THE ZOO

On the 5th October, the year 11 triple biology class went to London Zoo on a school trip. The aim of the trip was to analyse animal behaviour.  Which you may have already guessed …

On our way to the Zoo, we were distracted for a good 10 minutes by various bridges and the ducks underneath. They were very cute, but that wasn’t the kind of observations our teachers were looking for. After being sufficiently side-tracked, we continued our journey to the Zoo, where we queued outside for what felt like hours. It wasn’t, but it could’ve been, my mind was befuddled,most likely from cold and the disgustingly early hour, (in my mind, all schools should start no earlier than 10).

Anyway, we fought our way in, through turnstiles and grumpy receptionists and made it into the heart of the Zoo, where we were greeted by a cocky monkey – a ‘white-cheeked monkey’ (well, I have to include some science in here) – who was swinging from tree to tree the way the monkeys do it in ‘The Jungle Book’.

We were herded like sheep toward the ‘Lion Pen,’which contained a  mixture of males and females, incredibly fluffy, Asian lions. Apparently they were having a lazy day, lounging about roaring to one another. I’d like to think it was about the weather and not all the bug eyed students staring at them.

We then headed towards the Squirrel Monkeys, where a rain forest replica was built, which was called ‘Meet The Monkeys’. This was a ‘walk-through exhibit’ where you can see the monkeys up close, jumping above your heads, or running past your feet, or in my case, trying to eat your hand…

I saw a Squirrel Monkey, poking its’ face from behind a bush. So I caught my friends’ attention, and pointed in its direction. To my surprise it jumped on to my arm and there was a moments silence when everyone just stared, frozen, even the monkey didn’t move. Then suddenly, the monkey leaned forwards toward my hand and bit my knuckle.

“It bit me!” I laughed, staring at the monkey in shock as the ridiculousness sunk in. Then, It bit me again.

“It’s biting me!” I said again, this time panicky. I didn’t know how to react. What are you meant to do when a monkey is eating your hand? Apparently, the right thing is to give you hand a slight shake and to laugh uncontrollably, because soon after, the monkey hopped away. Probably to prey on other visitors. After that we, as a class, left the exhibit in a hurry. Understandably, the school thought one injury was enough.

‘Meet The Monkeys, Eat The Humans’

We trudged our way to an employee led talk, in which I got a couple of worried looks from the zoologist and teachers, and we were also were given the chance to stroke a snake. Which ended up with a student bolting for the door. The legend that snakes have slimy skin is not true, some people must think that they are just stretched out slugs.

The Zoo Instructor then gave us a table to fill out, and led us to the Penguin Pool. This was the first time during the trip where we actually did some work. We were grouped into pairs and told to pick a penguin from about 80, and note down what it was doing every 30 seconds. Ours was very interesting, it pecked at another penguin for a bit then decided to look at the view for the rest of the 5 minutes. Afterwards, there was a ‘Penguin Talk’ put on for the public where they told us about the tendencies of penguins and their animal instincts. They also dressed up a student to look like an emperor penguin, which we all found very amusing.

It was, all in all, a productive day … well better than maths anyway.

Last updated: April 16, 2020