The Shanghai Zoo

This weekend we made our 3rd trip to the Shanghai Zoo. It's a pretty good zoo- lots of animals and nice open green spaces. But, as with most things in China, there are some drawbacks. First off, this zoo would never cut it in the "sue happy" USA. Of course the enclosures for the dangerous animals are adequate but a lot of the other enclosures feature low walls and wide gates (which my weaselly 4 year old can easily slip through). I just kept wondering how many stupid people have stuck their hand into one of these enclosures and gotten bitten. Honestly, if you really wanted to walk right up to an elephant, you could. On the other hand, one cool thing about going to a zoo on the other side of the world is that you get to see some animals that most American zoos don't have- giant pandas, really cool vultures, asian tigers, sun bears, and red pandas. The funny thing is that some of our common animals in America are a novelty for the Chinese- as evidenced by the huge display of seagulls. Yep, the same old seagulls that crap all over the beach in New Jersey are one of the most popular displays in the Shanghai zoo.

The seagull enclosure.

There are some really weird things going on at this zoo as well. Namely, "Pet World". I must admit we skipped this exhibit on the first couple trips because we assumed it was a standard petting zoo. Not so. It's actually a display of dogs and cats. Yep, each breed has it's own cage- collies, beagles, poodles, huskies, afghans, etc. and a display sign attached explaining the breeds attributes. It's freaky.

The Collie display at the zoo. Weird.

Ok, the next bizarre thing we noticed is that they have an area where you can pay to have your picture taken with a stuffed zebra. Not the toy kind- a taxidermy stuffed zebra. Which is old and showing it's age. Yuck.

The "stuffed" zebra

But the thing that bothers us above all else at this zoo is the behavior of the Chinese visitors. It's always the same. There are signs all over the zoo "Don't feed the animals"; "Don't throw garbage into the enclosures". Common sense in the US, right? Not so in China! If I had a dollar for every time we have watched someone throw food into a cage, we'd be rich. Of course the primates are the favorite critters to feed but I've also seen people toss crackers to the foxes, bears, birds, pretty much no poor creature is exempt (except for the ones you can't get to like the pandas and lions). On top of that, we have watched people throw their garbage down into the enclosures as well. "Hmm, let's see how this sun bear will react if we throw our empty soda cup into his cage". Sev and I have made it our personal mission at the zoo to reprimand people when they do this but I'm pretty sure it's a lost cause. And it's hard to teach the kids to respect animals and the rules when every adult they see is behaving in the exact opposite way. Oh well, we will keep trying.

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year - my resolution is to keep up the blog a little better this year! By the way, for some reason, I can now access the blog so I can see comments- and comments are welcome! Also, I added a voting button at the end of each blog so you can let me know if you liked it or not.