Eideard

For wild animal lovers not content with watching tigers and gorillas during the day, a growing number of zoos are offering a more thrilling after-dark experience — overnight stays.

From Philadelphia to Denver nocturnal visitors are learning what happens when the gates slam shut, the sun goes down and the moon rises over some of America’s most well-known zoos…

The Philadelphia Zoo has been running its Roars and Snores Overnight Programs for about 20 years. The most popular theme program is the Night Flight Overnight Program where children aged five to 12 sleep in the zoo’s tree house.

The overnight stays are not only popular with young children. Teen programs are offered at many zoos for those young adults interested in the zoo industry. They are also a favorite venue for birthday sleepovers, family trips and with scout troops…

Most overnight stays include a night tour during which youngsters experience the mysterious sights and unusual sounds of the zoo without the usual distractions. A midnight snack and breakfast are also served…

Guests at the new overnight program at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Queens Zoo in New York make breakfast treats for parrots, bears, pigs, pumas and coyotes, and watch the keepers feed them to the animals the next morning, said Education Curator Tom Hurtubise.

With visitors at the Denver Zoo coming from as far away as Wyoming and Montana, Patterson said parents tend to be more worried about leaving their children than the children themselves. They have rarely had to call up a parent in the middle of the night.

“They love it,” Patterson said about the children. “For many, it’s their first overnight away from home. They are so excited that by the end of the day they are so tired that they have no opportunity to worry.”

Kids with groups of their peers, families sharing a learning experience together, any number of combinations can form up for a special adventure. Consider it. Add a special night to your kid’s memories.

In our neck of the prairie, the Albuquerque Zoo offers guided night walks for $10 – discounts available for the kiddies and old geezers like me.

Click on pic to go to zoo website with more photos

A trio of rare Snow Leopard cubs have made their public debut at a zoo in Switzerland this week. The as yet unnamed triplets, born in Basel Zoo eight weeks ago, were displayed on Wednesday with their proud parents.

Mayhan, the cubs’ mother, was paired with father Pator in 2009 as part of a Europe-wide zoo breeding program. The pregnancy was confirmed in January this year.

The zoo said the cubs, who are still being suckled by their mother, are expected to remain in Basel for their first three years but will later travel as ambassadors for their endangered species…

There are now an estimated 3,500 to 7,000 snow leopards left living in the wild, according to the Snow Leopard Trust.

Beautiful, representative of nature’s best adaptation – and human beings manage to ignore, threaten and destroy such beauty.

A goat performs wire-walking with a monkey on its back at a zoo in Fuzhou,
Fujian province, China, April 28, 2010. Reuters Strange and Unusual Pics

So I guess all the tourists who wonder how you got that ship in a bottle are totally blown away by this.

“Get off my lawn!!!”

Gu Gu is not your typical soft and cuddly giant panda.

For the third time, he’s tasted the flesh of an unwitting intruder in his pen at the Beijing Zoo.

His most recent victim was 28-year-old Zhang Jiao, who told CNN he fell into the panda pen Wednesday while trying to catch a small toy thrown by his young son.

“My son and I were playing with a panda doll, throwing it to each other, when I dropped with the toy” into the pen, Zhang said.

The barrier around the pen is about 5 feet tall, but on the other side is a drop of 9 to 10 feet, and Zhang says he could not climb out.

And then.. here it comes.. you know the victim is going to say it… Drumroll………..

Zhang said he never imagined a panda could be so vicious.

“I always thought they were cute and just ate bamboo.”

“So there!”

Puzzled zookeepers in northern Japan have discovered the reason why their attempts to mate two polar bears kept failing: Both are female.

The municipal zoo in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido brought in a polar bear cub three years ago. They named it Tsuyoshi, after the popular baseball outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and waited until it reached reproductive age.

In June, the zoo introduced Tsuyoshi to its resident bear, an 11-year-old female named Kurumi, and waited for sparks to fly.

But much to the disappointment of zookeepers, Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances toward Kurumi.

Earlier this month, zookeepers put Tsuyoshi under anesthesia to get to the bottom of the matter. That’s when they made their discovery: Tsuyoshi is a female.

The devil is in the details.

Green-colored polar bears are drawing questions from puzzled visitors at a Japanese zoo. Three normally white polar bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in central Japan changed their color in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae.

The sight of green polar bears has prompted many questions from visitors concerned about whether the animals are sick or carrying mold, said zoo official Masami Kurobe…

High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo’s conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said…

The bears are expected to return to their natural color when the algae growth subsides in November.

I expect the “green” on a lot of American politicians to subside after November, as well.