San Diego Zoo Safari Park

http://www.sdzsafaripark.org/

For today's post, I am just going to copy in what I wrote to Aaron about the Park, as that covers a fair amount of the experience. Sometimes I organize the material in a less narrative manner, and that we certainly true with the last two weeks, but perhaps because some time had passed it was easier to have a different perspective. In this case, it's really only two weeks since I've been there.

I know the zoo is bigger, and better known, but the Safari Park is pretty cool. We went through the bird area first, and they had some pretty cool specimens. As we came out of there, we saw a demonstration with a kangaroo, and then circled this area with water birds on our way to the gorillas.

Seeing gorillas live was new for me. We have orangutans at our zoo, and lots of other primates, but these were big apes. There was a sign up where you could compare your dimensions. They are usually around six feet, so that isn’t too out of the ordinary for humans. Weight is usually about 450 pounds, which again, a human can do that, and can do it muscularly. That still does not take into account their massive 66 inch chests, their 10 inch hands, and their arm span of 7 feet 8 inches, whereas a human of 6 feet would have about a 6 foot wingspan. There is a lot of raw power.

They had a young one. It was not exactly a baby, more of a toddler, but he was just hanging out in the tree for a while, and then he started exploring, and he suddenly grabbed a large section of tree and tried to drag it, which did not work quite right, then dropped it and zoomed up into another tree. It was fun to watch, though you are not supposed to make direct eye contact.

We worked our way past some other exhibits, including some zonked out lions, to the tram section. Here you take a ride over a larger area and you see some of the grazing animals, like giraffes, zebras, rhinos, and antelope.

The girls had kept mentioning cheetahs, which appeared to be their favorite animal. The cheetah was not visible in his exhibit, but there was a race at 3:30. While we were waiting we went to see elephants and tigers.

The elephants were another first, because these were African elephants, not Asian. We had seen that they had a new baby, but there were two other really young ones too. While we were watching some keepers started calling them over and giving them treats, so that was really fun to watch.

We lined up at about 3:00 for the cheetah run. It fills up really quickly so we went early and picked spots near the end. You can pay for premium seating: $10 to be at the beginning, or $40 to sit in a closed off area at the end, where you meet the cheetah afterwards, and another small African animal before. Meeting the cheetah after would have been nice, though maybe not $40 nice. However, we were right across from them, and I totally got to see the small African animal and hear them talk about it. It was a turaco, which is a kind of bird. Yes, they got to feed it and have it fly to them, but I still got a good look.

It was starting to cloud over and sprinkle a bit at this point. Sometimes they will run the cheetah twice, but if the grass is getting wet, that is a lot less likely. The issue is that cheetahs can get injured really easily, and the one thing they have going for them is speed, which various injuries would kill. Because of this, they are known as cowards, where they will often be run off by other animals rather than risk injury.

This led to something kind of interesting. The cheetah who was going to run, Shiley, has a dog companion, Yeti, an Anatolian Shepherd. This is becoming a more common thing. The dogs help the cheetahs feel safe, and be more playful, and part of helping Shiley run is that Yet does the course first. It is 100 meters, and Yeti did it in, I think, 10.9 seconds, which is not bad, but I think Shiley did it in 5.4. I didn’t even try and take pictures of them running, because I knew I would just have a blur without having been able to see anything. I did take some pictures of them walking back.

It was raining now, but we still took in a few exhibits on the way towards the exit, especially of the smaller animals, like the frogs and snakes and chinchillas. It was pretty cool, but animals are my thing.

Here is a good article on the cheetah and dog:

http://www.windsorstar.com/travel/Dogs+help+fight+save+cheetah+wild+zoos+parks+throughout+North/7952081/story.html