Sunday, July 13, 2008

The Nordic Ark, July 12th 2008. Part Three

When you begin the nature walk, the first exhibit you come to is the Southern Pudú (Pudu pudu) which was a new animal to all of us. For my part I had never even heard of it till I checked out the list of exhibits at the park's website on Friday. I was looking at the list with a coworker and we didn't know what that animal was ... then after when we clicked on it and saw the picture of it we still didn't know what it was. :-D But after a little research (thanks to Google :-) it turned out that the Pudú is the world's smallest deer. We were excited about seeing it, since it was new to all of us, but trilltrall may have had a little bit more interest than the rest of us because the Pudú is native to Chile, and trilltrall is Chilean-Norwegian. So we figured it would be really cool to see it. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see just then. The park currently has two adult Pudús - a breeding pair - and one fawn (their offspring), but all we saw was one of the adults sleeping in the indoor part of the enclosure. (I think it's the female, but I may be wrong on that one.) The sign said that Pudú are crepuscular animals, and as this was at about 11:30 am, it wasn't too surprising that there wasn't much to see.

I tried taking a picture, but well ... the glare off the window rendered it less than impressive. :-)

It was really cute when it groomed itself ... even though it just looks like a ball with ears right here. :-)

(Photo credit: me)

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