San Diego Wild Animal Park.
This is a sister park to the San Diego Zoo. It's out in the middle of nowhere and is huge. It's run the same way but slightly different. All the animals are endangered and are in a breeding program but they're even more wild. The pens are acres and acres big, and lots of animals live all together. The predators are kept separately of course. It's almost like they're wild in Africa. they have a feeding ledge that the giraffes come to to be fed by people every day. The keepers put out fresh greens to make them come in and then you can buy giraffe biscuits to feed them, they're like big dog treats. I fed them since I was used to it, it was nice to be up where they were, I was used to being on the ground and being drooled on. Rod took most of the pictures, he's very good at it so I leave it to him when I'm with him.
I love this shot of the giraffe I fed. It's like a postcard. They have an extremely long soft tongue that's very strong. He stuck his tongue out and I held out the treat then he wrapped his tongue around my fingers to grab it and make sure he got every last bit of it. That's how they get the leaves off trees, by wrapping their tongues around the branch and pulling them off.
I fed him the 3 or 4 treats I had bought and then watched them for a while. A keeper stands by to sell the treats, talk to you about the park, answer any questions you have and tell you how to feed them. It was truly amazing, I'd never seen a zoo like it and I don't think there are any. They had all kinds of plans to expand and still had hundred of undeveloped acres to grow on. Except for the palm trees, you'd think you were in Africa.
Some very cool birds.
They had so many areas it took all day to see it all, I was glad we got there early. I could really have used 2 days to see it all. They had a tram that went all the way around it too. Some animals you could only see by taking the tram, it's that big and spread out. They had a petting zoo, liked the little deer and other animals they had in there. Not just your ordinary goats and sheep. Th flamingo pond, it seems everyone has one of those.
They had an elephant show that was very informative. This was a baby giraffe, believe it or not. A tapir eating his greens.
A lion in his pen, staying out of the sun, and it was sunny that day. Think this is a bongo, really. The orangutans really seemed to like their enclosure.
The spider monkeys, they are in the gibbon family, just like the siamongs, a lesser ape. We loved watching them swing through the poles in their enclosure. Think the bird is a California condor, very endangered.
Okapi, kind of like a zebra and giraffe mix. The baby had a thing for mom's tail. Tiger sleeping the day away.
The peacock posed, we took the picture. A wild horse out in the large field. they had a separate mountainous area for the goats and sheep to hang out in. We had to see them by taking the tram. The guy stopped and told us to guess how many goats were in the rocks, we figured like 25, there were like 60 or something. Unbelievable. We could barely see them, they matched the surroundings very well.