# 26 Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden Home Safari

A while back I thought I should try to find a virtual tour of a famous zoo. So I did a google search and found a ton of videos on the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Facebook page.  Some of the videos just showed various different animals and some had zookeepers telling you about their different animals and answering questions.  I spent a few hours watching a bunch of these videos and saw and learned about a lot of different animals including polar bears, red pandas, ostriches, elephants, flamingos, tortoises, hippos and more.  Some highlights and Some things I learned were

• Seeing and learning about Rico the porcupine, I found out porcupines are Nocturnal, have big noses and a good sense of smell and have quills for protection, but their bellies are soft 

• Watching the elephant reserve. Not a lot was going on, but one was eating, one was taking a dump and another was playing with dirt and throwing dirt on himself or herself and taking walk. 

• The brown mountain tortoises which are from South east Asia. Have different shaped shell than other tortoises. They were just slowly wandering around

• The Hippo Cove had a couple of hippos swimming around and then napping. 

• The flamingo cove where there was a chick that just hatched. 

• There was a Home Safari Snow Day video. It was fun watching Kris the cheetah & Remus the companion dog play in the snow. 

• Fennessy the giraffe was celebrating his 1st Birthday!   He is a 791-pound male calf that was named “Fennessy,”  after giraffe conservationist Julian Fennessy. I also learned giraffes are about 6 feet tall when they’re born 

• I learned about the aardwolf; they are similar to hyenas.   They also have a long sticky tongue and can eat 200-300 thousand termites in 1 night. 

• I also thought the penguin parade was interesting to watch 

•  I really enjoyed touring their botanical gardens! I found out that The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden started as an experimental garden and is one of two accredited botanical gardens in Ohio. Each April they display over 121,000 tulips.

If you want to watch some of these videos for yourself here's the link to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Facebook page

Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden | Facebook

This was a another fun adventure and I learned a lot about so many animals.  This might not be as fun as actually going to the zoo but this was the next best thing.