Flehmen Unkind

Kitty cats large and small have a special organ in the roof of their mouths that increases their ability to smell, which is why you will often see them smelling stuff - or more often the air - with their mouths open. It's called the Jacobson's Organ, and the action is called "flehmen".

Well when you house some anoa (a species of small Indonesian buffalo) next door to the new tiger enclosure in a zoo, two things seem likely to happen: the anoa will be reluctant to come outside; and the tiger will lose all interest in mating with his new love and pace around dreaming of hunting his own dinner - even if he has been bred in captivity and has never hunted more than a stray pigeon.

That's what's happening to JaeJae at London Zoo.

He started the day enticingly close to the glass, enabling parents to get their vile offspring in the same photographic frame as the big boy. He stayed that way during "enrichment", when a keeper tried to lure him to the fence with offerings of meat.





Later, though, he woke up to the smell of fresh anoa and paced around trying to catch a glimpse, and perhaps a morsel, of his potential prey:

He stood on top of a convenient rock demonstrating the flehmen reaction:




In the old tiger enclosure it was too cold for the pygmy hippos to venture outside, so one dozed inside by the window doing an imitation of a leather sofa:



One of the colobus monkeys has a new baby. She's just three weeks old:







I knew I should have made a note of the names of these two types of snakes, but I didn't and I've forgotten. The first is a tangle of two or three, the green beauty just drapes itself over a branch in coils like a complicated piece of washing on the line:





On the subject of snakes, here are my new glasses - the ones that set me back over £450. Could have bought a real snake and a vivarium for that.