So after that disappointing date at the Ontario Science Centre, (it wasn’t my date’s fault, he was awesome, but the Science Centre was lousy!) I was ready for a do-over, and this time there was no way it could possibly be disappointing… we went to the zoo!  Even if it was pouring rain, the zoo is a ton of fun, if you’re an animal lover, like me =)  The Toronto zoo is huge, and definitely not something you can see in just a day.  They have the zoo separated into different global areas, and yesterday we spent the whole time in the Indo-Malayian and African pavilions.

We started our day with the macaques and then the orangutans.  The orangutans were very cute and entertaining.  They were swinging from the jungle-gym in their enclosure, hanging by a single foot at times, and playing hide n’ seek with these big pieces of cloth they had.  There were a number of adults and ‘children’ though none of them were younger than 5 years old.  They’d cover themselves in the cloth then peek out to see if they were spotted, and then go back to hiding again.  It was so cute to watch them climb and play, I could have easily spent the whole day watching them, if I wasn’t so excited to be seeing the giraffes today!

Next we walked past the Sumatran tiger enclosure.  This one tiger was sitting very close to us, so I decided to employ a cat-communication technique that I often use on my cats… the slow blink.  When a cat is relaxed and slowly closes it’s eyes, keeps them closed for a moment then slowly re-opens them, it’s a sign of trust and acceptance.  It signifies that they are comfortable ‘taking their eyes off you’ so to speak.  Try it sometime.  If the cat is comfortable and feeling non-threatened, it will reciprocate with a slow blink or a wink.  Anyway, so I caught the tiger’s gaze, slowly shut my eyes, and after a moment, slowly re-opened them.  The tiger winked back! It was a really cool experience =)

Next we come across the hippos.  While hippos are primarily vegetarian, and prefer to graze, they are in-fact omnivorous, and wont turn away a free meal if the situation arises.  I recently saw a video of a gang of crocodiles pulling down a zebra only to have a hippo swim up, take the dead zebra from the crocs and in basically one bite, eat it whole.   The hippo is one of the most dangerous animals in the zoo, and in Africa, hippos are accountable for more human casualties than any other animal.  They are highly territorial and will defend their territory fiercely from any intruder.  If you get bitten by a hippo, even if to them, it’s only a nip to neutralize the threat to their territory, the gigantic size of their teeth makes the bite virtually impossible to survive.  The two hippos at the zoo seemed so peaceful, it was surreal to see them grazing and swimming, and to think they had the inherent potential to be so vicious!

We then saw the rhinos, there were two of them out in the sun.  They were also just grazing peacefully, and as we made our way around the huge enclosure we came to the zebra paddock, where I got this great shot of a zebra chowing down on some grass with the two rhinos in the background:

After the zebras, we find the baboons.  There are a ton of them, a couple of big alpha males that are watching over the group, a few smaller beta males roaming about, a few females (that were in full estrus with the bright red, swollen behinds!) and a whole bunch of babies.  The mothers were interesting, walking about, with the babies hanging from their tummies, and when they sat down for whatever reason, they kept one hand on the baby’s tail, as though it were a leash.  It was funny watching the babies trying to run about only to be pulled back by their tails!  We saw one baboon that was sitting with a pile of leaves doing what appeared to be “she loves me, she loves me not…”

Then, much to our surprise, one of the males approached a female who was walking with her baby, and hopped on for some crazy baboon love, that lasted for all of 3 seconds.  Talk about a quickie!

Also, I might add, that the whole time we were walking around the zoo, we came across many chipmunks on the paths, as well as peacocks.  We didn’t see any peacocks with their tail feathers fanned out, but there were a lot of very brightly colored males sauntering about, causing ‘traffic jams’ while the people had to wait for them to cross the path!

Finally, the part I was most excited for… the giraffes!

There were two giraffes out today, both females.  One was lying down eating some grass when we first approached, the other munching on the top leaves of a tree in the shade.  Giraffes are by far my favorite animal at the zoo.  They were so gorgeous!  One started to walk in our direction while chewing her cud, and made this funny face:

Then, just as I’m explaining to my date that the giraffe has 7 bones in their neck, (just the same as us, only much, much bigger!), one of the giraffes bends over in the awkward yet funny way to eat some grass.  I took a short video, but I’m having trouble uploading, so I’ll have to post the link later when I fix that –  and you can sort of hear me describe how they also have a special valve that prevents blood from pooling in their heads when they bend over to drink water – this prevents the giraffe from fainting anytime it lowers it’s head.

The weather was beautiful.  The animals were fantastic.  The day was perfect!  I got to see the giraffes, and even stopped at the gift shop on the way out and got a little plushie giraffe to take home as a souvenir.  (It’s also a female, because there’s no little plushie penis attached to it!)  After walking all day in the sun, though, I was zonked! I slept like a baby last night, and actually, I think I’d like to go take a nap.  I loved the zoo, and very much UNLIKE the science centre, I’m definitely going back, in fact, I can’t wait to!

xox Violet

Tags: Giraffe Princess, monkey love, Toronto zoo

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