Canadutch
While my parents were here we took them to the Rotterdam Zoo. I really love that place. I went there one other time with some girlfriends but even in the 1.5 years since I’ve been there, so much has changed.
My (sort of) favorite change is that they have POLAR BEARS. I was so excited I took about 100 photos of them.
Unfortunately, once I finished taking the photos and really stopped to look at them, I felt really sorry for them. Their enclosure wasn’t that big and other than this one eating the ice, they looked agitated and bored. One was pacing and shaking his head and looked so completely unhappy. It made me feel bad for taking part in the whole thing somehow.
He just stood there on top of the hill, pacing back and forth. When I looked from this angle I realized just how wrong it was somehow. Seeing this beautiful huge creature with the city just behind him, he seemed so out of place.
I usually love going to the zoo but I really had mixed emotions this time, mostly with the larger animals like the elephants, polar bears, etc.
Here are a few more of my favorite photos from the day.
Getting good photos of those damn jellyfish is hard, for me at least.
Nemo fish! I’d so totally love to have a few of these but I highly doubt they’d even survive a day in any of my tanks. They’d be turtle food!
I think we came around to the penguin enclosure around feeding time. Normally you can see them zooming around in the water but this time they were all up top and looking at the door. One of the zoo employees was in there and they were all totally hoping for some food.
No idea what this thing is, but it really looked cool.
The Prairie Dogs, oh my goodness they were so cute. Another area where I took a ton of photos.
This little guy was another favorite of mine. We got lucky and caught him at a playful time. He was running all over the place, climbing all over his mother (if you can believe it) and being a total ham. Who knew a baby rhino could be so adorable?
Seahorses, yet another thing I’d love to own. Xander disagrees and made a crack about how exciting they are, which they aren’t really, they just kind of sit there… but I think they are great.
A shark egg! If you look closely you can see the shark just above the yolk thing. His tail is just to the left of it and his body curves over the top.
I have loads more photos from both of my trips to the zoo… Have a look here!
So what is your opinion on places like this? Do you ever feel those same guilty feelings when seeing these big animals being kept in captivity? I generally don’t feel so bad for the smaller ones as I figure they have lots of space and probably get better care than in the wild, but the bigger ones just seem so dreadfully unhappy.
Of all the zoos I visited, I have never ever seen a polar bear. And I only saw bears for the first time in Beijing this summer (NOT in the wild :lol:).
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Those are beautiful pictures! A zoo is a great place to photograph; where else can you get such good views of wildlife!
I feel exactly like you – this year we went to the Singapore Zoo and they had polar bears there too. In the tropics!! They were amazing and beautiful, but yeah, it just felt so wrong. I love seeing the animals, but even in the very best zoos, I feel sad.
Having said all that, I do think there is great educational value in zoos.
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Beautiful photos! I understand how you feel about animals in captivity.
When I took my children to the zoo last summer they were excited to see, among other animals, a panda. When we reached the panda, it looked so lethargic and bored. My younger daughter kept asking me why it was so sad…
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When I was a kid in Papua New Guinea, I once kicked one of those black spiky things when I was out on a reef in Madang. The spikes went through my toes, but I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to get in trouble for kicking it.
I eventually had to show my foot to the doctor, since it had turned black.
DON’T kick the spiky things.
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I’m not a fan of zoos or performance places like Seaworld for the reasons you’ve mentioned. I’d rather see animals in their habitat, not drag them into ours.
Melissa’s right – especially in the case of the polar bears, the wild ones are dying at a distressing rate as their habitat warms up. I know they don’t like being in captivity, and they might even rather be dead in the wild than alive in a cage. But I think we have a responsibility to try to keep the species alive. Zoos aren’t my favorite way to do that, but they are the most likely to succeed (I’m not going to hold my breath while I wait for humans to stop being greedy).
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Oh wow,the pictures of the Polar Bears are fantastic! I want to come there so bad to see the zoo!! I always have mixed emotions about the zoo aswell.
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I sooo have to go, I’ve heard alot about it and you’ve got me convinced. The sad thing about capturing nature, is that they arent in their real habitat.
How funny I have a pic of me and Noah in front of that penguin statue heheh. Great pics!
Cool pics!! Sadly if the world doesn’t smarten up then the zoo might be the only place to see the polar bears!
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We have an abonnement and go to the zoo quite often, so we’ve been waiting for the polar bears for forever, it seems. They had that huge area designated for them, and the enclosure ended up being so small! I don’t understand why you have to walk forever to get to them through nothingness, basically, and at the end they just have that little space. It seems they could have better utilized that area and made their habitat larger.
The older enclosures that they are slowly renovating are just awful, like for the smaller wild cats. But they won’t tear anything down because it’s the only zoo all done by the same architect. I don’t really think the animals care who designed it, they just want more space. It’s getting better, slowly, but I still think it’s all too cramped. I guess that’s one disadvantage of a zoo in the middle of the city.
I’m of two minds too, it’s really cool to be able to see animals you wouldn’t otherwise, but sometimes their enclosures do look really small. Usually the zoo staff tell you they are better off for various reasons at the zoo. I also went to an antarctic centre recently where they had about 16 or so penguins, all with special needs, injuries or balance problems or dodgy wings, they wouldn’t have survived in the wild, and even though the enclosure looked kinda smallish, they were all really happy running around and zooming through the water. I also took WAY too many pictures, but have a small collection online here http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilangel277/sets/72157607012682984/
Beautiful pictures! I feel the same way though, it just breaks my heart to see the animals in captivity… they always look so sad to me. I just don’t go anymore…I leave feeling awful..