“Where is everybody??” exclaimed Pearl Benjamin, 10, when she arrived at the National Zoo one Sunday afternoon last month. The walkways were empty.
Welcome to the winter zoo.
(Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) - A red panda climbs a tree at the zoo. The adult red pandas are usually outside during the winter.
(Lindsay Renick Mayer/National Zoo) - Piranhas, like the ones in the Amazonia exhibit, deserve a better reputation.
If you’ve ever gone there with your school on a spring field trip or tried to be patient as your parents hunted for a parking space there in the summer, you know how crowded the zoo can get. It’s sometimes hard to get close enough to really see the animals.
Winter is different; it’s a time for quiet observation.
Fifth-grader Simon Rosenthal of Chevy Chase was doing research for a school project on lemurs, primates that live on Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast of Africa.
With room to spread out his notebook in the small-mammal house, Simon took notes as he and his dad observed how red-ruffed lemurs use their long tails for balance. “You really get to study animals up close,” he said.
Some animals are more active
Ivan Mallon, 9, visiting from North Carolina, saw two lion cubs squabbling. “First there was a low rumble,” he said. Then he heard a loud, ferocious roar from one of the cubs. Later, the 18-month-old cubs wrestled playfully in a dusting of snow as only six people watched.
Another good reason for a trip to the zoo this month is that the male cubs are getting old enough that zoo officials expect to separate them from the rest of the family within the next few weeks. So this is a great chance to see the family together one last time. The lions are most likely to be outside when the temperatures are in the 50s. On colder days their outside time varies according to what zookeepers think is best.
Ivan also visited the Great Ape House, where he watched orangutans use purple sheets to play peek-a-boo with one another and visitors.
Without leaves to block your view, you can see how red pandas use their “false thumbs” to grasp bamboo. (Panda thumbs don’t have joints the way ours do. A panda thumb is a single bone coming from the animal’s wrist.) Twin cubs born in June are temporarily in the indoor viewing area while their parents, Shama and Tate, are outdoors during their mating season. You might see red pandas running along tree limbs and bouncing from tree to tree as they playfully chase each other.
As for the zoo’s giant pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, they stay outside even in cold, drizzly weather because it’s a lot like their native habitat in the mountains of central China.
See a surprising sight
The National Zoo’s flamingos are from the Caribbean, where it’s usually warm and sunny. But here, you might even see them in the snow! How can that be? As long as their water isn’t frozen, flamingos can adapt to many different conditions.
Get roasty toasty
One way to warm up at the zoo in the winter — besides sipping on some hot chocolate — is to visit the Amazonia exhibit, where the temperature is 80 degrees year-round. Get a close look at river stingrays, or see some amphibians with scary-sounding names such as poison dart frogs. (Some South American tribes use the skin secretions of these tiny, colorful frogs to coat darts and arrows for hunting. The poison apparently comes from the frogs’ diet in the wild. At the zoo, the food that the frogs eat doesn’t allow them to produce the poison.)
One Amazonia fish that gets a bad rap is the piranha. Movies often portray these sharp-toothed fish as ferocious man-eaters, but piranhas prefer to eat other fish, fruit and seeds. They swim in large groups to protect themselves from predators. Some have chomped on swimmers’ toes, especially when water levels are low and food is scarce, but they usually head off in search of yummier meals.
One kid’s advice
Twelve-year-old Milos Pajic of Takoma Park found that a little snow and cold weather couldn’t ruin a trip to the zoo for him and his family. His recommendation for those sitting at home in front of the TV: “Put your jacket on, and get your butt out the door!”
Ann Cameron Siegal
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