Sunday 27 September 2009

The Ankara Zoo

A few days before Clara was born we took a trip to the Ankara zoo. There were a few really good exhibits. The monkeys were great, and so were these bears.

They looked pretty content. This one is taking a bath.

He doesn't seem to mind me snapping a few photos.

Can I hug you? You're such a big fuzzy teddy bear!

This guy doesn't look quite so huggable. What is that crust hanging off of his matted fur?

And how do those skinny little legs hold up his enormous body? What kind of animal is he anyway? A yak? A water buffalo? A pointy horned shag carpet?

I've never seen zebras so close before. I was kind of sad... their pens were tiny, but then again it was fun finally seeing those stripes up close.
Hello pretty horsey!

But wait! What's this? A sign pointing to the cat exhibit... not the big cats and lions. We'd already seen them. The house cat exhibit. Am I the only one who didn't know domesticated cats could be a zoo exhibit? Oh, and the arrow also points toward the pigeons. To be fair, I think guvercin can also mean doves, but what kind of an exhibit is that?

Um..... let's skip that one, and instead see the...
DOGS!?

Oh, hello there! What are you doing in the zoo? Don't you belong with a family?

And you too, little dalmatian!

Please take me home!

Definetly NOT what I was expecting in a zoo. Dalmatians, Irish Setters, Huskies, Golden Retrievers, cute little hound dogs, and so many more.

It was the best exhibit of domestic dogs I've ever seen....

But then again, it was the only exhibit of domestic dogs I've seen.

3 comments:

Kristal Buckner said...

Wow, this made me laugh really hard! Dogs and house cats?! Really!?

Jamie and James said...

Crazy, isn't it!

Paul said...

Hi guys, I just had a question maybe you could help with this. I was wondering by any chance if you saw any lions at the Ankara zoo when you were there. And it would help to know how many were there at that time, and if possible their ages or a ball park estimate and their gender. There was an incident at the zoo in sept 2010 where a lion was killed by a tiger, but its believed the lion was young. But the only way to really know is to find out what lions were there before the incident and after.

There was a blogger who visited the zoo a few months after this happened in nov 2010, he mentioned the lions looked small. Only one had a big head. Paste the link into google to use their translate for his description, http://gezeryazar.blogspot.com/2010/11/darca-hayvanat-bahcesi.html

There is also some videos showing one adult male lion a year after this happened here's one, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONBmU-n2vmg

Any information as to what lions you might of seen there would be greatly appreciated, this is sort of mystery to solve that a lot of people online have been inquiring about. Thanks.