Zoos hawk animal sex tours

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.

"Manatees are not particular," said Rachel Nelson, the zoo's director of public relations. "We have only males right now and they don't seem to care."

Despite the blunt talk on the tour, many in the Saturday crowd in Tampa were coy about their reasons for attending.

"I really like the zoo and I thought it was a nice thing to do with my boyfriend for Valentine's Day," Chandler said.

Her most memorable statistic: "whales have like 10-foot-long whatevers."

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