Zoo Trip

During my trip to the zoo, I felt that there was a lot more smiling than laughing overall.  Many of the school busses had left, and I think a lot of the kids that were there we tired by the time I arrived at 2:00pm.  Also, it was a warm day and a lot of the animals were sleeping and were not nearly as active as I’m used to seeing them.

What made me laugh the most, unfortunately I didn’t get on video, was a conversation between a son and his parents.  As they were walking up to the elephant exhibit, the son asked, “Mom, elephants like peanuts right?”  The mom responded, “I think so.  Dad, isn’t that right?  I think that’s what I saw on Dumbo.”  And the dad said, “Well, that’s what Disney makes us believe.” What was so humorous about this conversation was that the child was oblivious to the sarcasm and jokes his parents were making.  I was overhearing their conversation, and it made me crack up.  Not necessary because laughter was contagious but because the parents were so sarcastic and sassy about a mundane question.

When I was by the duck pond where you can pay 25 cents to feed the ducks.  There was this cute family who had run out of change and I split my duck food with the two kids.  When the girl threw the food at one of the ducks it started quacking.  She got so excited that she yelled, “Mom, one talked back to me! It talked back to me!” (13 seconds into the video).  We all laughed because she got so excited by hearing the animal noises.

The other instance in which I saw people laughing was when a boy entered the “African Wind Tunnel” that simulates wind in the Sahara Desert.  From this video you can see that the boy was having a less than great experience but his aversion to the simulator made those around him laugh.  I definitely feel that this experience reflects the superiority theory and schadenfreude because the woman laughing was glad she didn’t have to experience the wind and was laughing at his obvious discontent.

I fully believe that laughter is contagious.  However, in my experiences at the zoo, one person’s laughter did not seem to always trigger another person’s laughter.  Yes, when someone laughed, the person with him/her may have chuckled.  But there were no instances of people being doubled over by laughter because of another person.

Those were the three instances in which laughter was most apparent to me at the zoo.  Below is what made me laugh the most.  As soon as I walked up to the flamingo exhibit, they all got agitated and started squawking.  Their fights made my mom and I laugh because they seemed so silly and cartoonish.  This was definitely the highlight of my zoo visit…

…until, while I was looking off at something else, my mom yells at me, “Come get this on video! The flamingos are doing it!”  Unfortunately they had concluded their romantic encounter by the time I got my phone on video to record.  But here is a picture of the moment right after it happened.

YouTube link for all of the videos (plus some awesome background music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkLFhh5ZNeo