I recently spent a day at London Zoo. It was fantastic. In keeping with the standards of service and comfort that I have come to expect, and following the grand tradition of naming trains - 'The Flying Scotsman', 'The Orient Express' etc. - I travelled there aboard the 'Special Olympics'. Fortunately for the sake of being believed by anyone not present, I had my camera.
<bitter aside> Last time we posted a cool picture of a train, the entire internet stole it. Once again, you saw it here first. </bitter aside>
Most of the animals at the zoo were primates, but the first one we saw was a Komodo Dragon. There were two present, new to the zoo and hoped to become a breeding pair, but only the male was in evidence. Since our visit, the female one escaped and died. This is not funny, and I mention it only as a point of information.
Because of the season, there were a lot of young animals in smaller, inside enclosures away from the adult animals. Some of these were very young, and underground in the dark. After about 10 minutes of eyes adjusting, one can both see these and walk without continually tripping. These were mainly Loris-like tree dwellers, though obviously I have no photos. The slightly older young animals were similarly housed, but in daylight. I do have photos of these, and this baby Albino Marmoset is of this second group.
Elephant Shrew were stored here too, by their size rather than age. As should be apparent, they are so-named because of their long snout and large ears. They move exceedinly fast, and are also very large for shrews - about the size of a medium-small pear. (There is also a sub-species, the Small-eared Elephant Shrew.)
This is a Red Faced Spider Monkey. I took several photographs of these animals, on the basis that they were fairly animated. I took these from the prime viewing spot, to the annoyance of a family behind me. When this family began to physically hassle me, I reasoned that I had spent quite a lot of time with the Spider Monkeys, so moved aside. When I moved aside, the monkeys moved aside also. The mother of the family started screaming that she had paid to see animals doing something. This screaming distressed the monkeys, and they did indeed do something: they urinated on the family. The family did not move, but stood there and began crying and wailing. This elicited a further response from the monkeys, who then pelted the family with a combination of faeces and gravel. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.
This is a gorilla. It is posing. There were several other gorillas running about, but this one seemed most interested in being photographed for posterity.
The fine green mesh that can be seen across the wider-spaced thick wire mesh is restricted to the area where the public area is not seperated from the enclosure by a wide banked verge. I suspect that at some time in the past, the loss of fingers figured in the making of this executive decision.
This creature is a Mara. Though it looks like a cross between a dog and a rabbit, it is in fact a large rodent, native to South Africa.
This is a White Faced Saki Monkey. Like the Spider Monkeys, this proved to be a very active type of monkey, though this one was more restrained, favouring laps. I suspect that both sport the '_____ Faced' prefix is coincidence.
This is an Ibis. I have never seen one this colour before.
I couldn't find the information point for these. Unlike other animals at the zoo, they were enclosed by natural geographical boundaries rather than the wire grids over wooden frames that was generally favoured. It is therefore possible that they were not part of the zoo at all, but wild hogs that happen to look odd and colourful.
