Beijing Zoo

When Katie was here we went to the Beijing Zoo.  This, of course, meant seeing Pandas in their current natural habitat, meaning captivity. We were there in time to see most of them sit back and eat. And eat. And eat.

The rest of the Zoo was better than I expected.  The original Zoo dates back to the early 20th century, before the Qing were overthrown, and through the years of constant war and struggle, it barely survived.   Today it is a huge sprawling complex which includes all the animals to be found in any Zoo (elephants, giraffes, primates) and some I didn't see coming (so many tapirs!)

Just like Shanghai, many people were very casual about interacting with some of the exhibited animals, namely the herbivores.  While we did not see a repeat of what we saw in Shanghai (parents holding their child into the giraffe's pen), we did see a few people petting and offering random junk food to the zebras.  Adults and children alike were incredibly unafraid of these animals.

It was a different scene over where the Big Cats live.  Most of the lions and tigers were held indoors in caged rooms, but a few were in the outside pens, separated from people by a constructed ravine and fence (a lot of zoos in the US use the same layout).  Even though people approached so many other animals as if they were practically pets, we saw a few parents stop their children from running anywhere close to the railing.  It was as if they expected the tiger to be able to leap up and get as close to them as they had probably been to the giraffes.

I didn't make this observation or connection; Katie did.  She thought it was interesting that they viewed the plant-eating animals as harmless enough to pet and feed, and yet approaching the well-contained tiger required utmost caution.  Zebras and giraffes are still wild animals, and even if they are used to the humans in their lives, they could still bite friendly hands trying to feed them.  Someone with no experience in handling wild animals could get hurt even by the most apparently gentle. It really surprised Katie, these attitudes by the Zoo visitors. Certainly they were consistent, but still surprising to her.  I had just never seen it that way.