Saturday, December 19, 2009

An Afternoon at the Zoo

December in St. Louis seems like an unlikely time to go to the zoo, right?

Wrong.

Apparently zoo animals like the 40 degree weather. Except for the bears. The bears were sleeping. The zebras were on crack and chasing each other around and making all sorts of noise. The male lion roared several times (in impatience? in hunger? or as attraction to his potential mate?) as well as one of the tigers. The two lions played with each other and climbed trees. The Malaysian Sun Bear played with a plastic hoop. The sifakas flirted with a blond. The humans froze.

And I learned that a black panther is not a breed of its own, but rather a large black cat. Specifically of jaguars, leopards and possibly cougars. Some of those lovely spotted cats have a gene that causes melanism - which means that they appear almost all black but appear to have their breed's markings. Kind of the opposite of albino, I think.

Since there were at least 2900 pictures taken, and whiltled down to about 150, I *only* uploaded about 80.

I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite, but I will have to for the photo of the day. But not for this post... here are some of my absolute favorites of the entire bunch:

A bouncy zebra:

Zingy Zebra

A lion portrait:

African Lion Portrait

A curious sifaka:

Sifaka

An impertinent African Lion:

Sticking His Tongue Out

A beautiful snow leopard:

Snow Leopard Close-up

A beautiful Amur Leopard:

Amur Leopard

Heard a lion roar:

ROOOAR!!

That's one BIG cat in a tree:

In A Tree - Tongue

Why does he look so guilty?

Malaysian Sun Bear in a "Tree"

A skidding lion:

Skidding Lion

Check out the rest here.

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