Black Leopards At The Zoo

[Pbartender]

The big kitties loved her, too. They fixated on her right away as the small quick-moving prey animal she was and they followed every move she made. Maybe no-one else really realized this? Anyway, I watch them watching her. They are some seriously scary big kitties. You can practically see the male working out pounce distances and weight-to-frame ratios in his head. He butts his head, house-cat-like, against the bars and that gets a reaction. Everyone's seen cats do this, marking something with their forehead scent glands. He does it again and little miss meatpie gets really squeaky at that and waves both arms at the big kitty.

A 2003 photo of the puma at the Milwaukee Zoo. It was very intestly stalking, from behind thick glass, about a half-dozen small children ages 2 through 5... Two of them being my son and my daughter. It was fascinating. He never actually tried to pounce; he probably knew better by then.

At the time I took this photo, I caught him trying to sneak up on me.

 

[Rel]

They waited till you were there before they started. They knew you could hear them.... I once had roommates like that too.... *shudder*

Man, you'd think they'd be a little self concious about that with Jesus in the house...

 

[Jesus_marley]

Yeah, But I forgive them....

 

[WayneLigon]

One of the coolest things I ever saw was a big cat show at the Atlanta Renaissance Festival. Now, this was a different kind of thing. You have this big flat sandy area. Then benches that go up to about three feet from the sandy area. No bars. No cage. No walls. Just them and the cats and some leather leads. No small kids are seated within the first five rows or so and they check before bringing out any of the cats.

You get a very close look at the cats. Closer than most zoos. It was amazing. They had a snow leopard. I'd never seen a snow leopard in the flesh before. It's one of the most beautiful animals I've ever seen. He was also a pretty pushy cat. He knew where that treat bag was and clamped his huge claws-out paw at the trainer's hand to actually restrict it's movement; the trainer could reach into the bag for a treat, and transfer it to the leopard. That was it.

They had a tiger, which just loved to gnaw on one trainer's leather boots. A couple of the smaller cats... and they had a young jaguar. They commented on actually how vicious the jaguar is. They had him on a short chain leash, unlike even the large cats. Every single time the second trainer, in the course of giving the lecture, presented his back to jaguar, the jaguar went for him, claws out.

 

[Desdichado]

Where else can you take a mini-safari into a 22 acre enclosure with not just one type of animal, but all kinds of them, including rhinos, gazelles, giraffes, and bunches of smaller African and Asian animals?

Actually, a fair amount of places offer exactly that. Near Toronto they have that and more; lots of larger (and rare) North American and Eurasian critters too. Plus one area that has probably 200 baboons, which climb all over your car while you drive through it. We had one sit on the rearview mirror about four inches from my hand (through the glass, of course) looking in at us. We saw another one pull the rub strips off the roof of a Jimmy in front of us.