IO: Panda Cub -VS.- Naked Mole Rat

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yolland

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3454%3A43523232%7Ffp334%3Enu%3D3267%3E669%3E683%3EWSNRCG%3D32333247%3C8%3B93nu0mrj


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http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/WebCams

:shrug: Sorry, I made that sound like I have some great captures from a lost Animal Face-Off episode. I don't. :angry:

Anyway, if you have grade-school-age kids or are an animal lover yourself, the website above is the COOLEST. It's the webcams page for the Smithsonian National Zoo in DC. They have PandaCam, NakedMoleRatCam, CheetahCam, GorillaCam and all sorts of others. Basically, each page has a gallery of photos and info about the animals in that exhibit, plus 2 cams that are trained 24 hours a day on areas where they tend to hang out.

The PandaCam is better monitored than the others because the Zoo's two giant pandas had a baby on July 9th, and so there is a lot going on in their exhibit. My 7 year old is obsessed with tracking the baby panda's progress, and he races to the computer every morning and after getting home from school in the afternoon (which also tend to be the times when the cub is most active). Sometimes he helps his 5 year old brother and a 6 year old who's staying with us look at it too, by navigating and narrating for them. (It really requires too much viewer effort for a preschool-age kid to watch on their own.) They especially love it when they manage to catch the mother nursing the cub.

I feel sorry for that naked mole rat though--while the site describes Tai Shan the panda cub as
Too cute!
all the poor naked mole rat gets is
Some might refer to them as downright ugly, resembling an overcooked hotdog with teeth.
:angry:

Neat stuff.
 
:ohmy: Why did they do that? Were they infected with something?

I do remember a zoo, which I think *might* have been the Smithsonian, getting some embarrassing (but deserved) bad press a while back for planting some kind of shrub that's poisonous to chimps on the periphery of the chimp exhibit, resulting in the death of a young chimp who didn't know any better.
 
yolland said:
:ohmy: Why did they do that? Were they infected with something?

I do remember a zoo, which I think *might* have been the Smithsonian, getting some embarrassing (but deserved) bad press a while back for planting some kind of shrub that's poisonous to chimps on the periphery of the chimp exhibit, resulting in the death of a young chimp who didn't know any better.

It was similar to that incident (could have been the National Zoo, but I don't remember reading about that one). They actually had several animal deaths caused by negligence all around same time [2001 - 2003ish] including two zebras that died of stavation, a cheetah, two giraffes, a hippo, a lion, an orangutan, a bald eagle, a komodo dragon, and a seal. The zoo had a rat infestation problem, so they buried rat poison in the red panda exhibit, completely oblivious to the fact that red pandas dig. Then the pandas dug up the poison and ate it. Congress asked for a review of the zoo's managment, staff training, medical, and animal care procedures by the National Academy of Sciences, and the zoo director resigned last year.
 
i :heart: mole rats
my favorite exhibit at the dallas zoo is the mole rats :laugh:

just ask rono...i wouldn't let him leave the zoo without dragging him to see the little things :cute:
 
meegannie said:
They actually had several animal deaths caused by negligence all around same time [2001 - 2003ish] including two zebras that died of stavation, a cheetah, two giraffes, a hippo, a lion, an orangutan, a bald eagle, a komodo dragon, and a seal. The zoo had a rat infestation problem, so they buried rat poison in the red panda exhibit, completely oblivious to the fact that red pandas dig. Then the pandas dug up the poison and ate it. Congress asked for a review of the zoo's managment, staff training, medical, and animal care procedures by the National Academy of Sciences, and the zoo director resigned last year.
:reject: Wow, now I'm almost feeling guilty for recommending their website. It seemed like such a great zoo when I was there about a year ago. It's really distressing to think that a zoo with such deep pockets and such a huge array of animals could wind up having such negligent management.

Hopefully, measures have been put in place to make sure those kinds of "mistakes" never happen again.
 
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