Feb. 13, 2007 — Genevieve Chandler has been visiting the Lowry Park Zoo since she was a kid, but the tour she got the other night was definitely not the G-rated fare of her childhood.
Among the things Chandler, 30, and her date learned on their "Wild at Heart" zoo tour: Male pigs have a unique corkscrew endowment and impressive, um, output; manatees have orgies and don't really care if their partners are male or female; and a male porcupine has only one four-hour window a year to mate.
And how do those fortunate few porcupines that get to home plate make love?
Very carefully, of course.
Valentine's Day is the time of year when zoos around the nation seek to woo a new adult audience with risque tours that couple champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries and candlelight dining with impressive facts about how animals do the wild thing.
Credit for the concept goes to Jane Tollini, a former penguin keeper at the San Francisco Zoo. Tollini conceived the idea two decades ago while watching her penguins' courtship ritual, which culminates in what she describes as "bowling pins making love."
"The keepers get there early and we see things that other people don't see," Tollini said. "And I went, 'My God, that's fascinating.' You know the old Peter Sellers line, 'I like to watch?' You kind of go, 'Oh my, my, my. How big? How many? How far?' It was unbelievable."
She set the ritual to Johnny Mathis — the makeout tunes of her generation — pitched it to her bosses and a new zoo tradition was born. The idea soon spread to other zoos.
San Francisco calls it "Woo at the Zoo." New York City's Central Park Zoo calls it "Jungle Love." Zoo marketing folks in Boise, Idaho named the tour "Wild Love at the Zoo."
"Sex sells. No matter what," Tollini said. "I wish I had a nickel for everybody that has copied me. But not every city is as liberal as San Francisco and can get away with what I do."
Even in San Francisco, zoo sex tours are mostly all talk and no action. Animals do it when they please, or, in some cases, when their human keepers deem it appropriate.
Tour guides in Tampa warned of possible manatee make-out sessions. But the giant mammals were content to munch on vegetation while the tour group ate a candlelight dinner in front of the zoo's massive aquarium windows.
