Sunday, December 23, 2001
MarkBernstein.org
 
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Strolling lemurs

The Singapore Zoological gardens take the open zoo concept about at far as it can go. Lots of animals appear to be perfectly free to go wherever they want; signs indicate that they are "conditioned" to stay within appropriate parts of the zoo. This means we're walking down a concrete path, gawking at a troop of chimpanzees doing amusing chimp schtick, when ZOOP! down the path goes a little brown furry thing that turns out to be a lemur, swiming from the shrubbery. Then ZOOP! there goes another. ZOOP! ZOOP! ZOOP! ZOOP! go the rest of the gang. Way cool.

Presumably, the free-flying peafowl know that it's OK to hang out with the gibbons, but not so cool to bother the lions. How they learn this is a mystery.