Animals!

I have mixed feelings about zoos. On the one hand, seeing the animals behind bars is horrible. In some zoos - like the one in my hometown Rio de Janeiro - the impression is that the creatures are suffering. On the other, some zoos are research and breeding facilities, which try to learn about the species so as to protect them in the wild. I still haven't make my mind on whether I really like zoos or not... But I do love animals! And I love photographing them.

The first two pictures in this post were taken at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), "a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats". The next three were taken at the Bioparc Fuengirola, in Spain. And the final one is a tiny monkey "in the wild": well, it is in the forest on the hills of Rio de Janeiro's Sugar Loaf. This is a Common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), whose natural habitat is the Brazilian Northeast region. It is therefore an alien in the Atlantic forest from Rio, which is in the Southeast region of Brazil, thus competing with endemic species for food and shelter.