Oh that is right, DR Jason, you wanted to see the pandas...were they as fun as you had hoped? I too find them fascinating.
The pandas were BEAUTIFUL. They have to keep the male and the female separated (they can only be kept together for short periods of time during mating season), but the baby was with the momma. He's 6 months old now, but he's still very small compared to his mother. One of the most fascinating, if not disgusting, things about the pandas is that they don't really digest their food, so they eat all day and night when they're not sleeping. Basically they poop out everything they've eaten before it's had a chance to digest.
The other exhibit that I spent a lot of time visiting was the cheetah conservation area, where they've recently had 5 cubs, who are now as big as their mother. Sadly, because the Zoo can only care for a certain number of animals, the cubs will eventually be sent to other Zoos, so they had to separate the mother from her cubs to let her get used to being away from them. She paced back and forth next to the fence for hours, looking and crying for her babies. They let her back into the big exhibit with the cubs later in the day, but they're trying to wean the cubs from their mother and this is the best way to do it, I guess. I also found it interesting that the zebra and cheetah exhibits are only separated by a chain link fence, so the cheetah cubs would just lay and stare at the zebra like so much lunch.
Have you ever heard a zebra? It's like a foghorn! You could hear him from across the Zoo. And cheetahs sound like doves, with a high-pitched bleat. They also bark like a high-pitched dog. And then when they meow they sound exactly like a domestic cat. One that could eat your head, but a cat nonetheless.
