FIELD TRIP TIME! THE COLOGNE ZOO

Hello, my friends.

Last Saturday, I had the chance to visit the Cologne Zoo, something I had wanted to do for a long time now. I am a great fan of zoos in general (my mum took us to the closest zoo all the time when my brother and I were little) and there are a few that are kind of on my bucket list of zoological gardens.

Cologne Zoo was awesome. Their enclosures are very open and well-proportioned, with lots of hiding spots for the animals in case they don't want to be stared at all day. The park is layed out in a very visitor-friendly way, offering a roundcourse that brings you to all the animals in about one hour depending on how long you linger and signposts showing you the way everywhere you might want to go.

Zoos are visited especially by families, mothers with little kids being the great majority, probably because zoos are great to distract the little ones for a couple of hours. I remember that when I was a kid myself, I especially loved spending hours on the playground. The ones I saw in Cologne looked so great that I was seriously tempted to try them although I am a seventeen-year-old teenager and probably would have been hopelessly stuck on the constructions. I can also account for a great many beaming childrens' faces while I was there!

I took an awful lot of pictures, of course (about two hundred that is) but a lot of them were out of focus and some I will delete as soon as my friend saw them because I have WAY too many elephant photos. I'll put the nicest of them below, including comment!

One of three extremely smug-looking camels. They're currently shedding their winter-fur, so I decided to capture only this one's face.

Here you see the raccoon, engaging in his natural activity of looking both very cute and very sleepy.

I love cheetahs. I took about a dozen pictures of this one alone, but most of them were either out of focus or weirdly composed.

I don't know why I think tapirs are this interesting, but they certainly look cool!

I was so excited when I saw these two okapis! I'd only ever read about them or seen pictures in books, but I'd never seen a real one before!

These are honeybadgers. The most badass animals on earth. Even hyenas don't dare attack them. And they're just lying around cuddling.

Seriously! This is both adorable and disappointing.

I have no idea what this bird is called, but it's beautiful. Also, it was moving so fast it took me about a thousand attempts to get this shot.

Gotta love giraffes. My favourite animals. Period.

Here we have the extremely cute baby elephant Bindi right next to Europe's tallest male with a shoulder height of 3.18 metres.

This sea lion was kind of modelling for the visitors while also acting like a true comedian. 

I really wish I could have gotten more photos of big cats because they always fascinate the hell out of me and I find them incredibly inspiring. Unfortunately, every single one of them was either hiding in the last corner of their enclosure or lying behind very milky glass so I couldn't.

I spent an awful lot of time in the elephant house, which is very big and light and airy. I was a little surprised that they keep the bulls with the females, I'd never seen that before, especially because they currently have two little ones. They do have a seperated area, but the info signs say that the bulls get along so well with all the others and even the babies that they decided to keep the herd together.

I'm hoping to visit the Münster Zoo in about a month, they have a baby rhino at the moment! That is extremely special, because in the past one of the females killed two or three of her little ones by accident. It's a different mother this time, and the baby seems to have good survival chances!

That's it from me for now. I hope you have a good week!

Love,

Jojo