So when Jo was visiting me we went to the zoo. I love zoos, but I have a problem where they also make me feel really depressed. I'll be looking at some animals and then start thinking "they're probably cold, do they have enough space, THEY LOOK LONELY I WANT TO HUG YOU!!!!!!!" and so on. Usually what happens when I do this is I need to look in some other direction and see something different and the process starts over again "poor elephants.. OOOOOOH GOATS!" So the follow are just some pictures from the Berlin zoo.
The Berlin zoo (Zoologischer Garten) is the oldest zoo in Germany and has one of the most comprehensive collections of animals (almost 1500 speices). It is pretty much in the middle of the city near Charlottenberg.
When you get in, pretty much the first thing you will see is elephants (ELEPHANTS!). They were actually kind of sad, but still awesome. Here we have Jo making a new friend.
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| Brand New Besties |
The elephants are pretty goat adjacent. The goats were cool, you can't see much of it from the picture below, but they had a whole artificial rock hill mountain thing with a cave. The goats know how awesome they are and make sweet poses. Pretty sure they are thinking "Oh, you're taking a picture, I guess thats cool, I'm just going to hop effortlessly between these rocks and around that cliff face. No big deal." So to summarize: I like goats.
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| Goats looking epic |
Next up we cam to the lions. Most of them were inside, but a couple were outside, giving off a goat like attitude. At this point I would like to mention that there are pretty much no cages. There is a trench and a railing, but it would not be all that difficult (in my opinion) for these animals to make a leap of fate and try to make it over. I am also left wondering how many stupid children decided to just wonder into one of the animals pens.
Stupid child: "Grrr I'm a lion too"
Lion: "ummmm no you're not, *CHOMP*"
Maybe that's how they get rid of all the stupid children here.
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| Lion being all nonchalant |
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| Don't worry child, Come closer. I'm only going to clean you... with stomach acid |
So we venture on and see more things and then some sweet giraffes. This is another picture where I want you to see more, but whatever. So the Giraffe house is like an Arabian palace and looks awesome. There was a way to get inside of it, but we couldn't find it. Very sad I know. Also in with the giraffes were these smaller guys that looked a bit like reindeer, but without antlers. they were pretty cool too
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| Good hay today |
My favourite part was when we found the Hippos. If you don't love hippos then check out the first picture below.
Yeah I know, awesome. This lazy guy above is one of the most dangerous african mammals, and he's adorable. We spent a lot of time here, so much so we even saw a fight between a parent and there sassy adolescent child (pictured bellow), They were speaking hippo so I just ventured a guess as to what they were fighting about.
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| "You are too young to go to a concert alone" |
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| "But it's Bieber, I have to go" |
It's sad when families fight, moving on. So a little background for the polar bears (Eisbäre). A few years back the Berlin zoo picked up a baby polar bear (I don't know where from, just somewhere. Maybe ebay) and it was the star of the place for a long time. Knut (Ka-noot) as he was named, was a big deal. He's grown up now and chills with all the lady bears *high five*. I'll come clean with the picture below. My plan was just to say that it was Knut and play it cool. The truth is that I have no idea, there were four or five polar bears and I could not tell which was which, but hey this looks like a guy who is a stud. So if your a good physiologist and can tell male polar bears from the female without making them flip and spread then let me know.
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| "What's up, I'm just chillin' out water side" |
While wondering around we started to here some sweet howling, we walked toward the sound and found a pack of white wolves all huddled close with a couple standing on a large rock all howling away. It was sweet. What wasn't sweet was the fact that I couldn't get a picture because 15 other people had the same idea and kept on getting in front of me. I was able to get this picture below though, post howling party. One of the odd things about the wolf pen was that some guy was just wondering inside of it. He had a shovel and a zoo t-shirt so I'm guessing he was working, but it looked more like he was just killing time and hanging out with wolves
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| From the people that brought you "Where's Waldo" we now present "Where's Whitefang" |
So penguins are awesome right? No one is going say otherwise, or fifty others will probably bust out a Morgan Freeman impersonation and break into "March of the Penguins". But yeah awesome. These ones were not very energetic though, they were almost perfectly still. I took like ten pictures of them and they were in al the same position for everyone. It was crazy, maybe they were fake.
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"Is it humans or t-rex that need movement to see?"
"I told you Todd it's humans! Now stay still and they'll go away" |
Seals, clowns of the sea... Yeah I have not a whole lot to say about the seals. They were doing laps and jumps and it was pretty cool.
They have a huge aquarium as well and this is were pretty much anything with scales are. I will warn you, if you do come to the zoo, the aquarium is extra so just know that before sashaying on into the aquarium without paying. There were so many cool things in the aquarium, but I'm not sure if you have ever taken pictures through glass before, it doesn't always go as planned. Any way check out this... Alligator? That may also be a crocodile. Don't worry about it.
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| "What's up" |
One thing was this large swamp area where they had all kinds of animals inside. Including a bunch of crocodiles. Now that doesn't seem like the best idea ever, but I didn't see many random animal corpses so it must have turned out all right.
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| "I know I said I didn't want fast food, but this is ridiculous" |
So thats the zoo, much more to come. Hope the two or three people that read these are enjoying them.
summary
penguins = awesome
Hippos = more awesome
crocodiles = something that does not eat turtles
me = conflicted between delight and depression at zoo
and Scene
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