Rosebud interacts with the monkeys

The past few days have been sunny and hot, so we decided that yesterday would be a perfect day to go to Tierpark Hellabrunn, or the Munich City Hellabrunn Zoo.

I was impressed by the zoo, and we had a very enjoyable outing. The zoo makes excellent use of their space, giving the animals as much room to roam as possible. According to their website, it was the first zoo to establish geographical land areas for the animals. The zoo also has a neat exhibit on protecting animals and their habitat, veterinary practices and ecology. Rosebud is too little to appreciate these concepts at the moment, but as she gets older, I will take her back to that exhibit.

Our day didn’t start off on quite the right note. I was putting sunblock on Rosebud’s friend, Aby, when Rosebud was stung by a bee on her hand. Fortunately, I had some child-safe ointment in my purse which seemed to really help. It’s awful, though, when your child is hurting and there is not much you can do other than soothe them. Rosebud’s finger got a little swollen but over the course of the afternoon, looked better and better; today you wouldn’t even know she had been stung. So that’s a relief to me and her both.

Rosebud is old enough now that she takes a much keener interest in the animals. We especially enjoyed the Urwaldhaus, where the monkeys are housed.

I parked Rosebud’s stroller by the glass so she could see the monkeys at play. There was one young monkey who clearly was hamming it up for the visitors. This monkey would run along the side of the glass and was generally playful with the other monkeys.

Rosebud was giggling at all the silly monkeys (who, I must admit, really remind me of toddlers). The playful monkey ran past the glass again and stopped in front of Rosebud. Then, the monkey tapped on the glass, looked as if it were laughing, and then ran in circles. We were all laughing, and Rosebud thought it was hilarious. The monkey “played” with her in this way several more times. It was adorable!

One primate exhibit we saw features the Lisztaffe.

Lisztaffe, or Cottontop Tamarin

They are called Cottontop or Pinché Tamarins in English. So why are they called Lisztaffe, or Liszt monkeys, in German? They were so named after the Austrian-Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt, who apparently sported the same hairstyle as the tamarins:

Franz Liszt and his mane of white hair

This fact amuses me to no end!

I took lots of pictures yesterday, but they’re on old-school film. I will need to wait for them to get developed and will post pictures later on. I am having fun getting reacquainted with my SLR, but I do miss having the instantaneous access to my photos in digital format.