Cranes and African hunting dogs

So there I was, thinking: "these building sites look quite cool, I'm going to use those on the blog this week". The sheer number of cranes in London, particularly the City, has always fascinated me. Even before the recent economic "wobble", it always seemed a bit weird that we'd need quite that much office space. Now, it just looks ridiculous. I particularly like the second one, of the Old Street roundabout with the Lloyds building and a tiny bit of Gherkin pointing up above the new development (the Bézier apartments - "curves in all the right places" apparently)...

Anyway, I continued along my Regent's Canal run full of further thoughts:
"It's not that embarrassing wearing tights [see first ever post] to run in, apart from those bits around Camden Lock and Islington where people can actually see you";
"It's nice to get back on a run after a two-week layoff";
"I look forward to my lunch of Jerusalem artichoke soup and the after-effects, which should coincide neatly with Super Bowl 43 (let's hope Kurt Warner can give it a go)"
"It's amazing how carrying a camera makes you notice things when running - things you'd probably miss otherwise"...

At which point - how right I was - I spotted these fellas behind one of the fences at London Zoo. Pretty cool guys, trotting along here and there. Now, admittedly the sign at the back says "giraffes" but I'm pretty sure they're not. My best guess is that they're African hunting dogs, seeing as the London Zoo website seems to admit to them owning some of them. Apparently they "mostly hunt medium-sized antelope". Even better, "the preferred species [varies] according to the most abundant prey species in the area". I wonder what they subsist on in London. Pigeons and children?