The National Zoo's Live-Tweeting Just Gets Cuter and Cuter

February 5, 2013 at 1:55 PM | by Omri | Comments (0)

Elementary logic: all organizations are increasingly leveraging social media, zoos are organizations, therefore zoos are increasingly leveraging social media. What differentiates zoos from other groups, of course, is that their tweets, posts, photos, and videos are much, much cuter.

Our beloved San Diego Zoo probably sets the standard for social media completionism—their annual Panda Week activities are to the point—but the National Zoo in Washington, DC is not far behind. Last year they live-tweeted the artificial insemination of a giant panda and the subsequent birth of the panda baby. Both of those were neat but not particularly cute.

The zoo's most recent live-tweeted event did much better on the cuteness front: photos and descriptions of elephant baths.

DCist has the live-tweet log so you can scroll through and see the second-by-second description of what happens when zookeepers go about cleaning and grooming the zoo's elephants. Whoever was running the feed did a very good job compiling photos and attaching them to tweets, but the tweets themselves are also kind of fun. Readers learned, for instance, that the elephants are smart enough to respond to over 40 commands.

The DC Zoo is in the process of creating a huge new elephant exhibit to house its herd of Asian elephants. Rumor has it after the facilities are completed, there will be more elephants, which is better than fewer elephants. Obviously.

In the meantime we've embedded a video below of one of the zoo's current three elephants, Shanthi, playing the harmonica. It doesn't have anything to do with this post—except inasmuch as it's on YouTube, and demonstrates that the Zoo really is all over social media—but it's an elephant playing a harmonica. Watch it. You'll be amazed at how much better your day gets.

[Photo: NationalZoo / Twitter]

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