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A visit to the Guadalajara Zoo part 1: Big animals

Guadalajara Zoo entrance

A few weeks ago I went with some friends to visit the Guadalajara zoo. I hadn’t gone to a zoo in many years. I remember not being too impressed by the animals as this time as an adult. It’s fascinating to see them up close and at the same time thinking they must be sad for being in captivity.

In a way they are no different than humans in modern day society: With the privacy scandals and freedom vs security debates lately, we’re not very different than these animals in limited areas that emulate freedom but safer than being in the wild while all our moves are being watched.

I took a lot of photos that I’d like to show here, so I decided to split the blog post into several posts, each with a group or type of animals. In this first post I’ll show the mammals, marsupials and one large bird that got in the mix.

White Lion

Tiger at the zoo

The hippo area was at ground level and this happy guy was eating very very close to the fence, so I had a great opportunity for nice shots.

The fabulous hippo

Happy hungry hippo

Bathing elephant

Handsome titi monkey

The titi monkey area was the most fun part of the trip. These little guys are very curious and will jump over you without notice. They also like to steal things from tourists like earrings, pens, lighters and anything removable from your person.

Gabriel Saldana and the friendly monkey

This titi monkey jumped on my back while I was photographing another monkey, then got very curious about my camera and tried to grab it from me.

Titi monkey wants my camera

Next we took a “safari” tour, where we saw many of the big herbivores from the African areas.

Goats, Oxen, Zebras and more

The ostrich and friends

Black and white zebras

Bad temper

We also got the opportunity to feed the giraffes.

Feeding a giraffe

Giraffe closeup

Rhino in motion

The last of the big animals we saw were the kangaroos. I thought they were not going to have them but there they were. I like the expression in this kangaroo’s face.

Thinking kangaroo

Before moving to other types of animals, we rested by the edge of the gully to take a landscape photo of this beautiful view. This place is called Barranca de Huentitan.

La Barranca

By Gabriel Saldaña

Gabriel Saldaña is a web developer, photographer and free software advocate. Connect with him on and Twitter