Sunday 30 September 2007

The Menagerie

I like zoos and I always try and visit the zoo in whichever city I am visiting. So it was only a matter of time until I ended up back at the Jardin des Plantes and the Menagerie there. The zoo was founded in 1794, but during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, when Paris was under seige, most of the animals were eaten by the starving Parisians. They have replaced the animals now so it wasn't just empty cages. In fact in a lot of the cages it was quite hard to see the animals due to the overgrown plants, either inside or outside the cages. It was a pretty random collection of animals, with a lot of birds, but there were a lot of animals I had never seen before. There weren't any of the "big" animals like lions, tigers and elephants, but I sometimes find those animals a bit boring as mostly they are just lying around.

My favourite animals were the pink flamingos, those are some cool looking birds, I really have to work out how to get my camera to focus on what I want it to though, as I ended up a with a lot of shots with lovely clear wire and with a blurry animal shaped figure in the background.

They had quite a few Australian animals there, wallabies, emus, cassowaries, black swans and green tree frogs. I didn't really bother taking photos of them as I think everyone has seen them before. They had some cool reptile/amphibian houses, with poison dart frogs, they were the coolest frogs I've ever seen as well as tarantulas which are some good looking spiders.


















I saw this really sad donkey-type thing there as well. It was way too big to be a normal donkey, plus it had a serious coat going on. The thing really needed a serious groom, I don't think it could see as the whole time I watched it, it didn't move one step.


















I think it was some Clydesdale-donkey from Russia and this is what it should look like:
There were also quite a few mountain goat type things in the zoo, with rocks and stuff for them to climb on. But the only goat I actually saw that had climbed up on stuff was a common, run-of-the-mill goat in the children's area:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That big hairy donkey is a Poitou donkey. :)