动物园 At the Zoo
We visted the zoo on our last day in Dalian, and just to compare we hit up the zoo in Qingdao on our last day there as well. I must say that the Dalian zoo is much nicer and larger, but at 120元/person it hits your pocket book a lot harder than Qingdao's 6.50元 ticket price.
Our first stop in the Dalian zoo was the elephant show.
Most kids at the zoo were more interested in feeding this baby elephant carrots and apples than watching the show itself. The baby elephant must have eaten its weight in carrots during the 30 minute show.
I am still amazed at the Zoo's and audience member's willingness to have such close contact with wild animals. Here, three audience members layed down and allowed the elephant to tap his foot on their stomachs and wave his tusks back and forth mere inches from their faces. All in good fun.
After submitting to some elephant teasing, you get a free ride.
We arrived at the petting zoo only moments after this Mountain Goat was born.
When we headed over to the Big Cats area we weren't initially impressed.
But then I noticed this guy standing off to the side with an adolecent tiger. For 10元 you can take your picture with the tiger.
Sign reads, "Tigers like live chickens." "Only 50元 each." I chose not to get my picture taken with the tiger or to feed the adults a live chicken.
This is as close as I would get.
The Dalian zoo has two Pandas. This is Wenwen.
This is Jodi. She sleeps all day.
If you can read the English part of the sign, you can see why the Chinese don't have Thanksgiving.
This boy was allowed to smack his bottle against the cage driving the bird to attack the bottle with its beak. His parents finally scolded him after about two minutes.
The Qingdao Zoo is much smaller and is run down. Feeding the animals junk food or any type of people food you have on hand is completely acceptable. Everyone crowded around the bear cages and monkey cages so they could hold their toddlers up on the railing with a stick in the child's hand in an attempt to feed the animals.
When we got to the tiger pit, we saw one of the tigers vomit presumably because someone fed the tiger a hamburger.
Parting thoughts.
(Comment this)
