The Journey of Lex & Ada: Stone Zoo

After visiting Franklin Zoo last month, we have to come to Stone Zoo in order to finish our Zoo New England journey. Stone Zoo, you might wonder how it got the name from. Is it because it is located at Stoneham or is it because it has lots of stones in the Zoo? Haha, I got you! Let me tell you a little bit of history about it. The zoo was founded in 1905 as the Middlesex Fells Zoo. It began as a small collection of local animals, but soon grew to include more exotic species as well. On March 14, 1969, it was renamed in honor of Walter D. Stone, a former Zoo Director of both the Middlesex Zoo and Franklin Park Zoo [1].

The Stone Zoo is much smaller than Franklin Zoo. On the day we went, we probably had the same number of visitors as the day at Franklin Zoo. You see the long line here. People were waiting to go to the restroom. This was what our adults decided to do as our first stop.

Finally, we were off to visit some animal friends. We first visited Gibbon’s house.

Gibbons are apes in the family Hylobatidae. The family is divided into four genera based on their diploid chromosome number: Hylobates (44), Hoolock (38), Nomascus (52), and Symphalangus (50). Gibbons occur in tropical and subtropical rainforests from northeast India to Indonesia and north to southern China, including the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java [2].

Unlike most of the great apes, Gibbons display pair-bonding. There was a black Gibbon with this light golden gibbon, however, we did not have luck to get him in the picture. Gibbons are masters of their primary mode of locomotion, brachiation, swinging from tree limb to tree limb using only their arms. They are the fastest and most agile of all tree-dwelling, non-flying mammals [2]

Our second stop was leopard’s jungle. He was sleeping comfortably at one corner of his jungle.

The leopard is the smallest of the four “big cats” in the genus Panthera, and the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. Leopards may sometimes be confused with two other large spotted cats, the cheetah, and the jaguar. However, the patterns of spots in each are different: the cheetah has simple black spots, evenly spread; the jaguar has small spots inside the polygonal rosettes; while the leopard normally has rounder, smaller rosettes than those of the jaguar. The cheetah has longer legs and a thinner build that makes it look more streamlined and taller but less powerfully built than the leopard. The jaguar is more similar in build to the leopard but is generally larger in size and has a more muscular, bulky appearance [3].

Hey, come here to see the Barn Owl. Look at his face! He looks like that he wears a mask. Cool!

The Barn Owl is the most widely distributed species of owl, and one of the most widespread of all birds. It is also referred to as Common Barn Owl, to distinguish it from other species in the barn-owl family Tytonidae. These form one of two main lineages of living owls, the other being the typical owls (Strigidae) [4].

While Guoguo, her mom Sissi and Popo were taking a break, I went to visit Llama’s planet with Mama.

In some ways, Llama looks like sheep and in other ways, it looks like a camel. The Chinese name of Llama literally combines the characters of sheep and camel. Llamas are very social animals and like to live with other llamas as a herd. The wool produced by a llama is very soft and lanolin free. Llamas are intelligent and can learn simple tasks after a few repetitions [5].

Here are some pictures of me and Guoguo.