Photos.

Chester Zoo

When we were working on the house in Wales, we took a day off to go and see Chester Zoo. It calls itself Britain's most popular zoo, and it's certainly one of the nicer ones. This is probably largely due to the fact that Chester has what most other British zoos don't have much of: land. There are some really nicely designed and landscaped exhibits, and they were working on more expansions when we visited.

One of the newer exhibits that was really well done was the jaguar exhibit (sponsored by Jaguar cars but thankfully not plastered everywhere with Jaguar car propaganda). The outside areas had a waterfall, lots of tropical plants, and spots for the animals to hide, climb, and lounge around. And also pose for pictures:


The inside area was huge, and actually looked like a jungle. There was a waterfall in there too, and lots of paths between the plants with areas the jaguars could go to get out of sight of the public. When they came up to the front, the effect of them prowling out of the "forest" at you was gorgeous.


The elephants also had a big waterfall (not in this picture), which wasn't running because of the cold, but I'm sure it would be great to see them playing in it in the summer.


Chester had multiple species of strange pigs to keep me happy. Red river hogs:


And babirusas:

The male babirusa has very silly teeth. So much so that this guy couldn't open his mouth all the way.

There were chimpanzees, which were inside, and thus not easily photograph-able, and orang-u-tans, which were outside.


From most places in the zoo you could hear the sealions barking, mostly the male:

I guess he felt he had to yell to keep his women in line.

Next to the sea lions were the Humboldt penguins.


And finally, wandering around everywhere, predictably, were the peacocks. These particular ones were a little less shy than those I've seen in other zoos though.


We didn't come close to seeing everything, and I will definitely try and go back for a second visit. If you happen to be in the area, check this zoo out.

posted by Sian at 3:21 PM