World Animal Day 2009

October 4th was World Animal Day. If you missed it, you can celebrate it today. And tomorrow. And the next day....


Start out by enjoying this wonderful gallery from The Boston Globe's The Big Picture.

The Big Zoo

Scenes From The Zoo by The Big Picture is a beautiful series of photographs from zoos around the world. Hippo likes the close-up of hippopotamus skin (although his is a little fuzzier than this sample). There's also a photo of his great uncle Happy having a talk with Indiana Jones.

Long noses

Hippo has quite a BIG nose. Or at least it's a big nose in comparison to a small hippo. But sometimes he wishes he had a loooong nose.



His friends the anteaters have long, pointy noses for poking around in the sand and finding tasty bugs to eat. Well, maybe not tasty. Hippo thinks they're probably chewy and sour, kind of like raisins. But the anteaters seem to like them.

An anteater nose would be handy to snuffle for candies that dropped between the sofa cushions or sniffing flowers without having to bend down.

His friends the elephants look like tall hippopotamuses with long, strong noses. They call them trunks and use them to pick up food without a fork. They also use their trunks to play soccer, tag, and boxing.



Hippo heard a story about how a satiable elephant child got such a long nose. Maybe he should get one too!

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism

Little Hippo loves big words. His favorite big word is hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism, which means "the love of big words".