A Tale of Two Zoos

Work took me to Seattle this summer, and while there, I visited the Woodland Park Zoo with a group of high school students. (We were just a few days too early to meet the newest member of the zoo family, a baby giraffe!) If you haven't been to the Woodland Park Zoo, I definitely recommend checking it out if you're ever in the city. It has a peaceful, park-like atmosphere. The landscaping makes you feel like you're really entering different habitats, with bamboo plants growing around the Tropical Asia exhibits, and ferns and evergreen trees near the Northern Trail. My favorite animal there was probably the orangutan. There were a bunch of kids staring at him, taking turns pressing their faces up against the glass to make eye contact with him, and he'd move his face back and forth, tracking their movements. It made me wonder if he thought that the humans came to entertain him :)

I realize now that I forgot to take pictures of the animals, though. I was mostly focused on working and keeping track of the kids I was with. Here is one semi-visible otter pic!

Then just a few days after I got home, D.F. and I went to the Memphis Zoo. It's slightly smaller, size wise (76 acres to Seattle's 92) but it also seemed to have a good variety of animals. It felt more zoo-like to me, with more fences, glass walls, and enclosures in general. I think the primates in Memphis have a nicer habitat, and the zoo is also in the midst of building a new hippo habitat. I remembered to take pictures on this visit :)

Entrance to the Memphis Zoo - designed to look like Egypt. (Memphis - get it?)

Komodo Dragon!

There is a small aquarium. Here is a puffer fish, non-puffed style.

A naturally occurring butterfly exhibit :)

Here's the hippo. Don't you agree he needs a bigger tub?

Silverback gorilla, ruler of the jungle

This was rather random - we can across a "Chief Seattle Memorial Garden" in the Memphis Zoo. Not entirely sure why it was there, but here's a statue!

Another thing I noticed in Memphis: there were a lot of African-American visitors. The zoo was probably the most diverse place I've been yet in Memphis. Isn't that interesting? Everyone loves animals, I guess!