Ausflug: Frankfurt Zoo

This summer we had a few Ausflüge (excursions, like field trips) that I never got around to posting. One day we went to the Frankfurt Zoo with Stefan's mother. It ended up being a pretty hot day, but overall we were fine. I think my favorite exhibit was the giraffe house.

I liked this display image - they are so elegant!

and there was a little baby giraffe who was already over my head
- you can just see him here.

The zoo specializes in nocturnal animals - so you go into a building where it's really dark and have a chance to look in specially lit cages. That was a new concept for me. This was one of the occupants:


They also have a brand new gorilla house. This place is massive and has many different type of monkeys, apes, gorillas, baboons, etc. It was SUPER hot and really smelly in here ! It was interesting to see the design of the space -how the creatures were contained, yet had huge play spaces that were both fairly private and yet able to be viewed by zoo visitors. We thought it was really well done.
Later, we heard that one of the gorillas had a temper tantrum and killed his baby the day after we were there. The following week the baby's mother died of a virus or some such thing. That was really sad, especially since we had seen the mother carrying the baby around protectively. I imagine it was also quite a loss for the zoo.

We saw a rhino and I was again amazed both at their large size
and how prehistoric they look.

Stefan and his mother particularly enjoyed the exotic birds. You could walk through a series of cages and see the birds in a recreation of their natural habitats.


All in all, it was a nice activity for a summer day. I was a little surprised at how old the zoo seemed - nothing like the San Diego Zoo or the Monterey Bay Aquarium. However, it's really unfair to compare them when the Frankfurt zoo is physically smaller since it's smack in the middle of an old residential neighborhood! How fun would it be to look out your kitchen window and watch the giraffes?! It also seems like the zoo is in the middle of a series of renovations. I will say we saw many zookeepers working with the animals and I was particularly struck by how caring and involved each one worked.

The little baby llamas on the way out were super cute!