I love zoos (no, really?!) so when I learned that Europe’s 2nd oldest zoo was the Dublin Zoo (est 1831) it was only natural that I’d spend part of my trip there! So on Tuesday of my trip I met up with Laura bright and early so we could get there when the zoo opened at 9:30AM.
Aside from being the 2nd oldest zoo in Europe (the oldest is in Austria), one of the tour guides happened to mention that one of their lions, born in 1919, was one of the many filmed to be the MGM lion and that they’ve had a highly successful lion breeding program. My primary interest was the elephants, since they have a young one and increasingly zoos in the US are having to close their elephant exhibits due to lack of funds to expand them as needed for humane living conditions, both the Philadelphia and San Francisco zoos had to get rid of their elephants in the recent past, I hear Oakland Zoo still has some though!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first stop on our visit was their “World of Cats” and “World of Primates” – the primates were a delight as always, especially the lemurs.
Unfortunately the cat exhibits proved to be a bit of a disappointment, the exhibits had glass windows for up close viewing into their habitats, but Dublin is a very damp place and on a typical misty morning these windows fog up terribly and you can’t see anything. Luckily they keep their lions on the other side of the park and I got a great view of their lovely lioness.
From the cats it was on to the California Sealions! They were as far away from home as I was, and one of them helpfully hopped out of the water so I could take a picture.
Their African Plains exhibit was a real treat, it’s large and you get to see giraffes, oryx, zebras and ostriches all hanging out together. Apparently the ostriches rule the place though, one of them kept chasing a giant giraffe (see, even giraffes think birds are scary).
The rhinos have their own exhibit right next to the others.
And of course there was the obligatory visit over to see the penguins, Humboldts at this zoo.
Now, due an unfortunate attack the San Francisco zoo has signs up all over the place telling you not to taunt the animals. There was one sign at the Dublin Zoo which was similar, but caused me to chuckle:
Please do not irritate, annoy, bother, irk, harass, badger, tease, torment, provoke, madden, taunt, anger, displease, pester, bully, exasperate, rile or vex our animals.
Finally, our visit wrapped up with a quick stop inside the Meerkat Restaurant. It’s the big cafeteria of the zoo and while you eat your lunch you are in the company of meerkats whose exhibit is connected to the restaurant.
The venue wouldn’t have been a good place for a release party (typical zoo cafeteria food, required zoo admission to enter, not really hang-out friendly), but it sure has quite a name! And the meerkats were adorable.
I still have so much to write about my trip to Dublin! But for now it’s after 10PM and I think I’ll finally surrender to the jetlag induced exhaustion.
Tuesday, Oct 19th, 2010 at 10:36
that sign made me laugh on many levels :) and there were cute meerkats too !