Today at the Pittsburgh Zoo (NDR but some wild dogs)

I love going to the zoo!  Our zoo doesn't have Tigers though.  Those  African wild dogs have the cutest ears! 

Cool!

 I LOVE African wild dogs!  I think they're just about the neatest looking creatures I've ever seen.
 

They are pretty awesome, aren't they? I love their merle coats and giant radar dish ears! That one looking up at me was just going to town digging a hole to China.  We also got to watch some social interaction as a small argument broke out over possession of said hole to China and their little squealing sounds were pretty cute too. A lot of our pictures turned out pretty blurry though because they were super active. I think it was around their dinner time so they were running laps around their enclosure waiting for it (except the little digger).

Great pictures!  They really seemed to be up and moving for you.  Usually when we go there they are so sleepy.  Although this year we picked a cooler day to go and they were moving quite a bit.  I really liked those African Wild dogs too!  They were very pretty.

It's funny I came along your post, I was just going thru my pics and was looking at my zoo photos...here's a couple

Not sure what kind of animals, these are, but I thought it was worth a "shot".

This I had to take!  She was the cutest (little monkey) at the zoo!  This is my grand daughter Allison.  My daughter is in the AF, in HI and the two came in (May) for a 2 wk. visit, which just wasn't long enough!  She has hair, now!  Boy do I miss her!   Sorry so many pics, but I was inspired by the others.  Plus, I just learned how to put them into posts, so I'm excited at the same time!  LOL

 I always feel so bad for animals in zoos but I know that they serve their purpose.

Your pics are great. I love the one with the fem. lion. It looks like a painting.

Those wild dogs are scary looking imo! 

I don't feel that bad for the animals in our zoo. Most of them are born in captivity (and our lions I think are all rescues from people who thought it would be cool to have a lion as a pet), and their enclosures are by and large really, really nice. I used to feel bad for them back in the days of Pittsburgh Zoo v.1.0 when it was just cages and cement floors, when I was a little kid. But most of the enclosures any more are naturalistic and large and in the cases of many non-predatory animals contain more than one species. They just finished a new polar bear habitat which is pretty awesome, and are working on a new elephant habitat and house (a couple of the elephants are pregnant currently, so the family is growing).

What does make my blood boil when I'm at the zoo (and on this point I can not stress enough how great it is to go in the off season when no one else is there!) is the bizarre misinformation that people spew at one another while watching the animals--especially what parents tell their kids! I've seen people stand directly in front of a sign that informs them of the complete opposite of what they are telling their children about the animals. And the complete disrespect some people have for the animals also really bothers me. I feel that we owe a tremendous amount to these animals, having screwed up their natural habitats and made it necessary to breed them in captivity for conservation programs, and the least we can do is show them a bit of respect and treat them with dignity.
 

 Whether they were born in captivity or not, I still don't think that you can build an enclosure that is big enough for say, an elephant, a dolphin, a bear, etc. Intelligent animals that have natural roaming instincts. I know that the zoos do their best, and again - they serve a purpose for education, captive breeding and the like. But you just can't build an environment that would stimulate intelligent, social pack animals enough to give them satisfying lives.