Taipei City Zoo

Yeah, so we’re dorks. We flew all the way across the Pacific to go to the zoo.

This was at the end of an MRT line, from which we got to see lots of Taipei, which was fun. Zoos always are a little depressing – nobody really wants to see animals in jail. The indoor exhibits were shamefully bad – sad looking owls and mammals either sitting and staring into space, or pacing their enclosure. Surely a city of 8 million can do better than this. My favorite was the raccoon. That’s right, an ordinary raccoon, the kind that knocks over your garbage and gets run over by cars. He actually seemed kind of at home in the bare concrete enclosure. Looked like a carport to him, I’m sure. Context is everything – I’m sure that our zoo in Seattle has plenty of things that people from other parts of the world would scratch their heads at: “Why put that in a zoo? I see that all the time.” (I have the same reaction when people get excited seeing deer, which used to run over the grounds of the filter plant like rats, and I saw every day. I came to see them more as a traffic hazard than as interesting wildlife – if you see one, slow down, ‘cause they always travel in pairs.)

Anyway…the outdoor exhibits were considerably better. The tropical waterfowl exhibit in particular was great. I think they just had a low spot they didn’t feel like spending the money to drain, so they enhanced kept the people out and let the birds go nuts. The birds looked quite happy, from a distance of a quarter mile.

The herd animals, the tropical ones anyway, seemed fine. I wasn’t terribly happy about the penguin exhibit. These were mostly indoors, but there was one lonely, hot penguin in an outdoor enclosure at 27 degrees (I have a very blurry photo to prove this.)

They did have the most extensive exhibit of apes I’ve ever seen, which considering the proximity to their native habitat, maybe isn’t that surprising, even considering the lack of resources. So, counting the people looking, we had all six apes in a several block radius. Not many places in the world can say that. I love siamangs (and I like to think they love me back.) I love the way they swing from branches, and when they want to investigate something on the ground, they still keep one arm on a branch. Even when walking across open ground, they do a swimming motion with their arms. I also like the noise they make, which in the Seattle zoo can be heard a half mile away.

I wasn’t terribly happy about the display of chimps, but what can you do? Zoos have to create interest in conservation essentially by exploiting the animals to a degree. The exhibit was pretty small, but they do have a successful breeding program, and lots of information (accompanied by stereotypically Asian cartoon versions of chimps, explaining their endangered status.) The gorilla exhibit was pretty hard to see, surrounded by a concrete moat.

Also, we saw a pile of hippos. A pile of hippos will make anyone happy. It made Evelyn especially happy. Here is about 50 tons of Hippo.

We tried to hit an Indian restaurant on the way back, but it was closed. Instead, we went to a stand on the way to Ev’s office that served something like donuts that looked like giant pills. Those were quite tasty and cooked in about a minute while we watched. We finally went to a dumpling/potsticker shop that was at the main MRT station. That was really tasty, but I wasn’t enjoying it much, since the jetlag was catching up to me. We made it back to the apartment and I passed out about 2030 local time, and Ev stayed up and packed all night. She and her roommates are vacating the apartment (Ev to Thailand with me, Patty and Jenn back to the states), so everyone is packing boxes to ship back.