What do zoos sound like at night?

One thing I thought about as I was figuring out if Dima and I could to the zoo sleep over last weekend was: What do zoos sound like at night? I was thinking that if we were sleeping near something like big cats or something would we hear them? Would the sounds get incorporated into my dreams and then I'd end up dreaming about being stalked or something? Would we hear them roar or doing other stuff that we'd then have to explain to the kids?? Would it be like torture for them to smell fresh meat right there - so close yet so far??

The tour and the staff were great the "live animal show" included an screech owl, an American alligator and a kinkajou. Trust me, while they were out of their cages I was happy to be back a few rows and ready to get my (and Dima's and Vicki's if needed) feet up on the bench if that two foot alligator made a run for it!! Interesting lay out of this zoo - Vicki pointed out the close proximity of the porcupine and the fisher, the only animal that knows how to eat one - by digging under the snow to wait for them - I think their cages were pretty close to back to back or at least within smelling distance if the wind is right.

It turned out that our "camp" was near the vulture cages and as we waited our turn to go do the night tour I mentioned my thoughts to the the lady that was helping with the enrichment project and she pointed out that unless we smelled like carrion the vultures wouldn't be interested in us. That made me feel better.... then Vicki tried a few times to freak me out as we did the night tour. I couldn't help but notice that the bald eagle "enclosure" was kind of lame. The five eagles were all just sitting there in a big fenced off pen nothing over them, nothing tying them down. Okay so they each have something wrong with a wing but the fence wasn't very tall and IF these eagles decided to make a break for it all they would have had to do was run close to the fence (and they could have gotten to right under a walkway) and jump like six feet up and over to the path to run around the zoo. They have this menacing look when you go near the enclosure that's like " If only..." I did ask about it and the tour guide said that they don't really run and really can't jump, and I'm thinking - uh, not that they've seen so far.

As we tried to fall asleep that night with the gabbing girls next to us they were pretty much all I could hear. Somebody said they heard elk making noises late at night but it was hard to tell if it was them or people. The howling monkeys definitely made noise but that was almost exactly at 8:30 like the zoo staff predicted. So basically zoos are pretty quiet at night... aaahhhhh. By the way - and not necessarily on purpose - our tent was in the middle of 50 other tasty campers who would certainly become eagle chow way before they would have gotten to us.