Jan 10 2008
The National Zoo
In my struggles to find something interesting to do at work, I have mostly found myself perusing wikipedia. One day I killed by looking up every country I didn’t know and reading about it. Today, I was looking through animals on wikipedia, found myself looking at capybaras, remembered they had some at the National Zoo and then looked up the zoo’s website.
I’ve spent the rest of the day driving my computer crazy by watching animal cams. Before you peruse this link, let me tell you that several animal cams are not currently available: the amazon river cam, the tiger cam, the orangutan cam, the lion cam and the kingfisher cam. I was pretty disappointed about that.
Of the cams that are left, few have managed to maintain my interest. The panda cams are well done, someone controls them so they focus on the pandas, which is nice. I like the flamingo cam, but there’s only so much squabbling, wobbly birds you can watch, even if they are cute. The naked mole rat cam is dark and impossible to see, the elephant cams are mostly inside while the elephants are mostly outside and the same is the case with the gorilla cam. The ferret cam links to a different animal cam. The rest of the cams are stationary so it’s really hit or miss, but many of the animals sleep throughout the day (the clouded leopard has been sleeping in the same spot for hours now).
My favorites to watch are the microscope cam and the octopus cam. The microscope cam is frenetic, very good for my ADD. The octopus is constantly moving, perhaps as a function of his being an aquatic creature, and I just like octopuses (octopusi?).
There are a few I didn’t mention, mostly because the animals weren’t really present when I watched the cams. I suppose that’s part of the fun, they do it on their own terms. Anyway, if the weather is relatively nice, I think I’ll try to go to the zoo this weekend, at least to visit the capybaras and the fish-y things.
K.