The Peacock's Tail

Everytime I see a peacock proudly showing off its tail, advertising his higher quality to a potential mate, the one thing that comes to mind is the Handicap Hypothesis - where the male displays his "quality" to the female through costly traits. In this case, the long tail of the peacock makes it more vulnerable to predators, but a surviving peacock uses the tail to communicate his fitness potential. I am sure many peahens found this guy here quite attractive! Back to blogging after a big break :)

More Tigers!

These are two of the five Amur Tiger cubs at the St. Louis zoo, born in April 2008. And no, they don't look like they are cubs, but they have a lot more to grow! I think there are 3 females and 2 males and they are absolutely beautiful to watch. Except when I see them frolicking in the mud, there is a temptation to hold them down and give them a nice bath :)

Favorite Animal

As I was waiting for the little zoo train at the St. Louis Zoo yesterday morning, I ran into Natalia - a little girl from the Dominican Republic who is in the US to get a surgery on her leg. One of her legs is much shorter than the other, and she had recently been fixed with a shoe, that helps her walk (and run). Since the train was running late, we decided to walk around some of the exhibits. Natalia, who mostly speaks only spanish told me her favorite animal is the 'elefante', which is also one of my favorite animals :)

The St. Louis zoo has four Asian Elephants, and the male is in an enclosure by himself. The three females, one of which looked like a calf, are together. They also have a separate enclosure with a pool where they can go for a swim. It would have been so cool to see them also swim, along with the baby Hippo!

Hippo under the Water!

I spent this morning at the St. Louis Zoo. I had a great time, walking around and taking a ride in the train around the 90 acre zoo. The first part of the zoo was the River's Edge and had Rhino, Hippos, Cheetah, Bush dogs and elephants. In spite of having been to so many zoos before, I saw so many animals for the first time and it was thrilling. The most wonderful experience of the day was watching a baby hippo swim!

This is the first time I am witnessing a hippo actually swim - this baby was basically doing circles in his pool, with the mom and dad watching from a corner. He has gracious movements, and it was fun to watch him swim along with hundreds of fishes. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring our camera on this trip and the pictures were taken with my iPhone.

Peacock and a Prairie Dog

This totally qualifies as something funny! When we were in Albuquerque a couple of summers back for the ASM conference, the picnic was at the zoo. In almost all the zoos I have been to in the US, the peacocks get to wander around, and also get in some of the other animals enclosures. When we were watching the prairie dogs, this adolescent peacock, got in their enclosure. But I suppose he didn't quite realize what he was getting into. The prairie dogs kind of spooked him, as they were running and rolling around.

The peacock, opened up its tail, hoping the myriad of 'eyes' may scare the prairie dogs. But then, one of the prairie dogs decided that the feathers look way too yummy. He just walked up to the peacock and started to nibble on one of the feathers. It sent the poor peacock into a frenzy. Every time it moved, the prairie dog just kept walking up to it, may be wanting to play! It was such a different scene from watching prairie dogs in the wild, to seeing this silly behavior in a zoo. Needless to say, we spent quite a bit of time watching these guys and laughed so hard :)

Another Tiger

To continue with the Tiger Time, here is one from the Milwaukee County Zoo. We went to the zoo for the first time ring our Anniversary weekend in July. We spent almost half a day at the zoo with one of our friends. We saw the tiger towards th closing of the zoo. There are more than 200 tigers in the zoos in the US, and numbers are in 1000's that are privately owned. Though the tigers themselves are probably not going to go extinct, the populations in the wild are declining at a very alarming rate. One just simply cannot highlight the role of zoos as conservation centers. One of the impressive things about the Milwaukee Zoo is that as you walk along the road, you can see the predator and its prey together. In the pen in front of the tiger were the prey. I definitely want to go to this zoo again to see the Snow Leopard, that we missed the last time.

Tiger Time

One of the things I was hoping to do during my India trip this summer was to see a Tiger. I was pretty excited when a friend was enthused about the idea of going to one of the National Parks where you can still see one. However, due to scheduling issues, the tiger plans fell through and I went to Eastern Himalayas and on the way managed to see a Great One Horned Rhinoceros at Gorumara National Park. So, now I have to contend with the time spent watching tigers in the zoos.

This one is from Atlanta Zoo, from our 2007 Holiday trip.

Leopard at Sikkim Himalayan Zoological Park

When I was in Gangtok during my recent trip to India, one of our stops was the Sikkim Himalayan Zoological Park. The park is known for its conservation efforts for the Red Panda. One of the animals that seemed to be awake that morning was the Leopard. He was exhibiting stereotypic behavior and pacing when we neared his enclosure.

He seemed to get a little interested in climbing the branch...and we were waiting to see what he was getting to...

But what does a really bored leopard do?

Find a really comfortable spot and remain bored :-(

Atlanta Zoo

Day 2 in Atlanta we went to the zoo. Not just that we love animals, but Atlanta zoo is quite famous. It is not a zoo where no matter how much you try, you barely see half the exhibits. We were able to cover the entire place in about 4 hours, with ample time watching the critters.

After watching the meerkats taking turns, looking out for things flying in the sky, we were thrilled to see the silver back gorillas relaxing and the otters playing.

The next stop was the main attraction of the zoo - the Giant Panda. The Atlanta Zoo has three of them, a mother (below) and a baby (on top) that is the first one to be born in captivity in the US, and an adult male. However, all of them were sleeping when we were there. We were walking around seeing all the other exhibits when someone mentioned that it was feeding time at 2 pm and all the sleepy ones will be awake. We doubled back and were lucky to see the adults up and eating. This is the male and the female only showed her back to us for the most part. And the baby - missed the meal.