On Mandrills

As a general rule, I don't dislike any type of animal (except the blood-sucking, disease-spreading, parasitic varieties). 

That being said, I definitely have my favorites. Some animals I love, and some I find strange. But as I learn more about the strange animals, I grow to like them. 

When I started at the zoo, there were two species of animals that I found the least interesting. Again ,this doesn't mean that I dont' like them. It just means that I fliked the other species more.

But those two species were chimpanzees and mandrills. 

Chimpanzees because they're so human-like (I just prefer things that are less human XD). And Mandrills because they're so strange. Maybe? I'm not really sure. They're so brightly colored for a mammal, that they don't seem real. Mostly because of the males, and their rainbow butts.

But of course, the more I learned about chimps and mandrills, the more I grew to like them. They are fascinating. Reading Jane Goodall books is an easy way to get more interested in chimpanzees. Plus, a new indoor room was built for the zoo chimps a couple years ago. They could see humans right up close for the first time in a very long time. Before that, you could only see them from across a moat. Some of the chimps love being able to get near people. On of them would kiss people through the glass, or give a handshake, or say hi (grinning and nodding).

 

The zoos first baby mandrill was born shortly after I started there. And he was so endlessly entertaining that you can't not grow to like them. (That baby mandrill is such a brat! But he's so fun to watch!) And now there's a second baby. 

Here's the first baby, trying to bite his mom.

 

You may guess what this was leading up to. Nicole emailed me the trailer for Kipo early last year. This is literally the first thing I wrote after watching the trailer:

"Oh, cool! I started laughing so hard when I saw the bad guy is a mandrill. We have a family of them at the zoo."

And then I proceeded to talk about mandrills some more. I talk about animals for a living, so sometimes it's hard to turn off that switch XD. 

It's appropriate that I only talked about monkeys during my first reaction to Kipo. Some part of me could see into the future and knew that I would love the crazy monkey.

 

Actually, Nicole actually called it "Kubo" the first time instead of "Kipo." I think that might be the reason that I kept getting the name mixed up at first. In my head, I would call it "Kipo and the Two Strings." Which is funny, because in both Kipo and Kubo, the mom is a monkey.