Zoo Exploration Walk

The zoo is a place that, as I said the other day, is a little touchy in terms of how much people dislike them. There are fair reasons for that, such as poor animal treatment and welfare, and a host of other issues. There are some zoos that are good though, and we've been to a fair number of them ourselves.

This zoo here is one that isn't incredibly far from us, so we decided that we'd make a trip to the place recently to do some exploration of the animals. The added benefit was that I get to test out my new camera and lens! The camera is a year old at this point for us, but I hadn't used it to take pictures of the zoo animals yet so I was really looking forward to getting a nice zoom on some of them, which ended up working out really well!

Sadly I don't remember all of the animals names.. or even most of them. There are ones that are relatively easy but then there are also ones that are far more complicated than I would hope to remember. Regardless though, they are still some beautiful animals! I love the massive horns on these oxen or steer, whichever they are. I do remember that these were not native animals to the United States, they were imported from somewhere else but I don't recall where they mentioned they were from. These have been here for a number of years which is good though, because they are doing pretty well for themselves! I always stop by to see them when we are at the zoo, even for just a few moments. I think the horns are fucking badass lol.

This one is a Tapir I do remember! We saw some videos when my son was younger on Tapir's and I remember them well because they look very similar to an anteater but they are not. Looking at the picture I was confused as to what the hell was up with the animal, but this was a male.. so you can infer what is going on there lol.. I did NOT catch that at all when I was taking the photo.

The Tapirs are cool though, they are a hog-looking species and are pretty relaxed, doing their thing unlike the hogs that destroy everything in sight. I remember that I thought they looked interesting, so that's why I remembered their odd name!

:P
This monkey is pretty awesome! Lol. I was mainly focused on getting him to look at me so I can get a picture of their attention. It was an added bonus that the fella was sticking our his tongue at the camera :D really cool! The monkeys are ones I love to see, although I do feel a little bad for them given that their natural habitat is much bigger than the cages that they inhabit here. I will say though, that the monkeys and other animals over the years have gotten habitat upgrades! I never came to this zoo when I was younger but my wife used to and she said that the overall size of the zoo has increased considerably and the animal cages are FAR bigger than they were when she was a kid. Giving the animals much more room to enjoy and explore instead of being confined to such a small area!

It is progress, I think, to give them better living conditions closer to their natural habitats, but also making it so that they are visible to the general public that comes to see them. Gotta have a balance!

The sloths were pretty cool. It wasn't too difficult to get these fellas to look right at you! They were even moving quite a bit when we were walking around which was interesting. You see so much online with the sloths just sitting there all day and night, barely moving. With this though, the sloth was moving around quite a bit to really ham it up for the camera! I'm glad that I got a decent shot of the dudes face, he was cheesing for sure. Thanks bro! lol

There were also some really cool looking primates like this one. I have no clue what the species of it was, but it looks really cool! I love the orange colored hair above it's head. They were a little the sad or depressed side, I don't know if that's a product of where it was living or if it had recently lost one of it's troop but this one wasn't overly active for the time that we were there. I tried pretty hard to get it's attention but it wasn't interested at all, which I can't necessarily blame it since it likely gets harassed all day by people, especially demonic little children. It's likely not interested in anything but food and sleep!

All photos are my own
Canon EOS 2000D
Canon 24-105mm lens