Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
I took a trip to the St. Louis Zoo today. My family and I spent about three hours - which barely scratched the surface.
These first three pictures are of some black lemurs:
A giant squid for PZ:
Fortunately it is only a sculpture, otherwise the Zoo could get in trouble for hanging it from the ceiling like that.
Dinosaurs:
or, if you wish to get technical, pelicans. The next couple are various types of penguins and puffins:
On the way to the apes we passed by a sleeping polar bear:
and some more dinosaurs - okay they were flamingos:
Which brought us to the apes. We had one digital camera to take the pictures and we were sharing it between three people. Unfortunately the only ape I was able to get was this baby Orang. Minutes before I came into possession of the camera he had been beating another orang with a stick - which he dropped by the time I got the camera:
I did take pictures of the chimps, but they got accidentally deleted by one of the other users. I had been watching an impressive male chimp delicately search through some cedar shavings for cheerios. Deciding he had found all there were he started walking away. A little kid turned to his mother and said "Mommy, what is that?" His mother says That's his bottom" "No" says the little boy "I mean that other thing" referring to the impressive set of testicles on the chimp. Mom tuns beat red and says, "Oh, I think it's a boy monkey" After getting over my indignation at the way they called the chimp a monkey I was, of course, amused at the rest of the conversation. The gorillas were escaping the heat by shading themselves under a rock overhang so I couldn't get a good picture of them. Maybe next time. Next stop was the reptile house.
Alligator snapping turtle:
This is an alligator:
A false gharial:
A stray dinosaur that wandered in to be with its archosaur cousins:
Okay, confound you, its a duck!
A boa of some sort:
A green anaconda getting ready to shed its skin:
Silly me, I took this next picture and forgot what kind of turtle it was...
More turtles:
A gaboon viper:
In case the reptiles are creeping you out, here is a sea lion:
Dwarf Caiman:
Out at Lake Carlyle, where I frequently go sailing, they have signs telling you not to run over the snakes. One particular species is endangered and they are trying to protect it:
The above is an eastern massagua rattlesnake.
Reticulate python:
This brings us to the primate house. This first picture is of Allen's swamp monkey:
It is in the same cage as the main object of my visit - the black and white colobus:
I was trying to get a picture of it's behind to see if it had ischial callosities, but it stubbornly refused to cooperate. At one point it and the Allen's swamp monkey got into a tiff and I could have got the desired shot, but someone called my name and I missed my chance. I hung around for about thirty minutes after that, waiting for another chance. It didn't budge. I think it was toying with me.
This is a black and white ruffed lemur:
This is a sifaka:
The next two are saki monkeys:
A spider monkey:
The next two are lion-tailed macaques:
Tomorrow, I'll post the rest of the pictures. Be sure to catch it as I have an amusing okapi story to relate...
Comments
I havent been to the St. Louis zoo in ages! I remember the flamingos, though!
Posted by: ERV | August 5, 2007 8:52 PM
The San Diego Zoo has a special yearly pass for local residents. It's $39.00 a year, which comes out to $3.25 a month for unlimited access. If the St. Louis Zoo has the same deal, and you and your family qualifies, you may want to see about getting passes for everybody. That way you could go more often, and in the long run see more.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | August 5, 2007 9:17 PM
Nice zoo they have there. There really isn't anything that good around here.
Roger Williams Park Zoo is ok and they just finished major renovations. I'll have to hit there next weekend.
Posted by: Tony P | August 5, 2007 10:19 PM
Alan - Actually it's free. Our tax dollars at work. The Zoo, the Art Museum, the History Museum, Muny Opera, and several other cultural attractions have a tax specifically to support them. I think they get this from both the city and the county. It has allowed the Zoo, for example, to transform itself from the old iron bar cages to a state of the art facility over the last 20 years or so.
ERV - they still have poor Phil, stuffed and behind glass, if that means anything to you (although they also now have a statue of him too).
Tony - Between this post and the one tomorrow (hopefully) I will have covered about a third of the zoo.
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | August 5, 2007 11:07 PM
I love zoos... my best story is from the Toronto Zoo. We were wandering around the African exhibits, and happened upon a couple of giraffes behaving peculiarly. People were gathered around the enclosure, and several small children were pointing at the bizarre beasts. It was around then that things got very messy. Parent's hands quickly flew to their children's eyes.
Let's just say, for giraffes, the earth does actually move. And the males...um... don't seem to have really good aim.
Posted by: katie | August 6, 2007 6:55 AM
Did you get to see the Darwin robot??
Posted by: Colin Purrington | August 6, 2007 8:58 AM
Afarensis,
That makes a difference. :)
Our zoo costs about 25 bucks for a single visit. I suspect they charge that much to encourage membership and pass purchases. And to pay for special deals such as the panda exhibition.
Speaking of pandas, a new cub was born today. At the moment we have 5 pandas living at the San Diego Zoo; 2 adults, 2 juveniles, and the cub. One of the juveniles and the adult male are scheduled to head to China fairly soon and a new adult male will be arriving thereafter.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | August 7, 2007 2:34 AM