I’m loving this new trend of people going to zoos and participating in animal enrichment. We use to observe large exotic animals for our entertainment, but the fact is that we are now trying to make ourselves equally as entertaining for them. It’s interactive, completely parpicipatory and I would argue that eventually someone’s gonna come up with something new enough that it expland ethologists understanding about how some animals think, problem solve, communicate and feel and I think its fantastic.

Human: play?

Aquatic creature from an entirely different branch of the animal tree: play!

Shit I’m gonna start crying that was so beautiful

Reminds me of when I was very little. I barely remember it but my parents and godparents have told me about it many times. I think it was SeaWorld but it could’ve been somewhere else. I was like two. And we went to go see the dolphins. Well my mom held me up so I could see them properly. One of the dolphins saw my mom holding me up and thought my mom was showing them her baby. So the dolphin swam off then came back with her baby to show my parents. After a few minutes my mom set me down and I started running back and forth and the dolphins swam alongside the glass with me. So they showed off their baby to us and then played with me afterwards.

When I was in elementary school my class did an overnight trip to the local aquarium, and we got to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff. On one part of the tour there was a juvenile giant pacific octopus in a cylinder tank. My dad went up to look at it… and when he would move, it would follow him. They went round in circles together, then he’d stop and go the opposite way and the octopus would follow. It was fabulous.