California Field Trip #6: San Francisco Zoo

Showing double productivity, since this is something else that we're trying to do a lot of this year, we made it to another zoo!

I was thrilled to see that the San Francisco Zoo includes each animal's scientific name on its info board, because the girls and I LOVE taxonomy! I wish that they'd also included the translation, though--I know my Greek and Latin well enough to translate many names (such as old one-horned horny nose there), but not enough to satisfy our curiosity at every exhibit:

The tiger exhibits were especially noteworthy, because we love the tigers--

--the tigers always seem to want to kill us--

--and we followed the news reports several years ago of the tiger who escaped from its exhibit in the San Francisco Zoo several years ago and killed a visitor. The old tiger grotto looked very similar to the one still in place at the Louisville Zoo, but the new one not only has the tigers behind glass, like at the Indianapolis Zoo, but also with a concrete moat that they can play in, but that increases the distance they'd have to jump to get over the glass fence to 19 feet:

Personally, I don't put anything past a predator on the attack, but the extra fencing, and the signs everywhere that now remind people to stay quiet around the animals and not antagonize them, will hopefully keep the tigers safe from US now.

And of COURSE Will somehow found a bug collection to admire:

I shudder to tell you that that's our big spring project.