there!

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Kimmel Campus Presents

Wild kratts live 2.0: activate creature power, sep 23, 2023.

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This show is a part of the Family Discovery Series. Buy 2 shows and save!

Get ready to dive into another classic Wild Kratts story with the Kratt brothers in an all-new stage adventure! Based on the hit PBS KIDS series, Wild Kratts , this action-packed theatrical production is perfect for adventurers of all ages and takes audiences along on a “wild” ride with a dynamic mix of live-action and animation.

Chris and Martin, stars of the Emmy-nominated Wild Kratts , take to the stage to activate new Creature Powers and go “off to the creature rescue!” With some help from Aviva and the rest of the Wild Kratts team - on screen at Tortuga HQ - and their audience members, the Kratt Brothers confront a comic villain and help bring the creatures of the world to safety once again. Along the way, they share fascinating tidbits about some of the world’s most amazing creatures.  Which creature powers will they activate and what new and amazing “WOW!” facts will you learn? Experience, live-on-stage, the same electrifying excitement and inspiring quest that make the hit television series Wild Kratt a family favorite time and time again! It’s going to be WILD!

Since 2014, Wild Kratts LIVE! has performed over 225 shows for hundreds of thousands of fans in over 135 cities across North America. It was created for the stage by the imaginative minds of Martin and Chris Kratt from Zoboomafoo, Kratt's Creatures, and Be the Creature. 

VIP Ticket Includes: 

• Admission to a special meet and greet with Chris and Martin Kratt after the show 

*Each child attending the meet and greet must be accompanied by an adult, who must also have a VIP ticket. 

(Formerly Merriam Theater)

250 S Broad St

Philadelphia, PA 19102

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Wild Kratts Live 2.0: Activate Creature Power!

Embark on an extraordinary adventure with the Kratt Brothers in "Wild Kratts 2.0: Activate the Creature Power!" This live, interactive experience brings the Emmy-nominated children's series to life, offering a unique blend of captivating storytelling, scientific exploration, and high-energy entertainment.

Ticket Office Hours

In-Person Ticket Office Window Support

• Friday 10 AM - 5 PM 
• Saturday 10 AM - 3 PM

Ticket Office will open three (3) hours before doors on show days. 

Ticket Office Call Center

• Monday through Friday - 10 AM - 6 PM
• Saturday - 10 AM - 3 PM

To contact a call center representative please email  [email protected]  or dial  855-285-8499 .

MOBILE TICKETING USER GUIDE

Cashless Venue

This is a 100%  CASHLESS  event to help mitigate hand-to-hand contact. Please be prepared to pay by card ONLY. All major credit cards will be accepted with tap-to-touch payment. Guests with cash will have the opportunity to exchange cash for a pre-paid card for use at all concessions points of sale.

Prohibited Items

The following items are prohibited on Fox Theatre property

• Weapons of any kind, including but not limited to:
• Firearms (with or without permit)
• Pocketknives, multi-tools, or knives of any size
• Pepper Spray or Mace
• Flares or Fireworks
• Oversized bags (Bag larger than 8.5” x 11”, including all backpacks, briefcases, luggage, or duffle bags)
• Illegal Substances
• Outside Food and Beverage
• Laser Pointers/ flashlights greater than 3"
• Professional or flash photography, tripods, monopods, selfie-sticks
• Audio or Video recording devices
• Signs larger than 11” x 17” or any sign attached to a stick or pole
• Skateboards, hoverboards, rollerblades, scooters, or bicycles
• Balloons, permanent markers, spray paint, silly string
• Noisemaking devices (e.g. air horns, drums, whistles)
• Large or pointed umbrellas

**The Fox Theatre reserves the right to prohibit any item, including items not listed above, from entering the premises based on any show request or requirement.**

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Wild Kratts LIVE 2.0 – Activate Creature Power!

• Date May 3 , 2024
• Ticket Prices $30-$150 (VIP)

All attendees must have a ticket to enter regardless of age (including infants). Lap children must have a ticket adjacent to the adult with whom they will be seated with. Every patron attending the VIP event, including parents who are escorting children, must have a VIP ticket.

• Public Availability On Sale Now

Event Details

Get ready to dive into another classic Wild Kratts adventure!   Martin and Chris Kratt, stars of the Emmy-nominated Wild Kratts, step out live on stage to engage the audience in a classic Wild Kratts story! Martin and Chris are sure to keep you entertained as they activate some fan favorite Creature Power Suits and go “Off to the Creature Rescue!” With the help of the Wild Kratts team - and their audience members - the Kratt Brothers confront a comic villain and help bring the creatures of the animal world to safety once again!

Experience, live-on-stage, the electrifying excitement and the inspiring quest of the Kratt Brothers that make the hit television series Wild Kratts a family favorite time and time again!

VIP tickets include admission to a special meet and greet with Chris and Martin Kratt right after the show.

Please note that each child attending the meet and greet must be accompanied by an adult, who must also have a VIP ticket.

There is not a VIP offering for the 3:30 PM performance.

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Activate Creature Power!

Tickets are also available at the Portland'5 Box Office . Service charges apply.

Wild Kratts LIVE! 2.0

Second show added at 3:30pm!

The Wild Kratts LIVE! stage show that has kids across North America buzzing is coming to Portland with an ALL NEW show: “Wild Kratts LIVE 2.0 – Activate Creature Power!” Get ready to dive into another classic Wild Kratts adventure with the Kratt brothers as they combine live action and animation, with Martin and Chris LIVE on stage and the rest of the Wild Kratts team on screen, at the Tortuga HQ. Which creature powers will they activate and what new and amazing ‘WOW!’ facts will you learn? Experience, live-on-stage, the electrifying excitement and the inspiring quest of the Kratt Brothers that make the hit television series Wild Kratts a family favorite time and time again!

VIP/Meet and Greet Tickets

VIP tickets include admission to a special meet and greet with Chris and Martin Kratt right after the show. Please note that each child attending the meet and greet must be accompanied by an adult, who must also have a VIP ticket.

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WILD KRATTS LIVE 2.0 - Activate Creature Power!

Silva Concert Hall

Tickets starting at: $25.50

“We are so excited to introduce our new live stage show and meet our fellow ‘creature adventurers’ in cities across the U.S. this fall,” said Chris Kratt, creator, producer and co-star of the Wild Kratts series and co-founder of The Kratt Brothers Company. “Wild Kratts LIVE 2.0 is perfect for explorers of all ages. It features all the excitement and interactive elements that Wild Kratts fans love, plus awesome new Kratt Brothers twists and turns to keep them on the edge of their seats.”

In Wild Kratts LIVE 2.0, Chris and Martin take to the stage to activate new Creature Powers and go “off to the creature rescue!” With some help from Aviva and the rest of the Wild Kratts team, who will be animated and on screen at the Tortuga HQ, the brothers confront a comic villain and once again save the day, sharing fascinating tidbits about some of the world’s most amazing creatures along the way.

Audience members are encouraged to bring along their animal knowledge and participate in the action right from their seats by calling out answers to the questions posed by the Kratt Brothers during the show. Since their original Wild Kratts LIVE! touring show launched in 2014, Chris and Martin have performed to wildly enthusiastic crowds of hundreds of thousands of fans – many of them sporting their own Creature Power Suits, just like the Kratt Brothers do in the popular series – in more than 135 cities across North America.

VIP Meet & Greet description: VIP tickets include admission to a special meet and greet with Chris and Martin Kratt right after the show. Please note that each child attending the meet and greet must be accompanied by an adult, who must also have a VIP ticket.

About Wild Kratts Produced by The Kratt Brothers Company and 9 Story Media Group, the popular live-action and animated Wild Kratts television show just received its sixth Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children’s Animated Series. The show airs daily on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings) as well as the new PBS KIDS 24/7 channel and live stream. Now in its sixth season, Wild Kratts is one of the top 3 rated shows on PBS KIDS and the #1 show site and streaming site on pbskids.org. The series is also a top performer on Amazon Prime.

Wild Kratts follows the animated versions of the Kratt Brothers and their friends on hilarious expeditions with wild animals from around the world, complete with animal-inspired gadgets and awesome Creature Power Suits that enable the adventurers to get close to the creatures. Every episode explores an age-appropriate science concept central to an animal’s life and showcases a spectacular wildlife moment, presented with engaging stories of mystery and rescue as well as the Kratt Brothers’ signature brand of laugh-out-loud comedy. The real-life Chris and Martin introduce each episode with a live-action segment that imagines what it would be like to experience a never-before-seen wildlife occurrence and sets the story in motion. Wild Kratts airs in more than 180 countries and is available in 18 languages.

About The Kratt Brothers Company Wild Kratts is the latest of several other wildly-popular children’s television shows created and produced by animal experts Chris and Martin Kratt. Zoologists by training, the Kratt Brothers have built a trusted entertainment brand based on their enthusiasm for animals. Since founding their production company, The Kratt Brothers Company, in 1993, they have developed and executive produced more than 275 episodes of three successful television series: Kratts’ Creatures, Zooboomafoo with the Kratt Brothers and Kratt Bros: Be the Creature. In addition to playing themselves, Chris and Martin serve as directors, scriptwriters, authors ,and wildlife cinematographers in pursuit of more “creature adventures.”

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Wild Kratts Live 2.0: Activate Creature Power!

The Wild Kratts LIVE! stage show that has kids across North America buzzing is coming to Baltimore with an ALL NEW show: “Wild Kratts LIVE 2.0 – Activate Creature Power!” Get ready to dive into another classic Wild Kratts adventure with the Kratt brothers as they combine live action and animation, with Martin and Chris LIVE on stage and the rest of the Wild Kratts team on screen, at the Tortuga HQ. Which creature powers will they activate and what new and amazing ‘WOW!’ facts will you learn? Experience, live-on-stage, the electrifying excitement and the inspiring quest of the Kratt Brothers that make the hit television series Wild Kratts a family favorite time and time again!

Since 2014, Wild Kratts LIVE! has performed over 225 shows for hundreds of thousands of fans in over 135 cities across North America. It was created for the stage by the imaginative minds of Martin and Chris Kratt from Zoboomafoo, Kratt’s Creatures, and Be the Creature.

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WILD KRATTS LIVE 2.0!

• Von Braun Center Mark C. Smith Concert Hall
• 700 Monroe Street
• Huntsville, AL 35801
• Visit Website

The creature-loving duo, The Kratt Brothers' wildly popular stage shows, performances, and speaking engagements have delighted crowds across the US and Canada. 

• May 2, 2024
• Location: 700 Monroe Street, Huntsville, AL
• Time: 6:30 PM
• Price: Amission Charged
• 05/02/2024 - 05/02/2024
• Amission Charged

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How the Nature-Loving Kratt Brothers Became PBS Rock Stars for the Younger Set

25 years later, the 'Zoboomafoo' and 'Wild Kratts' creators are still creature adventuring

Months into an expedition through the Amazon in the early ’90s, the Kratt Brothers — as Chris and Martin Kratt are known — were on the lookout for giant river otters, German shepherd-sized animals also known as “lobos de rio,” or “wolves of the river.” A sudden snorting sound had tipped them off to the presence of the endangered predators feisty enough to chase off jaguars, so they hopped into their little boat, video camera in hand.

“We were so into it, and they were just right there,” recounts Martin. “We were getting great stuff. Then suddenly, Chris and I realized our feet were getting wet. We were so excited [that we didn’t realize] we were both on the same side of the pontoon boat … and we were already going down.”

They scrambled to protect their video equipment in a waterproof bag as the boat plunged into the river, where the brothers soon found themselves face-to-face with several giant otters. “They were coming right up to us, snorting and spraying their spray in our face… [the boat] went down and we were just floating there,” he continues. “So we got really up close and personal with them.”

That footage became part of “Kratts’ Creatures,” the educational children’s wildlife show that premiered on June 3, 1996, and kicked off over two decades of “creature adventuring,” as the brothers call it.

The Kratts’ signature style is likely familiar to anyone who has tuned into PBS over the last 25 years for “Kratts’ Creatures” or “Zoboomafoo” or the animated “Wild Kratts”: a torrent of animals facts, muddy pratfalls (or “Kratt-falls” in their parlance), and unbridled enthusiasm for learning about wildlife in a particularly hands-on manner. To see Martin engage in an elephant dung “snowball fight” in Africa or Chris laughingly get a face full of raw fish guts as he feeds a young alligator is to understand the brothers’ charm. Perpetually clad in cargo shorts, Chris always wears green shirts while Martin dons blue so kids can tell them apart. (Even in a Zoom interview for this story, the brothers remain committed to the Kratts Sartorial Code.)

But the public television mainstays, now beloved by children across several generations, were once not quite so understood by grown-ups.

Chris and Martin Kratt grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, seeking out garter snakes and box turtles in piles of lawn clippings, and watching “Wild Kingdom” and solemnly-voiced nature specials on TV.

“At the time in the late ‘80s, there were no kids’ wildlife shows,” says Martin. “There were nature documentaries that families would watch together, but nothing made just for kids. So we thought, ‘Wow, if we could do a show that shared the adventure with kids and get kids introduced to all these amazing animals, maybe that could have some kind of impact on saving endangered species.’”

So they set about making their own nature documentaries. After graduating from Duke University with a degree in zoology, Martin worked as a research assistant to the Duke Primate Center’s Dr. Kenneth Glander on a howler monkey project in Costa Rica, then for Dr. Patricia Wright at her field station in Madagascar, then for Dr. John Terborgh in the Peruvian Amazon.

Chris, three years younger, was studying biology at Carleton College at the time and would join in on the excursions. While on those trips between 1989 to 1992, equipped with a video camera and a bootstrapped budget partly funded by grants, the brothers hitchhiked and took ox carts through the regions, saving on money by camping out in tents and surviving on peanuts and rice as they sought to film animals in the wild. (Their parents, who nervously thought their sons’ efforts were “kind of crazy,” says Chris, were nonetheless supportive.)

The Kratt brothers then edited VHS tapes and took them to elementary schools up and down the Eastern seaboard, using their enthusiastic audience as a focus group of sorts. But when shopping around their demo at networks, TV execs waved off the Kratt Brothers as “too frivolous” and said things like, “Oh, it’s really cute. Maybe it’ll be a home video, but never a television show,” they recall.

Leo Eaton, then vice president of production at Maryland Public Television, was persuaded otherwise in 1993 by a short demo featuring Chris and Martin dressed up like ponies, trying to join a herd of real-life Chincoteagues.

“I used to get dozens of tapes, so I didn’t even have time to look at it,” says Eaton. “I figured it was just a kids’ show. But my son was four years old at the time. I said, ‘Come on, Alex, take a look.’ And he must have watched that little demo 70 times. He just loved it. And I got so sick of him saying how wonderful it was — I figured I must meet these guys.”

That led to Maryland Public TV funding the production of a pilot that would go on to win best children’s film at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Festival, prompting a meeting with PBS’ head of children’s programming at the time, Alice Cahn. Eaton and the brothers expected a series order of a handful of episodes. PBS wanted 50. (Eaton would go on to executive produce the brothers’ first three series over the course of the next decade.)

The next two years of filming across Australia, Africa, the Caribbean and North America resulted in “Kratts’ Creatures,” featuring Chris grooming baby chimpanzees, Martin gnawing logs alongside beavers, and of course, plenty of pratfalls into exotic waters. “Whether kids will find the herky-jerky, hip-hop editing of ‘Kratts’ Creatures’ riveting or distracting is any grown-up’s guess,” read a 1996 Baltimore Sun story ahead of the premiere. The series would be “best served by just a touch less silliness,” said the Chicago Tribune at the time.

But those elements made it an instant hit. “When it aired in June, we went on a little tour to zoos, and we acted out an adventure on a stage. And that’s when the the kids started coming out,” says Martin. “We were very surprised by it, but it was very similar to meeting the kids in the schools that we’d done in the past.”

The show resonated with the littlest of viewers as well, leading to the development of a preschool concept at PBS a couple years later. “Zoboomafoo” was a beast of a production — literally and figuratively — combining filming of three live lemurs, a puppet lemur (brought to life by puppeteer Gord Robertson), claymation, segments featuring kids, segments featuring live animals, and field packages of the brothers in various far-flung locales.

“A few production managers at the beginning, during the planning phase, quit because they didn’t think it could be done,” recalls Chris. “Logistically, they didn’t think it could be done, because we had this puppet lemur that was going to sometimes be the real lemur and we were going to cut back and forth between them … It freaked out a lot of seasoned television professionals.”

A feat of engineering, a replica of the main set piece of Animal Junction in Canada had to be rebuilt at the Duke Primate Center down in North Carolina one sweltering September, in order to film a trio of endangered sifaka lemurs — Jovian, Nigel and Flavia — that would collectively be known as the titular character.

“Fortunately, lemurs kind of look like puppets in the first place, so the idea of cutting between the puppet version and the real live version worked in the end,” laughs Chris. “And the set of Animal Junction was very colorful and kind of confusing, so it was very forgiving if we were cutting from one place in Animal Junction to another.”

In Toronto, the primary set hosted all sorts of live animals, from elephants to bear cubs to crocodiles, with storylines adjusted to match whatever the creatures felt like doing.

“Everything was to the animals’ schedule,” says Cheryl Knapp, the Kratts’ longtime series producer who has been working with the brothers since the start of their TV career. “We didn’t ask them to do anything. We basically put them in this environment, and just watched them and filmed what they did, and then worked the story around what they did. There was no stress for them. It was a very, very, very comfortable setting for the wildlife.”

But in the middle of filming the first season, “Zoboomafoo” encountered an existential crisis. The show’s Canadian production partner Paragon Entertainment hit financial troubles, recalls Eaton, leaving a set full of crew and animals — and future of the Kratts — in limbo. After a tense few days, PBS ultimately decided to take over the production, allowing the series to live on.

By the late ‘90s, the Kratt brothers had ascended to the status of public television hotshots, with live tours drawing thousands of kids and their parents.

“It was like they were rock stars,” recalls Knapp of one enormous event at the Brookfield Zoo outside of Chicago. “And the thing is, they were just so kind. What you see is what you get [with them], especially with kids. They never rushed the kid; even now with the [‘Wild Kratts’] live show, they will take as much time as they need to talk to the kid and sign autographs.”

Parents, too, had become quite accustomed to seeing Chris and Martin’s faces on their screens. A New York Times profile from 2000 notes that “many of the mothers [spent] their line-standing time debating the relative cuteness of the two brothers.”

“The ‘yummy mummies,’” chuckles Knapp at the memory of some of the mail they would receive. “There was a fan letter from this woman, and she was saying, ‘I was looking at Martin’s big blue eyes.’ And so we’d [rib] Martin and say ‘Where’s your eyes, Martin? Where’s your eyes?’ … We wanted to hear from the kids, not from the mothers.”

So what was it like to be PBS heartthrobs?

“Zoboo is the real star here,” Chris good-naturedly deflects, quickly pivoting to the show’s ratings. “What we are really proud about is the term ‘co-viewing’ in TV, where parents watch the shows with their kids. All of our series have always had really high co-viewing.”

The wholesome Kratts, now in their 50s with children of their own, have always been more interested in promoting conservation than becoming celebs with groupies, it seems. “The guys are not that kind of thing,” says Knapp. “It wouldn’t even [occur] in their brains there.” Instead, she recalls the countless times the brothers have helped kids cultivate a love of nature, and all the times parents have thanked them for it.

“Having worked on so many different types of programming in my life, this is something that working on shows like this, and still having fun doing it, makes all worthwhile,” she says.

After filming “Zoboomafoo” for several years, Chris and Martin began itching to leave the confines of a TV studio. “We wanted to get back to being out, living with the animals for big chunks of time, because we’d spent a lot the time in Animal Junction for many years,” says Martin. So they embarked on more adult fare with “Be the Creature” for NatGeo, in which the brothers would live out in the wild with grizzlies and lions for weeks and weeks at a time, compressing around 75 hours of raw footage per trip into 40-minute episodes.

While it may be one of their lesser known endeavors — scarcely anywhere to be streamed, the first season of the show is on DVD and the second was never properly distributed — Eaton says Season 1 of “Be the Creature” is “some of the best things they’ve done.”

A production trip to the Kodiak peninsula in Alaska showed Eaton firsthand the Kratts’ extensive knowledge of wildlife, when a large bear started chasing a juvenile too close to the production for comfort. The Kratts quickly bunched up to make themselves appear bigger and disincentivize the brown bears from approaching.

“You know the old joke about, if a bear chases you, you don’t have to run faster than the bear, you only have to run faster than the guy beside you?” says Eaton, who has been on a few expeditions with the brothers. “Well, because Chris and Martin were always in front of the camera, I always knew I was safe, because there was always a Kratt between me and the bear.” (Knapp mostly opts out of the field adventures — “it’s like traveling with a men’s hockey team,” she jokes — in favor of shepherding the productions from afar, coordinating with local rangers to ensure that Ugandan trees are fruiting at just the right time to attract chimpanzees, and so forth.)

Still, after spending even a month with African wild dogs for an episode of the NatGeo series, the Kratts weren’t able to get all the footage they needed. “We had our open-air truck, and in just trying to follow them when they went off on the hunt, I think we ended up with dozens of flat tires. [We were] stuck in the sand and mud, like, five times,” says Chris. “The technology, our vehicle, couldn’t keep up with these amazingly mobile predators we were trying to follow.”

Adds Martin: “We knew there were facts about them that we just couldn’t show. So we started thinking, ‘Wow, with animation, anything we want to show, we can — any ‘wow’ fact, any interesting behavior.”

Thus “Wild Kratts” was ultimately born in 2011, their longest-running series so far, with its catchy theme song from Pure West, composers who have also been working with the brothers since the “Kratts’ Creatures” days. Each of the more than 150 episodes are bookended by live animals (and live Kratts), but centers on their animated counterparts and a tech-savvy team as they learn about and replicate the incredible “creature powers” of beavers, Komodo dragons, wolf hawks, you name it. Chris and Martin trade off drafting the scripts for each episode before working with a team of storyboard artists and animation directors to bring each story to screen.

Season 7 of “Wild Kratts” is officially in the works, though the COVID-19 pandemic is keeping the Kratts’ live-theater tour on pause until early 2022. The uncertainty of the virus’ spread has curtailed international exploration for the moment; the brothers, who live in Ottawa, Ontario, have more North American trips planned for the time being. They’re also working on a “Wild Kratts” feature film and an autobiography.

For all their goofiness on screen, the Kratts are serious about conservation, founding the Kratt Brothers Creature Hero Foundation and establishing refuges to protect wildlife habitats. The first, Grizzly Gulch, spans early 1,700 acres on the Rocky Mountain Front where grizzly bears, elk, wolves and other creatures roam. A fundraising campaign is underway for a second “creaturefuge,” with the location to be determined — with input from their fans, of course.

“Having been on for 25 years, I think one of the things that I’m most proud of is the impact it’s had on kids watching our shows, and seeing kids actually get so excited about animals and nature that they want to go on their own creature adventures in their spare time,” says Chris. “Or people [saying,] ‘Thanks for your show. Now we actually go on creature adventures as a family.’”

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• APPEARANCES

The creature adventuring duo, Martin and Chris Kratt leap into animated action in Wild Kratts, a half-hour adventure comedy that follows the brothers on hilarious expeditions with wild animals. With animal-inspired gadgets and awesome Creature Power Suits invented by Aviva Corcovado and her team, the brothers use the amazing abilities of animals to rescue their animal friends!

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Gonna Go Wild!

The Only “Problem” With Making Wild Kratts Is Actually Good News For Fans

With a literal planet full of animals, there’s no dearth of content to explore.

From the ages of 2 to 10, my now-tween son was obsessed with Wild Kratts , a nature show on PBS Kids hosted by zoologists and veteran presenters Chris and Martin Kratt. Each episode would feature the brothers in live-action and cartoon form, traveling the world in search of exotic and everyday animals to learn about their remarkable “creature powers.” My kiddo was convinced he, like the Kratt Brothers, could harness the power of assorted creatures. Like the time he spotted a Goldfish cracker on the floor and, remembering a recent episode that highlighted a certain bird’s ability to catch fish with its feet, climbed onto the couch and shouted “Here comes the osprey!” before pouncing on the snack, smooshing it into a barely extractable mess on the carpet.

“I love that!” Martin Kratt laughs when I recall the story. “Experiential learning! That’s what we really tried to do with Wild Kratts ... so the kids could imagine themselves doing what the animals do. That’s the best way to learn!”

Talking to Martin is like talking to a kid deep in their animal obsession phase. Over the course of our talk, I’m regaled with stories about feisty river otters, camels who love getting groomed with garden rakes, friendly aye-ayes, and baby chimps who don’t know how to use their gentle hands. “I just always loved animals,” he says simply. “Ever since I was the age of the kids who were watching Wild Kratts now.”

The brothers grew up in a part of New Jersey that had recently transitioned from farmland to suburbs. There was plenty of wildlife left to keep them entertained — ponds full of frogs and box turtles, plenty of trees to climb to check out the squirrels — until the family’s annual camping vacations in Vermont allowed them to experience bobcats, moose, and porcupines as well. Not surprisingly, both Martin and Chris wound up on biology tracks in college, Chris at Carleton College and Martin at Duke University where he was able to get a work-study job at the Duke Lemur Center.

“I got to feed all the lemurs, like aye-ayes and sifakas and ring-tailed lemurs. It was the best,” he says. “The first aye-aye that was born in captivity, they called him Blue Devil, and I was in there feeding him. They’re very curious, and he came down and started tapping on my watch with that long finger they have.”

“Looking for bugs!” I whisper excitedly.

“Yeah, exactly!” he says brightly. I don’t tell him that, thanks to my now 12-year-old son, I’ve seen the “Aye-Aye” episode of Wild Kratts (and everything episode that aired from 2011 to about 2020) about 100 times.

He, and eventually Chris, worked with a number of former professors at research stations after college — Madagascar with Dr. Pat Wright to study lemurs, Costa Rica with Dr. Ken Glander to observe howler monkeys, and the Peruvian Amazon with Dr. John Terborgh , in search of the rare giant river otter. Through these assorted adventures, they had access to incredible creatures that they were able to film on location.

“Our dream was to create a TV show and show kids all the animals on the planet,” he says, noting that in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, such shows didn’t really exist. “Looking back, I never would’ve thought that we would’ve made three subsequent shows. Because we were zoology guys, we weren’t TV guys.”

Initially, they used the footage they captured to make films that they took around elementary schools along the east coast. They developed a system: go on expedition, make a film, and then come back to the United States and give presentations to school groups, where they were able to receive feedback. “And then we went to Madagascar and made some more films and just kept trying to improve it until we had a pilot that got green lit.”

The films they were able to make, thanks to those opportunities, ultimately became the pilot for Kratts’ Creatures , the brothers’ first series, which would be followed by Zoboomafoo, Be The Creature , and ultimately Wild Kratts, which has been on the air since 2011.

The series has continued to take them around the world on “creature adventures,” the beginning and end of every episode features the two introducing the theme of the episode, often with footage of an adorable baby animal. But because the series is primarily animated, they’re able to show unique animal behaviors and habitats that would be difficult or even impossible to capture even with months in the field. This was particularly relevant since both men had young families when the series began. But since on-location shoots didn’t have to be months long to capture the hunting habits of a jaguar, Martin’s boys, Gavin and Ronan, and Chris’ sons, Nolan and Aidan, were able to join them in some of their travels.

“I was going back to Madagascar for the third time on Wild Kratts , so I brought the boys with me,” he says. “It was so great finding chameleons in the forest, and we went to this waterfall where this species of frog lives at this waterfall and nowhere else in the world. Found all the sorts of lemurs. So it was a great, great experience, and it was great to share it with my kids.”

Martin’s sons — who even appeared in cartoon form on the show when they were younger — are adults now “pursuing their own careers and dreams.” But just as he was able to share the world of animals with them, so too are adults who grew up on Kratts’ Creatures and Zoboomafoo watching Wild Kratts with their children. I ask how he feels when he reflects on his now multigenerational legacy.

“It’s so funny you brought that up because that’s something we’ve been talking about as we’ve gone back on tour since the pandemic,” he says. “Because when we meet people, parents and their kids, what you’re saying is the phenomena we’re encountering now. And I think it feels really good just to be a part of that continuum, and families learning about the animals. I love it. Because we always wanted our shows to be something that anybody could watch, not just for kids.”

Fortunately, there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight for animal loving families. Wild Kratts returns with new episodes on April 1 starting with a new movie special, Our Blue and Green World. You can check out Romper’s exclusive clip below!

And with a literal planet full of animals, there’s no dearth of content to explore.

“It’s so easy to figure out new episodes,” he says. “Actually the problem is, well, which one should we do next? We’ve already got a list [of creatures we want to cover] that’s like 100 animals long.” There’s also always the question of which brother gets to write which episode. “Sometimes we both want to do a particular animal. I think right now we might be vying for who’s going to write a California Condor episode. But there’s a lot of animals to go around, so we usually figure it out.”

“We’re doing what we loved ever since we were kids,” he smiles. “We’re just keeping on creature-venturing, like the way we sign off every show.”

Our Blue and Green World premieres on PBS Kids on April 1.