ZOOtaku

Today is World Tapir Day and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was offering the opportunity to give tapirs scritches, so we visited there today. Cofan and Carlotta, the zoo’s Mountain Tapirs were looking in fine form and were eager for treats and scritches. I asked a keeper if she could explain why tapirs were important to save and she said, more eloquently than I am paraphrasing, that Mountain Tapirs are a very important distributor of seeds in their forest environment and are vital for a healthy ecosystem. Also, as charismatic animals Tapirs are important representatives for other animals who need protection in their shrinking habitat.

Cheyenne Mountain is only one of two zoos in the US that have Mountain Tapirs (I believe that the other one is the LA Zoo). You can also find three other species of Tapir in zoos around the US. Malayan Tapirs (Denver Zoo), Baird’s Tapirs (Brevard Zoo) , and Patagonian tapirs (World Wildlife Zoo), newly distinguished (2013) kabomani tapirs do not yet have a zoo presence that I know of.

Hello, this is a blog about zoo animals, zoos, and animals in general. The title is a portmanteau of “Zoo” and “Otaku”. Otaku is generally meant in English as a rabid Japanese Anime/Manga fan, however in the original Japanese it applies to anyone overly passionate about something, which in my case is zoo animals.

Besides this blog I have a wiki of zoo animals and their locations and am working on a forum to discus animals. My current information is limited to zoos I’ve personally visited (especially in the Denver area where I am situated), but I hope to expand to more and more zoos in the future.