On a recent visit to the National Zoo in Washington, I met with Preston Foerder and Diana Reiss of Hunter College, who showed me what Kandula, a young elephant bull, can do if the problem is presented differently.

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However, slightly lower on the evolutionary scale I spoke to London Zoo to ask whether monkeys had right or left handed preferences and I discovered that they tend to use both left and right, and hands and feet, interchangeably.

BBC: The sinister tale of left handers

Dad and I would go to the zoo early in the morning, just the two of us.

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"I have a colleague at London Zoo who was called out last year after the police spotted a 'big cat', only to find it was an ordinary ginger moggy, " he said.

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And I only know all this because I made a short visit to the zoo to meet with Lanny Brown, its ungulate manager.

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I'll put the Silver Lion there to enlarge the zoo.

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This was good for my secret because I was comfortable with such language, and he and I shared sumptuous ideas over fine wine or walking through the Central Park Zoo smelling the chilly fall air.

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David Casselman : I was called on to litigate pro bono regarding the fate of elephants in the Los Angeles Zoo.

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