Alice The Camel

A Bactrian Camel at London Zoo

This is a photo of a Bactrian camel, and a very handsome one too, even if he does have straw all over his face. Bactrian camels are super fluffy and have two humps, while dromedary camels are less fluffy and only have one. Strangely, although there are over two million Bactrian camels alive today, they are listed as critically endangered because most of these camels are domesticated, and only about 800 still live in the wilds of China and Mongolia.

Simba...

Asian lion cub at London Zoo

One of the main reasons I wanted to go to London Zoo was to see the baby Asian lions they have at the minute. They were born in October 2011 so they're growing up fast but they are ludicrously cute. When we got to the lion house, it was late afternoon and they were snuggled up in a big pile of fur with their mum in a patch of sunshine, right up against one of the viewing windows in their enclosure.

Asian lions are super endangered. Although they used to have a range that continued as far west as Greece and Italy, these days they are only found in the wild in the Gir forest of Gujarat, India; a census of the lion population in 2011 indicated that there were about 411 Asiatic lions in the world, up from a total of 234 in 1936 when the first ever census was taken. They are threatened by habitat destruction, and are killed by electric fences and open wells.

Tell Me A Tail

Squirrel Monkeys at London Zoo

And... we're back to the squirrel monkeys. Because they're oh so adorable. I took a frankly worrying number of photos in their enclosure, and I don't regret it for a moment. Although the foolish lady who tried to prod one and got a nip on the finger for her trouble may do. Seriously, there are signs everywhere that say "Don't touch the monkeys. The monkeys will bite you. Just don't touch them. They bite. No really, they do. LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF A BLEEDING HAND-STUMP. THAT IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU TOUCH A MONKEY".

And what did she do? Tried to touch a monkey. Oi vey.

Furball

Photograph of a prarie dog at London Zoo

This prarie dog was a tricky character; (s)he kept doing entirely adorable poses in parts of the enclosure that I couldn't get on camera. Outrageous!
And the keeper was most rude when I complained about it. Really, you'd think they'd train the animals to be more photogenic.

FUN FACTS ABOUT PRARIE DOGS:

1. Prarie dogs are rodents, not dogs, as I was surprised to learn aged eleven, having assumed they were America's equivalent of the dingo.*

2. According to Professor Con Slobodchikoff, prarie dogs may have the most sophisticated language of any animal, able to communicate the news of predators approaching as well as describing the colour, type of predator, and the direction it's coming from.

3. Prarie dogs are social creatures and are very affectionate, greeting one another with a prarie dog kiss.

4. Black-tailed prarie dogs live in large communities known as "towns". The largest known prarie dog town covered 25,00 square miles in Texas and was home to perhaps as many as four hundred million prarie dogs.

Who knew?
_________________________________________________________
*Without the baby eating.

Hey Hey We're The Monkeys

Two squirrel monkeys

And we're back to photos of squirrel monkeys! This photograph was taken, as you've already worked out, at London Zoo.

The most famous squirrel monkey of them all was of course Miss Baker, one of the first two animals who were launched into space in 1959 and survived, along with the rhesus monkey Miss Able. She went on to live for twenty five years afterwards, receiving copious amounts of fanmail from children who'd heard of her exploits, and when she died of kidney failure in 1984, over 300 people attended her funeral.

Who knew!

Squirrel Monkey

Common Squirrel Monkey

As promised, another squirrel monkey photograph, taken on my recent trip to London Zoo. Whilst I took dozens of photos of the monkeys, it was admittedly tricky to get pictures of them that weren't crazily blurry. They don't like to sit still (probably because in the wild this might result in being eaten).

The Common Squirrel Monkey comes from the Amazon Basin in South America, and lives in the middle canopy of the rainforest. At first, when I saw the monkey in this photo carefully examining and later nibbling his tail I wondered what he was doing, but apparently squirrel monkeys have a habit of smearing food onto their tails, and may smear urine all over themselves as well. A charming habit! I suspect that advertising that particular fact in the squirrel monkey enclosure would actually be more effective at persuading people not to try to touch the monkeys than all the signs warning that they bite.

An interesting fact about squirrel monkeys relates to their colour vision; in these monkeys, one gene on the X chromosome codes for colour vision, and there are three versions of this gene, each of which produces a pigment sensitive to a different wavelength of light. Because male squirrel monkeys have only one X chromosome, they are dichromatic (i.e. any colour which they can see can be created using a mixture of just two pure spectral lights - similar to what we call colour blindness in humans); however, because female squirrel monkeys have two X chromosomes, about two-thirds of them have trichromatic vision like humans (i.e. a mixture of three pure spectral lights is required to create all the colours which they are able to see). Researchers have successfully used gene therapy to give adult male squirrel monkeys trichromatic colour vision.