The Zoo! ¡el zoologico!

feeding the exotic deerCourtney and I have been wanting to visit the zoo for some time now. It has either been too cold or too late in the day or we've had too much rezaco. But yesterday was a holiday, Dia el los Estudiantes. Yes, Argentina has a holiday just for students. I wish America would get hip to this idea. It was also the first day of spring for the southern hemisphere and this proved to be an ideal day to visit the zoo.

The zoo in Buenos Aires is small but has many many animals on display. They have at least six different types of big cat, both types of camels, elephants, and hippos, and many varieties of primates and birds. The park has a past era feel. The elephants have a Arabian looking stable. You can purchase food to throw at any animal. Every enclosure looks way too small and many of the animals look extremely restless and have visible skin diseases. But despite this the zoo is more interesting than any I've been to in the States. You can actually see the animals and get very close. Some of the small animals like deer and antelope you can pet through the fences. Some animals aren't kept in enclosures and roam the park. At one point I encountered what looked like a giant beaver-rat fighting with a majestic pheasant. I also saw a lemur and a black and red duck "exchange words" through a fence. Sometimes animals were put together that in no way made sense. The giraffe had a deer of some kind in his enclosure.

What was interesting to me though was the exoticism of North American animals. The bison was drawing crowds similar in size to the jaguar. Deer that are as common as squirrels in North America were there in sparse numbers. A grizzly bear looked out of place next to the lion display. It seemed odd to have a polar bear this side of the equator.

But it begged the question. If we think jungles and African deserts are exotic, what is the nature of exoticism to people from those places? Is it a blander conception? Do prairies and temperate forests incite the same interest that the Sahara or the Amazon do? Not to be too forward of course, but as a person from those places am I on display in a way as an exotic object?It was also interesting to see the mountain lion there. A native to my home of California and Argentina the mountain lion was a connection in the dichotomy. The zoo, which had one or two specimens of every other cat, had five or six mountain lion. It was strange to think of mountain lions roaming in a jungle when they seem to me such a suburban nuisance. I imagine them wandering the chaparral in search of coyotes and rabbits. I see them more likely to attack a pet dog than a spider monkey. I'm not sure where this observation fits into the picture or analysis of exoticism, but it's something to notice in the very least.