ducksfi

Morioka Zoo in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture has a host of both fierce and cuddly animals on its premises. Among the zoo’s current highlights are opportunities to see a baby giraffe, make dinner for the elephants, and feed raw meat to a lion. Oh, and did we mention that the animals there seem to have a penchant for looking dead while simply taking a snooze? 

On June 5, everything was going swimmingly at the zoo until a crowd of spectators called over to a nearby zoo worker in a panic.”Come look at this duck!” they yelled. “It’s collapsed on the ground!”

At first glance, the duck in question certainly did look like it had keeled over and quaked for the last time. However, upon closer inspection the worker discovered that it wasn’t dead at all, but merely sleeping in an odd pose.

The zoo subsequently uploaded the picture of the sleeping duck onto its Twitter account, and as of this writing, the picture has been retweeted an impressive 29,717 times! Not every avian can earn that kind of popularity.

As the tweet explains, perhaps the funniest thing about the whole spectacle is that this isn’t even the first time that an animal at the zoo has fallen asleep in a rather awkward-looking position. Back in late March, the zoo’s resident camel, named Hitomi, also fell into a deep slumber while looking like this:

▼ Birds of a feather flock together, apparently.

Here’s how some Japanese Twitter users reacted to the picture online:

“You should definitely give the duck a special name and make it the mascot of the zoo.”

“It looks like it’s on its way to duck heaven.”

“The zoo has lots of animals with strange sleeping positions. Animals are the same as humans.”

“It’s so defenseless at the moment, LOL”

“It doesn’t give off the vibe of a wild animal at all. Or is it playing dead?”

Now excuse me while I duck away to go visit my neighborhood’s own flock of feathered friends…

Original article by Yayoi Saginomiya
Source: Twitter (@moriokazoo)
Image: Morioka Zoo (used with permission)
[ Read in Japanese ]