London Zoo: The Wild Side

London Zoo: The Wild Side
13 June 2003

Location	London Zoo, Regent's Park, London On a hot and sunny day I ventured into London to go to the Zoo. The London Zoo is in Regent's Park. It was the world's first scientific zoo, opened in 1828. There's rather a lot of famous architecture there, such as the Snowdon Aviary and the modernist Penguin Pool. But in my pictures the emphasis is on the animals. There's no particular order to the pictures below, except that animals that belong to the same family or order mostly are together. Cats Birds (including penguins) Otters

Weather	Sunny and hot.

Click on the images to see larger versions.


	A chimpanzee is thoughtfully pulling on his ear.

Who can resist those dark, soulful eyes?

	Thinking chimpanzee thoughts.

Sometimes a photographer is lucky. As I was when I passed the camel cage and caught these two in the act of kissing.

	This ferret looked mischievous, the way ferrets often do.

A closer look at that little pink nose and the twitching whiskers.

	An animal with a much more laid back life style, is the tiger.

Here the male lion is being unusually active, standing up and sniffing the ground.

	Showing off his noble profile and mane.

Whatchalookinat?

	A wild visitor to the pelican pool -- a heron. I guess it shows that this isn't a bad place to live if native animals decide it works for them.

Here are the creatures the pool was built for.

	A close look at one of the snowy white pelicans.

The penguins were a hoot.

	This fellow definitely thought that he'd get a treat if he just performed.

It looks as if he is about to fall over backwards but in fact he never did.

	Here he is wondering if the silvery thing in my hand could possibly be a herring.

His friends wanted to be in on the begging act too.

	On the far side, some other penguins were going up the stairs.

I just love the way the penguin closest to the camera holds his head while looking at me.

	The pygmy hippopotamus had just decided to take a bath. Here it is walking towards its pool. It was a hot day.

The zoo continues on the other side of the canal. The netted structure on the right is the Snowdon aviary.

	There were some flowers about. This is a wisteria. It smelled lovely.

The same goes for this large philadelphus flower.

	A meerkat is on the look out.

They dug in the sand too.

	And now for the real stars of this page: the Oriental short-clawed otters.

Two otters swimming in one of the pools.

	There's a waterfall for the otters to play in.

They're very social animals, constantly interacting with each other.

	Here I managed to get seven otters in one picture.

Aren't they adorable?

	This was when they heard the keepers come with their food.

A feeding frenzy ensued. They eat sea food, crabs and such. Those fangs look pretty sharp. I guess they must be if they use them to open crab shells and mussels.

	Mmm, crab! The concentration is absolute.

Afterwards they mellowed out quite a bit.

	I end with a giraffe looking at me through the huge doors in its purpose-built house built from 1837.