Madrid Zoo

I loved visiting Madrid Zoo. It was an August day and rediculously hot, but who cares when there's pandas involved?

Madrid Zoo has four pandas (parents and two youngsters), which gives the viewer plenty to enjoy! I thought I'd spent about 30mins watching them, turns out it was closer to an hour! Oops...

Pandas really are pretty slow, lazy creatures most of the time. The adults have to spend a lot of time eating because bamboo has very limited nutritional value, and as a general rule they move about very slowly.

The adult male panda spent our visit eating. It was cool to see him manipulate the bamboo with all four paws and grip it with his almost-a-thumb pads.

The female was also eating (read: lying completely covered in bamboo). But she did trundle off outside to play with her water bowl too.

The youngsters were sleepy. One just wanted to lie down with his paw over his face and ignore the world.

Unfortunately for him, his brother was half-heartedly leaning on top of him and rolling around. After a particularly comedic backwards roll where he got stick upside down, the slightly more active one levered himself onto a branch and gently slithered down to the ground, waiting for gravity to do the hard work so he didn't have to :)

It was a- maz-ing!!!