Things We Learned At The Cleveland Zoo Saturday

Last Saturday we did something spontaneous again because it was such a nice day. We went to the Cleveland Zoo to see the baby Red Pandas but learned a lot of things while we were there.

Red Pandas

The baby red pandas were inside the Primate/Aquatics building and were resting when we got there after playing an hour. They had stuffed toys in their exhibit that they played with. We were sad to learn though that they will be transferred to some other zoos as part of the conservation project because there are so few left.

Poop

Even in the gift shop we learned that paper can be made from elephant poop! We bought a calendar with paper made from elephant poop! It doesn't smell at all which surprised me so we bought one! The elephant exhibit is being remodeled and won't be done until 2011. We miss our elephants but once it's done, we'll have even more than the three we had before!

This is a note at the bottom of one of the calendar pages about recycling the poop in the spring:

Octopus

Did you know octopus have beaks--the only hard spot on them? The docent had one in a jar that we could see close up.

Giraffe

How much does one of the bit giraffes weigh? We were shocked when we heard a big giraffe could weigh up to 4200 pounds!

Animal Inventory Website

The zoo docent also told us about the International Species Information System, www.isis.org, which is a site that shows what animals are in what zoos around the world.

Teeth

Shark teeth are pointy and in layers. If a tooth breaks, another pops up to replace it in 20 minutes. Wish we had teeth like that! We saw the skull of another fish that eats plants and its teeth were flat like ours (can't remember what kind).

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