2 degrees
Steps taken: 5,415
Miles walked: 2.13
Allie and I had fun during our birthday-weekend zoo visit! In fact, we saw lots of things that we've never seen before! This is perhaps the biggest thing I've learned during the first part of my zoo adventure - you have to come often to know all the animal behaviors you can see.
The Northern Trail was closed due to the cold weather, but we were able to go through Russia's Grizzly Coast. Here you can see how much steam was coming off of the sea otter's pond. You could extend the learning for bigger kids by researching what causes the steam on such a cold day.
An amur leopard was perched on this branch, like the previous week. We watched him lick his paws just like a kitty. Because the Northern Trail was closed, and one of the reasons I've been coming to the zoo is to get some extra walking in, I yelled (on the mostly vacant Grizzly Coast trail) and started walking "Serpentine," which I had recently seen on New Girl. After doing a bit of research, I learned the joke was from the movie, The In-Laws.
Another of the leopards was posing nicely for a good selfie opportunity.
We stopped to peak in on the typically winter-drowsy bears on our way back inside. We paused briefly thinking "aren't there normally three bears, or are we thinking of the bears on the Minnesota Trail?", when we looked over and saw one of the bears out in the larger exhibit. We don't know what prompted him to rouse himself, get up out of the cozy den, and walk around, but we did catch him yawning a few times. That was just the first unusual or rare (at least to us) thing we witnessed. Sometimes kids get bored looking at animals. One thing that might keep them more interested is using, when provided, the names of individual animals. The names of the three brown bears, for instance, are highlighted in the exhibit.
Discovery Bay was kind of quiet. Here are a couple of the weedy sea dragons floating about.
With the cold, there were fewer snow monkeys out with most of them sitting where the sun was hitting the exhibit.
The African penguin exhibit is always popular, but particularly so when fewer folks are taking in the outdoor trails. I've loved watching when the penguins follow the lead of the little kids up against the glass (but hope it doesn't frustrate them!). Today I had Allie try and demonstrate how they interact.
I was having a hard time keeping my camera ready to catch good pictures and videos so I only got this interesting pose of Tia, the female white-cheeked gibbon, on my phone.
FUN FACT OF THE DAY: When white-cheeked gibbons are adults, the males (black) and females (buff) are different colors. When they are infants, however, they are colored to match mom. At six months they turn black like their dad and then females turn buff again when they reach adulthood.
Allie has been my lucky charm in terms of seeing things I or we hope to see (like seeing the Asian small-clawed otters in the water last week), so I shouldn't have been surprised when we saw the male tapir get in and out of his exhibit pool multiple times.
That wasn't even the only pleasant surprise we had in the tapir/binturong exhibit! We saw the binturong! I'm not sure I've ever seen him, but today he went in and out of his little areas multiple times.
When we peeked into the little nesting window of the agouti exhibit, we saw this - a mama agouti nursing her babies!
As we kept walking, we learned the babies were only 6 days old!
When we got to the Minnesota Trail, the puma was on the move.
The white wolf was right by the front of the exhibit as we passed. I think after a zoo visit it'd be fun to make your own version of a book similar to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? i.e. White wolf, white wolf, what do you see? I see a red dhole looking at me....
The last fun, and the funniest, thing we saw was the wolverine playing with a toy and chasing his tail!
I told Allie that the wolverine's antics reminded me of the silly weasel toy -- which we saw when inside. What do you think?
