We off to Bedfordshire for a few days as this is my birthday present to Colin, albeit nearly a year later! Today we drove up in just over an hour to visit Whipsnade Zoo which I have never been to before but our season tickets to London Zoo got us in for free! I was a bit surprised to be charged £12.50 for the car on entrance but this was such a good thing to do as the area is massive and as it was so quiet, we just poottled around stopping as and when we wanted to to jump out and look at the animals.
By sheer chance we arrived just as the sloth bears were being fed and again after watching the elephants we were about to leave when I spotted a troupe returning to the paddock, all holding each others tails. There were some very young elephants and after our trip to an elephant rescue South East Asia it was lovely to watch them being fed and sharing the food which is todays photo.
I have no problems with well kept zoos with large adequate enclosures and a number of the species we saw are critically endangered in the wild, mostly because of the actions of humans either through habitat destruction of hunting. They are involved in a number of captive breeding programs and without work like this by the ZSL, it is entirely likely that a number of species such as the white rhino will have completely gone from the wild in 10 years or so.
