Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My
I went to Woodland Park Zoo today with my mom and dad, and we had a wonderful time. I'm ambivalent about zoos, because on one hand, I love watching the beauty and behavior of the animals, but on the other hand, why should wild things be caged for my amusement? But every time I go to this zoo, there's a new and improved, wilder habitat for someone. This time, the jaguar has an amazing new enclosure with tons of running water, trees, bushes, and little rock dens to curl up in. I swear that cat's digs are larger than the lot my house is on. The lemurs and the monkeys have a spiffy new open-air environment too. It may not be perfect, but it's an immense improvement on the old-style zoo reality of concrete rooms with bars on.
We went specifically today to see the two Sumatran tiger cubs, about three months old now and thirty pounds apiece. Cute as buttons, with enormous paws. There are only 400-500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild; they're the smallest of the tigers, and have white "false eye" spots on the backs of their dark ears. These cubs are named Langka (LONG-ka), Indonesian for "rare", and Manis (Maw-NEES), Indonesian for "sweet." They were awake when we got there, bouncing all over and biting everything in their vicinity, including their mother. She took it pretty well, but didn't hesitate to clomp them in the head with her paw when they went too far. I don't know if it was a dominance thing or what, but one cub consistently ran roughshod over and gnawed on his brother or his mom, while the other cub seemed to think that trees and sticks were the enemy to be subdued. They're pretty lively on their feet, but don't have perfect dexterity yet; one of them fell off a log about four feet above the ground; he sat there thinking about that for about 30 seconds before getting up and loping off to attack his brother, who was injudiciously lying with his belly exposed.
Another highlight was listening to the lions and tigers roar, which they did quite a bit of today (apparently zoo animals tend to be more active in the colder winter weather). It actually scared some of the little kids, which isn't surprising. It provided me with a delightful frisson down the spine, but if I were out in the wild in their natural environment, it wouldn't have been so delightful. One small boy seemed more concerned with the tiger; he looked up at this massive animal, (to whom "regal" and "imposing" don't do justice and who looked like he would eat you as soon as look at you), and said, "Daddy, he doesn't have any friends."
The tropical aviary is always wonderful (and warm); we saw turquoise tanagers, yellow-rumped caciques, kiskadees, peruvian pigeons, blue-crowned mot-mots, and a sun bittern. I conversed a bit with a kiskadee and a cacique, and suffered an aerial bombardment from a mot-mot (missed my head, got my coat).
The so-called "Elephant Barn" is an impressive structure after the manner of a Thai temple, I believe. We were watching mother and baby (relatively speaking) elephant eat their evening ration of hay when we saw another trunk snaking in through a gap in the doorway leading to an adjacent isolation room. I assume this elephant had also been fed, but she was covertly abstracting hay from the adjoining room; she got through quite a bit of it, too. I guess "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" isn't a human-specific idiom.
We went specifically today to see the two Sumatran tiger cubs, about three months old now and thirty pounds apiece. Cute as buttons, with enormous paws. There are only 400-500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild; they're the smallest of the tigers, and have white "false eye" spots on the backs of their dark ears. These cubs are named Langka (LONG-ka), Indonesian for "rare", and Manis (Maw-NEES), Indonesian for "sweet." They were awake when we got there, bouncing all over and biting everything in their vicinity, including their mother. She took it pretty well, but didn't hesitate to clomp them in the head with her paw when they went too far. I don't know if it was a dominance thing or what, but one cub consistently ran roughshod over and gnawed on his brother or his mom, while the other cub seemed to think that trees and sticks were the enemy to be subdued. They're pretty lively on their feet, but don't have perfect dexterity yet; one of them fell off a log about four feet above the ground; he sat there thinking about that for about 30 seconds before getting up and loping off to attack his brother, who was injudiciously lying with his belly exposed.
Another highlight was listening to the lions and tigers roar, which they did quite a bit of today (apparently zoo animals tend to be more active in the colder winter weather). It actually scared some of the little kids, which isn't surprising. It provided me with a delightful frisson down the spine, but if I were out in the wild in their natural environment, it wouldn't have been so delightful. One small boy seemed more concerned with the tiger; he looked up at this massive animal, (to whom "regal" and "imposing" don't do justice and who looked like he would eat you as soon as look at you), and said, "Daddy, he doesn't have any friends."
The tropical aviary is always wonderful (and warm); we saw turquoise tanagers, yellow-rumped caciques, kiskadees, peruvian pigeons, blue-crowned mot-mots, and a sun bittern. I conversed a bit with a kiskadee and a cacique, and suffered an aerial bombardment from a mot-mot (missed my head, got my coat).
The so-called "Elephant Barn" is an impressive structure after the manner of a Thai temple, I believe. We were watching mother and baby (relatively speaking) elephant eat their evening ration of hay when we saw another trunk snaking in through a gap in the doorway leading to an adjacent isolation room. I assume this elephant had also been fed, but she was covertly abstracting hay from the adjoining room; she got through quite a bit of it, too. I guess "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" isn't a human-specific idiom.
posted by Jennifer at 9:13 PM
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