Today was a whirlwind of action. Mostly because I slept in. But I needed that. The Pipster slept straight through the night and somehow getting more sleep left me feeling more sleepy. Say what??? I know, it makes no sense, but whatever. Tapping into one of the true virtues of homeschooling, we dealt with it by starting later. No biggie. We got writing and math done, then cleaned up house and took off for the zoo to get our memberships and explore a bit. We didn't have much time because Buddha had soccer practice at 5pm, so we decided we'd do a "letter of the week" activity and try to find alligators for A. Well, every reptile on the zoo's map that looked remotely like an alligator turned out to be a crocodile. Go figure. So we chalked it up to experience, patted ourselves on the back for giving it our best shot, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing a crocodile using a turtle as a pillow. (I wonder if they even have alligators at the SD Zoo? Anybody? Anybody?)
We went home happy, memberships in hand, knowing we'd be back . . . frequently.
Incidentally . . . . Do you know how to tell an alligator from a crocodile?
1. Alligators have U-shaped snouts; Crocodiles have V-shaped. Just remember A and U come before C and V, respectively.
2. An alligator's upper jaw completely overlaps the lower jaw, so you only see the one row of top teeth. A crocodile's lower and upper jaws, on the other hand, are closely matched and the teeth interdigitate (a new word I learned while cruising this subject; see what it means,
here).
And here's your completely-useless-but-cool-nonetheless random tidbit of the day:
South Florida is the
only place in the entire world where alligators and crocodiles cohabitate. Cool, huh?
4 comments:
Interesting. Good stuff.
I'm jealous you have a sleeping baby and I don't. SO not fair!
They do have alligators, the ones with really long skinny noses, over by the big turtles. :)
Tiffany! We totally thought they were alligators, too, but they're totally not! They're called Gharial Crocodiles. I only know because we went all the way over there to find the alligators and that's all that was there. But the Galapagos Tortoises were mating and that was exciting, let me tell ya . . . whoo wee! :D
I don't believe either of the parks have alligators. I think they only have your lions and tigers and bears and croc's O my.
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