All stories about "Zoos"

Japan has been hit with a wave of cute baby animals, the likes of which the world has rarely seen before. This new video shows the cubs behind this shocking cuteness epidemic: Raja, a 7-week old lion Yokohama Zoo, and a rare litter of newborn baby cheetahs from Tokyo. The cheetahs are cute and all, but Raja seems to have the star power necessary to earn him a place in the Baby Zoo Animal Hall of Fame alongside Flocke and Knut. The clip shows the lion cub squealing, sniffing the camera, and drinking from a baby bottle. For God's sakes people! The wion is dwinking fwum his widdle biddy baby bottle!

I can't even handle all this cuteness. It's melting my brain and turning me into a senseless pile of goo. I'm going to go read about the election for a few minutes until I regain my composure. [via]

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Move over Godzilla, the real threat to Tokyo these days involves crazy people in animal costumes. This video shows two people in a papier mache zebra outfit attacking zookeepers and visitors at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo. Luckily, this disturbing scene isn't evidence of a real-life kaiju invasion or another case of a zoo animal killing spree-- it's all part of safety procedures. Each year, the Tokyo zoo staff conducts these drills with a different simulated species in order to prepare for beast-related emergencies. It's hard to imagine that shooting a fake horsey with a cap gun would help anyone deal with a major crisis like a rampaging wildcat, but what the hell do I know? These people are zoo professionals. They are like the Delta Force of poo-raking and animal husbandry.

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What is with the bear overkill in Berlin? You run across some form of bear iconography on just about every block in Mitte, and the sheer number of them seems to suggest some deep and profound significance. But nobody actually knows for certain what elevated the bear to its lofty position here. Theories tout potential historic and phonetic explanations for the density of the city's bear symbols, which date back hundreds of years. (I actually sit in the Albrecht der Bär camp.) But before that, it was just a seal. Only in the past decade has the bear fascination begun to get a bit out of hand and become an emblem of the city's renaissance and a tool of marketers. The return of the brass bear to the Altes Stadthaus that symbolized the "reappropriation of the city's cultural heritage" only just took place at the turn of the last century. Now tourist shops are full of all things bear that visitors can cart home like battle regalia.

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Australia has a lot of truly weird creatures (and many of the dangerous ones are now famous because of Steve Irwin). As faunanet explains, Austalia has "bugs that stink, cicadas that sing, octopus, spiders, gliders, sea dragons, pelicans and much more". If you're particularly interested in Aussie fauna, the Australian Museum is a good place to start -- you can see plenty of dead birds, insects, and spiders in glass boxes. Once you've finished a circuit of the museum and absorbed some of our natural history, jump online and brush up on your vertebrates and invertebrates -- read about the truly disgusting funnel web spider to see why most Australians don't stick their hands under logs and rocks. When you're finished there, explore these theme parks and animal activities in Sydney. There really is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.

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New York City gets called a lot of names. People refer to it as a "concrete jungle." Commuters grumble under their breath about how college kids are turning the city into a zoo. While the spirit in which these things are said are is not quite right, the words themselves are spot-on. New York is an animalistic urb, and unsurprisingly, it's home to a total of five zoos. Here's a rundown of the best captive wildlife (no, not Bungalow 8) in NYC.

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Knut, the polar bear cub who hit two Vanity Fair covers and drew mammoth Easter weekend crowds to his home at the Berlin Zoo, may have a new nemesis. Stockholm's Skansen zoo has a six-week-old bamboo lemur named Bilbo that seems likely survive a baby-animal-orphan backstory similar to Knut's. Can Bilbo command the same numbers, cutewise, as Knut? "It remains to be seen," says the oracular AFP. Given the photo above -- which seems to show a wizened hairy junkie mummy sucking on a syringe of smack -- I'm not seeing it at all, frankly.

Stockholm raises bamboo lemur in possible rival to cub Knut [AFP]

-- Chris Mohney

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