The Zoo

Remember this post where I had a great idea about taking pictures at the zoo and talking about our dogs wild cousins.  Well I also promised that I would be going to another zoo to take pictures because all of the dogs/wolves/foxes were hiding at the first zoo.  Well it turns out that the problem was not the heat, dog-like creatures just make for bad viewing at zoos.  I had my break through about this while photographing a monkey. 

I asked myself "why are all the monkeys so interesting and the dogs are not?"  Then I hit myself in the side of the face.  For being so stupid.  Primates love eye contact, they, like us, take the world on face first.  Dogs hate eye contact with unfamiliar people and animals, approach others from the side and usually greet nose to but.  So guess what?  They put their butts to you at the zoo because making eye contact with a million new people walking by every day would just be no fun.  At least that is my read on the situation.

So here is a picture of a monkey.  He was very, very interested in staring directly into the lens of my camera.  Try getting your dog to stare that deeply into something that looks like a dilated pupil.