Thursday, March 31, 2011

Seoul Zoo

Like most people, we have a love/hate relationship with zoos. No one wants to see animals caged up, but everyone likes to see animals. We're big dorks for exotic animals though so we tend to fall on the love side. The Seoul Zoo is hardly in the city - it's a very long subway ride out there. The day we went was cold and gray and there was hardly anyone there. That didn't stop us. We had high hopes - pandas?! Alas, there are no pandas at the Seoul Zoo. Not surprising, perhaps since the entry fee was less than $3. We did see chimpanzees playing with college students who were studying them and zookeepers feeding hunks of meat to lions. There were also plenty of spry Korean seniors walking with their friends around the grounds. Here's what else we saw.

Axolotls - It was our first time to see this animal live and there were an inordinate amount of them. All the way from Mexico!


This turtle cracked us up. It was as if the animals were lonely since they were all eager to make eye contact with us, from the lions and monkeys to this guy.


The greenhouse was full of elderly Korean folks painting and photographing flowers like these.






Finally, our apologies if you're sick of hearing about giraffes, but the Seoul Zoo has 6 of them! A 1/2 dozen! Have you ever seen 6 giraffes together, nuzzling necks and everything? We sure hadn't.

2 comments:

  1. How have I never heard of an axolotl?? Those things are crazy!

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  2. Right? They're like frog-lizard-fish! Aren't they awesome? For some reason both of us had our Japanese English teachers ask us how to pronounce the word axolotl this year. My first reaction was - isn't that an Aztec word or something? It made us all the more excited to see our first ones in person though :)

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