CHOCOLATE LIFE AND JAZZ!: Zoo Trip

A short time ago, Tony took me to Whipsnade Zoo, which is part of London Zoo. We went there on our way up to see our son and his wife in Rutland. It is an amazing Zoo, no cages but loads of open spaces. It is trying to breed endangered animals and does a lot of conservation work, which is why l didn't mind visiting the place. It was a lovely surprise for me from Tony..thanks love.
Strangly enough, the first animals l took images of were..ducks. They had really fluffy feathers and the colours were soft and subtle. This is one of those ducks.

I have always loved Ringtailed Lemurs and it was great to see them in the flesh, so to speak. They were resting at the time, curled up and looking so cute.

The next creature is an European Bison and in this image he is either shredding or growing a winter coat.

Other animals you would not expect to see in a zoo, are goldfish! But here they are and so beautiful to watch.

These animals are the largest cattle in the world, even bigger than Water Buffalo, and are called Gaur...really are large but sort of cute looking, don't you agree?

One of my favorite animals is the elephant, Asian ( I used to know them as Indian!!) or African. These elephants are Asian elephants. They are smaller, they only have one hump on their forehead, African have two, and also the females don't really have tusks. The baby here was so funny, trying to drink from the water but not wanting to fall in..really cute to watch.

This was the Elephant Exhibition. The show was put on to educate people about Elephants in the wild. The things the elephants did, were to enable the staff to clean them or give them medicine etc. Elephants never do anything they don't want to do.

This was the adorable baby elephant that was only 6 weeks old and already he is doing everything he is told and also is copying all the other elephants! He is the youngest elephant to be trained like this. He is very clever for his age!

An Asian Rhino..such weird looking creatures but l can't help but love them.

I love camels but they really are funny looking animals. Used to love seeing the Dromedaries roaming freely in the desert, when we lived in Dubai. You can see if you look carefully, that some of these Bactrian camels humps are full of water and others are bent over..empty!

I saw quite a few flamingo flocks in Bahamas but they were never this pink. These must be fed well on freshwater shrimps

This Cheetah, we think, is the mother of the cubs being kept next door. She could hear and smell them and was pacing backwards and forward, waiting to get back to them.

Mother and daughter Hippopotami in their pond. I can smell the "sewage pit" from here..They fart and poo in the water, then swirl it around so as to claim their territory....what a pong!!!

l can't remember the correct name but roughly these creatures are called pygmy hippo's. They have very curved teeth that look like tusks.

Their skin looks just like old leather!

"Simples" ( from the advert about "Compare the markets.com"!!)...Meerkats are so cute.

A painted face that looked great. She was with her friend, who was also face-painted! They looked as if they were having great fun. I think she was a tiger and her friend was a zebra.

A very weird looking Giraffe....one side of his face was definitely different from the other side. Also his neck was very thin for a giraffe l thought.

I think these animals are called Bongos. Their horns are amazing, long, slender and twisted, wonder how they manage not to get tangled up in the bushes?

These are White Rhino..cute aren't they? Calm and gentle looking but can be very dangerous. To me they look very "ghost like". Also when you see the following image, did you reaslise they had such small ears?

This strange animal, that was allowed to wander all over the zoo was called a Mara. To me it looks like a deer with a large hare's head attached. Weird!