I have other zoo photos I want to show off but got some good ones the last time I was there. I am always fond of the scarlet ibises, above, and liked this swan one for the intersecting ripples.
The llama seemed to protest my photographing him, though the prairie dogs, familiar from childhood days Up West north of Newport, paid not the slightest attention. (And I still haven't figured out how the zoo manages to keep them confined to one small area when ranchers complain about sprawling prairie dog towns Those cement walls aren't that high.)
Some other branches of our primate family, the first two in the Hubbard Gorilla Valley, the next two in the Hubbard Orangutan Forest.
The aptly named Ursus arctos horribilis, with its distinctive shoulder hump, stalked off on its deadly claws (up to 5-6" long) to its cave, but its cousin had a surprise for me.
The brown bear, which group includes the grizzly above and the giant Kodiak, gets the most attention for its ferocity, though the Inuit and other aborigines revered the polar bear, Nanook of the North. On a recent National Geographic documentary about winter, I was fascinated at a polar bear shorn of its excellent fur, showing its dark black sun-absorbing skin under the prismatic hollow transparent cylinders of its long outer fur, the shorter, plush undercoat not hollow but also transparent. The prismatic air spaces scatter all the colors, leaving our deceived eyes seeing white.
The Doorly polar bears ordinarily swim lazy ovals in their rectangular tank, casually pushing off the supports of the glass front with a paw and backstroking.
However, this day I stood very close to the windows to get some good pictures. Unfortunately, I haven't taught myself yet the rapid-fire camera sequence, for when the bear came to me, he suddenly reared and flattened himself against the glass as if to attack. Everybody else exclaimed, while I was too busy trying to get another photo. Some woman shouted, "You're lucky he didn't come through the window!" The results aren't as good as I hoped for but are definitely close-ups.
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