Special Group Tour 1/19

After the morning's Sunrise Surprise Stroll, one of the Educators invited me to accompany him on a Special Group Tour. Golbon, a large food service marketer, had invited it's distributors from across the country to a special Zoo trip. The huge group was divided across two Educators, and it was obvious that everyone was very excited to be there.

The group started off on a short walking tour. We made our way to the Bactrian camels, where everyone was able to meet and feed Mongo, Amu, and Heidi. Mongo was having a surprisingly unslobbery morning. WE knew it couldn't last, and the dry streak came to an end when a big slobber blob fell right down the inside of a woman's shirt as she was feeding him. Eww! She was very good natured about it; I mean, how many opportunities do you have in a lifetime to get drooled on by a huge camel? The group got to peek a little further behind the scenes, spotting a red tree kangaroo, some food storage, and a nice big heap of Zoo poo. The Zoo produces four-and-a-half tons of manure each day, most of which is sold. The state highway department is a frequent customer, using the manure to fertilize the plants and flowers along the interstates.

Heading to Elephant Mesa, the group was able to witness the meerkats feeding before we all boarded the bus for the rest of the tour. The three elephant girls, Devi, Tembo, and Sumithi, were happily munching on branches. They are so strong that they can break branches up to eight inches in diameter! Contrary to common belief, female elephants can have tusks. Tembo has large tusks, but only a little bit of Devi's are visible, because she likes to break them off. It's hard to estimate how long an elephant can live. Over the course of their lives, elephants grow six sets of teeth, approximately every ten years. After the last set falls out, wild elephants most commonly die of starvation. In zoos, accommodations are made for the elephant's meals, usually just making them mushy, so that they can live much longer.

We passed the giant anteaters and saw that mom is still carrying the baby, though it looks like he may be getting a bit too big for it. They are patterned so that mom and baby's stripe aligns, making it tough or predators to be able to distinguish the young one. Giant anteaters can eat an average of thirty thousand ants or termites a day! Obviously it's not practical to come up with that many ants daily, besides the fact that they would crawl out of the bowl, so zoos feed them a special insectivore meal that's formulated specifically for them. The anteaters say that it's really long lip licking good!

We passed some of the Zoo's ficus, a portion of which is shipped daily to the Sumatran rhinos at the Cincinnati Zoo. Their rhinos were having some trouble previously, because they didn't have the ficus in their diet. Now they're getting a daily dose, and not only has their health improved, they've just had their fourth baby rhino! As they are critically endangered, this is terrific news.

Lopping down into Cat Canyon, the group learned many interesting tidbits about the various animals we passed. The bateleur eagle's name is French and means "tightrope walker". The Siberian lynx have been known to hunt possums climbing up the outside of the lynx's enclosure. This was discovered by some night observation, after Keeper's kept finding possum skulls stuck in the fence five to six feet in the air. The lynx would pounce and grab the possum's tail, pulling it through the fence. Only the head couldn't fit through. Wow and eww! The warthogs in this particular canyon were the basis for Pumbaa from Disney's "The Lion King". Disney's animators didn't feel the warthog's body was quite the big screen image they were looking for, so instead they used the body of a pot bellied pig in the Children's Zoo. It is believed that the light swath of puffy hair on the head and back of a baby cheetah causes it to resemble a ratel from a distance. As ratel are very fierce and aggressive little guys that even lions won't bother with, this provides the baby cheetah with an extra defensive camouflage until it gets older. Orson, the black jaguar, has a different hunting style than most big cats. Jaguars wait high in the trees until their prey walks by below. Dropping down on top of them, instead of going for the throat, they actually use their amazingly powerful jaws to crush their prey's skull! It's no wonder Orson makes such short work of the giant bones he's given.

We turned up Bear Canyon to find the grizzly brothers joyfully digging up their enclosure. They quickly overcame their shyness at first coming to the Zoo and are now crowd favorites, striking plenty of closeup poses. The lion sisters were snoozing together in a patch of sunshine as we made our way up the hill and across the front of the Zoo.

Down into Tiger River, the tigers were temporarily off exhibit. Due to unfortunate recent event at the San Francisco Zoo, most zoos have decided to take extra precautions in their tiger exhibits. (This picture is from before.) On a good note, the tigers have been witnessed mating, and we are all crossing our fingers for baby tigers in the near future. We did get an excellent view of the okapis wandering through the trees and the hippos, who were soaking in a little sun themselves. Rounding the corner, the guests got a great view of Su Lin the panda perched up in a main exhibit tree. Baby panda viewing had been extended by an hour, so most of the guests chose to disembark to get a peek at little Z. The tour was great, led by a terrific Educator, and the group was extremely pleased. Thanks to the wonderful Golbon group; it was great having you!