Mendoza Zoo

Next we went to explore the zoo. I did a seminar once dealing with zoos and their importance, you know, species conservation and and .... yadda yadda blah blah. Nothing in my opinion justifies keeping animals in constraint and stimuli impoverished conditions. Most of them are going nuts over beeing imprisoned in much to small and bland pens. Have a look at this webpage:
 http://www.captiveanimals.org/zoos/zse1.htm.

Anyway on rare occasions, especially in other countries, I like to see whether conditions are better or worse than in most German zoos.

So here we were, at the zoo in Mendoza (http://www.zoo.mendoza.gov.ar/).

At least they had a decent map to find the animals ... NOT:

But we still found some of them. Here is a hungry meerkat:

A shaved camel, it is still cute, isn't it:

With age come saggy bumps (don't worry dear camel, happens to everybody):

The word 'environmental enrichment' for zoo animals never reached Mendoza. Poor ice bear :(

An Indian elephant gone crazy and constantly bumping his head in the wall, yeah, I'm completely sympathizing, a so very social animal like an elephant and all alone and look at the 'enriched' environment, plenty to do ... NOT

A special for J. The hippos looked at least quite content in their water basin:

Can you guess what this is?

Correct, an armadillo lying on it's back and napping until his partner came:

A peacock tried in vain to impress a female:

And of course the promised live nandu:

And do you remember the engraved nandu feet in Tunduqueral?

Tomorrwo we will have exciting archaeology at a museum in Cuyo just outside of Mendoza and first shots from Buenos Aires. And on that bombshell I'll go to bed and leave you alone with your thoughts about the dignity of animals and zoos. See you tomorrow!