It’s not very often that I can convince Marshall to join us for an afternoon trip.  But the weather was so nice today, and the offer to go to the zoo was one that was just too good to give up!  So, we all piled in the car after lunch and headed to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC.  We LOVE this zoo!  It’s small enough to go and see everything in just a few hours, but big enough that they have a good assortment of animals.  It’s also the cleanest zoo I’ve ever been to, which was nice!!  Anyway…we had fun, laughed and smiled a lot, and learned some things, too.  I’m always surprized to learn something new every time I go there!  Anyway, here are the pictures.  And below the pictures are the amazing facts that I learned today!!

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*Riverbanks Zoo has a new joey(baby koala seen in the slide show above) named Oz.  Oz is the son of Lottie and Great, and he is 8 months old.  He just ventured out of his mother’s pouch in late November, so he’s still new and tiny!  Oz is Lottie’s second joey.  Her first joey died at 9 months.  It is very common(73% of the time!) for a first-time mom’s joey to die.   Glad I’m not a koala!

*Giraffes have the same number of vertebra in their necks as humans; theirs are just larger.

*Giraffes do make noises, but mostly subtle ones: grunts, snorts and soft whistles.

*African elephants have four toes on each of their front feet and three toes on each of their hind feet. (Is this why they are Tucker’s favorite???)

*Elephants cannot jump.  (I guess I should have just known this intuitively, but it’s still kind of a cool fact…Emmie can’t jump either.  Any relation there?? Just kidding!)