Several times each summer, the Oakland Zoo hosts a slumber party. The last two Sundown Safaris of the season are Sept. 18 and Oct. 2.

"Not very many people have ever woken up to the sound of a kookaburra and a hyena," says Olivia Mendez, a docent who leads groups of tours through the zoo. On this particular Safari morning-after in August, the kids in attendance range in age from toddlers to pre-teens.

In the early-morning Oakland fog, a few kids are nestled into their parents' arms, groggy from a long night of excitement, hot chocolate, and storytelling around the campfire. But most are buzzing around the chimpanzee cage, or gawking at the bats, and each child has their neck wrapped with either a tiger- or zebra-striped bandanna.

The groups move through the zoo while the guides point out that flamingos can't be trained and explain why they only have male bats in the new exhibit. The kids ask questions, their parents ask questions, and all are engaged with the animals.

Mendez leads the kids over to a cage filled with white-haired primates. "These little guys, with the mullet haircuts, are called cotton-topped tamarins. Are any of you twins here?" She asks the group. "Did you know that tamarins almost always have twins?" Mendez goes on to tell about the ways cotton-topped tamarins are captured and sold illegally as pets. The people who capture them are kids about your age, she tells the group. Because they don't have much money or many toys, they catch the tamarins for smugglers. Project Tamarin is a program dedicated to stopping the illegal trade of the animals, and is one of many programs the zoo supports.

Mendez works at the zoo because, she says, "I love animals, and I want people to respect the animals and the only way to do that is to educate them about the animals." She thinks the overnighter is a great way to introduce kids to zoo management and the realities of what it's like for an animal whose permanent home is the zoo.

Mara Strauss is a zookeeper, and the camp manager for the Sundown Safari. She enjoys seeing families get together, and giving people a behind-the-scenes look at the animals. "I like sharing what I get to see every day at the zoo with others," she says.

Parents enjoy the experience, too. A few are a bit stiff from sleeping on the ground, but all follow their kids around, point at the toucans, gaze at the sun bears. Donna Roberts and her sons are with Cub Pack 444 from Concord. She says the facilities are great, and loved being able to camp out on the grass. "My blow-up mattress is more comfortable than my mattress at home," she says, laughing.

"I slept," William Hecht, age 8, says simply of the prior night. But then he adds that he saw a few animals, too. "Goats and bats. And elephants. And monkeys. And a cock-a-roach," he says. He also got to pet a hedgehog. "It felt like a broom," he says, grinning.

Nancy Morgan is another parent enjoying the Sundown Safari with her sons Nick and Jimmy. She says spending the night at the zoo was like a big geography lesson, and that the kids learned about the habitat of each animal. She says, "Overall it's a neat family experience, to come and see a different side of the zoo and learn a lot about the animals."

"I was up late so I'm tired," says Jimmy Morgan, age 8. I like seeing the animals and seeing how they do things in the wild. I watch a lot of Animal Planet at home." The chimpanzee is his favorite animal. "That's a primate," he says. But he didn't get too close to the hissing cockroach. "I don't like touching bugs," he says.

The safarigoers all seem to be enjoying themselves, and kids are squawking like the Malaysian flying foxes and pounding their chests like the chimpanzees. They've seen nocturnal animals at play, told stories around a campfire, and awakened to the screech of bats and birds. They've gotten a taste of zoo life. "They come away with getting to see what normal people don't get to see every day," says zookeeper Mara Strauss.

Maryclare McCauley and her daughter, Olivia, enjoyed the insider's peek at the zoo. "We love this zoo, it's a great zoo," says McCauley. Olivia answers only with a wide-eyed nod.