Wednesday Walk: Minnesota Zoo

I'm guessing there aren't many people who had one of these on their morning walk today:

I've been running myself ragged at the same time as I have an irritating, ongoing cold, so I decided this morning that I desperately needed some zoo time. I spend a lot of time at the Minnesota Zoo, and mostly the photos I take are like the one up there, of animals with the long lens. But I figured for Wednesday Walk (by @tattoodjay) I would also take my phone out from time to time and take some pictures of what the zoo itself is like.

I started with the tigers. Minnesota Zoo is very heavily involved in tiger conservation, so there are two Amur tiger exhibits. This one is Tiger Base Camp, which has this long bridge out into the middle of the exhibit. I imagine that was really cool cutting-edge zoo design when it was built in the 1970s, but my zoo experience is that it's hardly ever worth walking out there. But I'm glad I did today.

Usually in this exhibit the tigers are far away and asleep, and the other exhibit lets you get close and sometimes even interact. But this time I was there early enough that the keepers hadn't let the tigers into the exhibit yet. That's often one of the secrets of zoo photography: animals are usually most active when they first enter the exhibit for the day, so if you can be there for that there's usually a good chance of getting something worthwhile.

The tigers also have a new pool since I've been there, which you can see above, and that led to visiting them definitely being worth my time.

After that came what I think is my new weirdest thing I've ever seen at a zoo. (And I've seen dogs that climb trees.)

These are takin, a large and stocky Himalayan goat-like animal. While they're members of the goat family, they're very large, and most of the time I see them they're basically funny-looking cows. They sit around, they eat a little, they sleep a lot. You can tell they're goats because they head-butt, and I got to see them teaching a baby to head-butt once which was pretty great.

I did not expect to see this one standing on his hind legs. That ability was complete news to me, but he was doing it regularly, climbing the fence to get at the choice leaves that were overhanging. I always enjoy seeing new behaviors, and this one was particularly spectacular.

Then it was off to the kangaroo exhibit. If you read my post earlier in the week about having giraffes every third summer, the kangaroos are what they're doing with that space in the summers in between, as well as wallabys, emus, sheep, black swans, and for some reason camel rides.

The kangaroos and wallabys are the first walk-through exhibit we've had here, which are basically the new hotness in zoo design, where you get to share space with the animals rather than being separated by cages. I've heard really good stories about zoos doing that with lemurs, but the kangaroos have been a little disappointing, as they really don't seem to want anything to do with the humans. The zoo added feeding stations this year and even that doesn't seem to help much. I did get pretty close to some wallabys today, though.

At the far end of the zoo is the Family Farm, a working farm that they let you wander around in. I'm not sure why we need one of those in Minnesota, it's not like we can't visit farms whenever we want to. But the kids seem to like it, and sometimes I walk out there. These nursing pigs were pretty nice today.

On the way back I stopped to see the bird show, something I do about once a summer when I happen to be passing by at just the right time, and today was that day. They also have a summer concert series in this amphitheater, which is always full of artists that are almost tempting enough to get me to spend an evening on those seats. Some day I expect I'll get to one.

The big group on the upper left are Mennonites, of which there were several busloads wandering around the zoo in traditional clothing today. That happens from time to time.

There's a big chunk of the zoo that's indoors, too, but I didn't get to that today. It was overcast and pleasant, which made it easier to take photos outside and harder inside. But this gives you a little flavor of what my home zoo is like.