I don’t know what you’d expect, but after seeing these pictures, it’s obviously true that elephants get their “nails done”, too.

Boy, a 39 year-old Asian elephant getting a pedicure

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Koala bears – those cute little fuzzy creatures, half squirrel, half bear, half something else from down under. Every zoo wants some, until now.

It costs more to feed six koalas at Osaka’s Tennoji Zoo than to feed the rest of the zoo’s animals put together. That comes to Y92million ($950,000) a year to feed them or $160,000 each per year = $450/day per animal. And the Tennoji Zoo spends Y85 million on all the other animals it cares for.

The fuzzy wuzzies feast on Eucalyptus trees which are cultivated in only seven locations in Japan. Hey! I have one in my front yard!

Koalas apparently only eat about 50 eucalyptus species, introduced to them by their mothers when they are still in their mother’s pouches.

It all boils down to how much zoo visitors are willing to shell out to see the little rascals and whether or not it adds up to the cost to feed and care for them.

After all, it’s always about the money. Isn’t it?

Images by FrankMaurer, jcolman, alumroot

There’s scientific proof that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees at Sweden’s Furuvik Zoo.

Researchers watched Santino the chimp’s anti-social behavior and studied the 31-year old alpha-male over the years – 10 years to be somewhat exact.

Santino never attacked others in his group probably because he was comfortable being the head banana … or getting his bananas first.

What shocked the researchers was that Santino would collect rocks each morning, even knocking out disks from concrete boulders, then store them until midday. At midday, visitors would come to the zoo and Santino would start throwing the rocks at the monkeys on the other side of the fence. He never hit anyone, well hardly ever. But, the fact that the chump, chimp planned ahead stunned the researchers. They concluded that humans could not have evolved from chimps because how many humans do you know who plan ahead? And if humans did plan ahead, then why is the world in the mess it is in?

Read more here.

Whenever I feel blue, down in the dumps, or think there is not much hope for the future or love going around, all I need to do is find a few moms and their babies. The Buenos Aires Zoo in the Argentina Capital is happy to lift my spirits today.

A baby seal and mom ...

A baby lemur and mom ...

A baby alpaca, a baby donkey, and their moms ...

All these baby animals were born from October of last year to January of this year. They made their debut for visitors earlier this week. Meanwhile, infertile couples everywhere might be found heading for Argentina.

What gives you hope? Makes you feel their is love in the air during the Valentine’s Day season?

After the incredible commercial on global warming with animals that “give up”, I think it’s refreshing to take a look at some babies … cubs, kitties, little fellows. There’s something about the hope in the eyes of a newborn, human, animal or otherwise that gives us reason to think that everything can still be okay IF we change our ways.

Two Persian leopard twin cubs made their debut at the Budapest Zoo, last week. One of the little fellows came out shouting: “I want a world to grow up in! Please stop destroying our world. We live here, too!”. Or some other sentiments to that affect.

Seriously, is there anything else that can make us feel better about the world than something as precious as these youngsters? If so, please put a link here in the comments to tell us about it. – via Sina

Somehow, deep inside, we knew those Tibetans were wild, didn’t we? I mean, what’s with sitting up in the mountains all day waiting for someone to come to you, ask you a question and such?

Well, a few Tibetan wild asses got loose, or took to the fields, whatever, to hang out with the Qinghai-Tibet railway in Northwest China’s Qinghai province.

The wild asses (kiang) frolicked about and otherwise posed for pix. What were you expecting to see?

Run, fellas, run, before some goof ball in the name of trying to save you puts you in a zoo.

Sometimes words are not needed to explain a picture, right?

I guess this is what feels like to be in a Zoo with all the people staring at you and lots of sun. Add to all these a lot of fur and you have a really unhappy polar bear. At least they gave him some ice cubes to lean on. I can even hear the poor guy saying “I just wanna go home, where I have lots of ice, lots of snow and lots of below 0 degrees”. Do we need polar bears in Zoo just to look how cute they are?

One last thing. I don’t know who owns the copyright for that image but anyone knows who the photographer is I’d like to know so that I can give him full credits.

Polar bears on strike? Protesting the disappearance of the ice around them, asking the world to go green and showing them the way? I am not sure what these green polar bears are thinking, but these fellas at a Japanese zoo in Higashiyama central Japan are creating a ruckus among the Japanese.

Are they sick? Do they have mold? (this one made me laugh out loud.) Moldy polar bears?

High temps and conservation efforts, changing the water less often, caused algae growth in the bear’s bond. So, when they swam, they came out green. The algae goes to hollow spaces in the bear’s fur making it hard to rinse off.

Besides, “I look good in green,” says the papa bear. The color fades in November.

If only it were this easy to get the world to become greener and NOT have it wear off in the winter, eh?

Tokyo is sending two zoo employees to Norway to learn how to breed ptarmigans before it’s too late for the endangered birds and the do NOT hatch. The idea – “Being prepared for a species’ future is an important role for a zoo.” Norway knows what to do and Japan has good imitators.

Ptarmigans are a rare subspecies that live in the high mountains of the Japan Alps. They are also on the ‘Red List’ meaning they are at an increasingly high risk of extinction. The birds live on alpine plants 2,400 meters above sea level and face problems with temperature management and food supplies when they are moved to lowlands and with increasing temps throughout the globe.

Japan will study how Norway controls daylight and air conditioning which will play a part in the ptarmigan’s reproductive cycle. If the team succeeds in Norway, they will try the same technique in Japan.

“How about eggs for b’fast, Taro?”

“Noooo!!!”

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“I want my mommy!”

“Doesn’t anybody love us?”

“We’re hungry!”

“I need burping!”

“Well, at least we have each other.”

“Alright guys! Let’s stick together.”

I guess I am naive enough to think that only humans can be so heartless as to turn away their own children. Not so. A white lion in Schloss-Holte Stukenbrock of Germany rejected her three cubs. What’s up with that? Let me have the little critters. Cute as can be, and whoever thought to put them on a black sheet knew what they were doing when these pix.

So, I wonder aloud here again about the whole zoo thing. Does having these little fellows in a zoo and having humans all around and such have anything to do with the momma lion turning them away? I love animals. Let’s put them back in their natural habitat. And if people want to study them…okay what’s to study. Leave them alone.

What do you think?

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