San Diego Zoo

Welcome to Jurassic Park . . . .

No, its actually just the new elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo but it reminded us of Jurassic Park. They have numerous elephants- both Afican and Asian- in their new habitat.

They are treated super well- they even get pedicures

They also have fun ways of being fed- helping them exercise all of the muscles in their trunks.

But as big as these elephants are, their ancient ancestors are even bigger- look how small I am compared to this to size replica. And those tusks could do some major damage.

We also saw the apes- both the orangutans (this guy who loved to roll across the dirt)

And the gorillas- they were super entertaining to watch as the older brother and younger brother were wrestling and play fighting. This is obviously a trait inherent to all mammal siblings :-)

We saw the king of the jungle-

and were fortunate enough not to get hit by him (we laughed at the "warning signs")

We watched other people pay money to feed the giraffes and it was super entertaining to see just how far they would extend their tongues to get the treats. It was hilarious to watch some of the people who were so afraid to go through with it. Awaiting feeding time (sorry its so blurry- it was taken from the moving tour van)

Look at that long blue tongue

The smaller babies didn't waste their time since they knew that they were not big enough to extend their necks over the fence.

We also saw several polar bears out playing

We learned for ourselves that rhinoceroses skin definitely looks like armor

And that camels humps can become droopy when they are kept in captivity

And that jaguars do have such beautifully spotted coats

We spent a good amount of time with the birds because William absolutely loves them. He had a bird growing up, Shorty, and so he has a special affinity for them. They had so many unique and birds with interesting head pieces (didn't show up in the photos) and that look kind of like a secretary

And bright colors

We also attended a birds of flight show. They had an owl who flew across the audience

and a few other birds flew around the stage and even sang "Old McDonald"

But the most shocking part was when one of the audience members fell into the pool as these geese ran wild across the stage!! And she was even holding her i-phone.

The host was so shocked that she could hardly talk and had a difficult time not laughing and re-starting the show. The poor lady went off stage and got a towel and when she tried to come out again, a rooster scared her back in. After the day before, when the staff member fell in at Sea World, you would have thought that I would have been expecting something like this. But, I was not, especially since she was holding an i-phone in her hand! It turns out that she too was one of the trainers and that they had only been doing this show for a week and so that is why the host is still so flustered by it. I guess that is the new thing for these shows at theme parks to have the "audience" members fall in the water.

We sadly were not able to see the pandas (sorry Lyanna!) due to a HUGE line and we just didn't have time. And the mama and baby weren't on display either and since I had just seen pandas in Beijing, we decided to skip it. The only problem with the zoo is that there is no way to make some kind of giant loop around it- instead, you have to walk up and down the hill several times, so that took up a fair amount of our time.