Ruth And Dana Go To The Zoo!

After finals were done, Dana and I decided to go to the Hogle Zoo to see the "fantastical animals."

This is a Bornean Orangutan. He's a pretty cute bump-on-a-log.


Here are the free-range zoo animals. They have all the advantages of zoo animals but none of their weaknesses! They can't go quite as many places as the zoo-keepers, but almost.


Dana and the boring old elephant. All he did the whole time was stuff his face! (The Elephant, not Dana)


The animal voted "Most Interesting" on our trip was this baby orangutan. Yes, she's hanging by one arm. Eating bushes. With her toes. She liked chasing the peacock who had decided to move into their enclosure.


Here is the big daddy eating bushes. He's more civilized though, he's using his hands.


The giraffe house was pretty cool. It had an upper level. So instead of looking up at the giraffes, we got to look down on them...HA! Cool perspective. I liked the giraffe shaped garage doors

This is an artsy giraffe photo: Giraffe-y Sillouhette

Dana was enraptured by the gourmandizing giant tortoise. The tortoise really loved that grass platter.


We thought these Colobus Monkeys were pretty cute. They looked very wise...and sad.


Here is the majestic Western Lowland Gorilla. It spent most of the time determined not to let us see its face. We showed him!


We named this one the "Kramer Lemur." 'Nuff said.

No, the zoo did not have a house cat on display, this is some kind of Persian hunting cat...

This tortoise loved the camera, totally posed for me.


The Golden Lion Tamarins liked Dana's camera, they were very curious!

This orangutan didn't quite realize how very slippery her fur was...and then she started eating her feet. Yum!

This is the first porcupine I've every seen in real life, and they gave us a show! Someone thought it would be funny to put the meerkats in the same enclosure as the porcupines, and the meerkats decided to harass the porcupines. Here is a great video of the porcupine's defense dance!


By the end of the day we were very tired, like this fulfilled sloth. Happy day.