A few weeks ago, I got to travel to San Diego for a conference, so naturally I took the opportunity to stay the weekend and visit a friend too 🙂 Between getting my fill of Asian foods less accessible in the Bay Area (soup dumplings at 鼎泰豐, bubble tea, ramen at Mitsuwa, snow ice, just to name a few…), we also stopped by the San Diego Zoo to check out the koalas and other animals.

The San Diego Zoo specially grows different varieties of eucalyptus for its koalas, and bamboo for its pandas, at an offsite farm. The koalas are most active between 9-10am, after their eucalyptus tasting menu has been refreshed by their keepers for the day. Different varieties of eucalyptus actually have toxins at various parts of the year, which is part of the reason why they need to have many varieties available. In the wild, the koalas would have to physically move to different trees to find fresh leaves – I am not sure where they get those missing steps in at the zoo. They slowly munch their way around the various handfuls and varieties of eucalyptus that have been placed in different spots in their ‘trees’. Male koalas become very territorial once they reach puberty, so they each have their own ‘tree’, which kind of looks like a metal version of a giant cat climbing tower, with a shade structure to shade from the sun and heat lamps in case it gets cold in the evenings. The female koalas appeared to be better at sharing their environment. We were informed that the females were carrying joeys in their pouches, but they were hidden from the world.

We also waited a good half hour in line to see the panda. The San Diego Zoo has more than one, but only one (Xiao Liwu) was hanging out in the exhibit when we were there. You can see him with his own tasting menu of bamboo varieties in the below image gallery.

If you can’t make it out in person, the San Diego Zoo has webcams on a variety of their animals, including the koalas and the pandas.

More springtime animal pictures coming soon!

-pl