The Newest, Cutest Baby Animals from the World's Zoos & Aquariums

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The Taronga Zoo is helping Ripley the barking owl chick (the latest addition to its bird flight presentation) learn the ropes.  Acclimatization though new experiences is the name of the game for this 40 day old baby barking owl.

Learning to fly means taking occasional pit stops to check on the latest ZooBorns updates…

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Here Ripley meets some new friends…

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Ripley even rode the cable car to get a bird's eye view of his new digs…

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excerpted from the Taronga Blog

Ripley is nearly fully grown now and spending every day at Bird Show.
He does require a little more attention though as he can fly well and
is flying all over the place! This can be a little distracting but is
very funny. He has been landing on top of our television monitors,
cupboards, chairs and even on our keyboards! This is usually followed
be a very loud BEEP as he turns the computer back on, taking it out of
its energy saving mode. Ripley isn’t very energy conscious yet! I have
had whole emails become illegible thanks to Ripley. And droppings
everywhere!

Whilst Ripley is still growing, and is now over 42 days old, we are
trying to introduce him to as much as possible, just as you would with
a puppy, so he is used to different objects, environments and people
when he gets older.

We are trying to make things less ‘scary’ so we took Ripley on a walk
around the zoo so he could meet different people and also for a ride on
our Sky Safari.

This was very exciting for Ripley. He was calm the whole time, which is
a very good sign to us that he will be robust when he is in shows, just
a couple of months away. Whilst in the Sky Safari his head was looking
all around. His pupils became huge as we went over the elephant
paddock. He tends to do that when something catches him by surprise or
is new. Elephants are definitely new for Ripley.

After our ride we walked back down through the Zoo and stopped to talk
to many excited people. His eyes and feet are generally what they
comment on, aside from the fact he is extremely cute!

7 responses to “Ripley… Believe It or Not!”

  1. Smilla Avatar
    Smilla

    Wonderful! I love Ripley.

  2. Lisa Avatar
    Lisa

    He looks so smart. Teach him to reformat the hard drive. 🙂

  3. Cat Avatar
    Cat

    Uh-oh birds need to stay away from Windows!
    (Sorry, could not resist)
    Been a fan of this site since it started – it’s the antidote to a bad day without the cloying silliness of most cute animal sites and I can safely send my young cousins here for a dose of science along with the baby tiger pictures 🙂

  4. Holy Cuteness Avatar

    Beautiful Ripley. I love owls (like so many other animals…), their are so intriguing…

  5. Captain Nemo Avatar
    Captain Nemo

    If he’s going into the open, he must learn Linux and other open-sourced programs. Windows doesn’t do well in the wild…

  6. unknowntheartist Avatar

    I got to see Ripley and quite a few other awesome bird in the bird show at Taronga a couple weeks ago. They are all well trained and seem very well cared for. There was even a couple of rats in the show and I am surprised none of the birds went for them. I guess their food at the zoo is tastier than trained rats 🙂

  7. Chris Avatar

    Very cool – Taronga has always stricken me as a top notch zoo. I hope to go there some day.

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