Marsupials and Dragons
So apparently Koalas sleep 23 hours of the day and eat the rest of the time. I didn't get to hug the cute marsupial, but I did get a photo with a snoozing one and a hungry one. Thank dog, it didn't cr@p on me like it did on the tourist in front of me.
I got plenty of photos of Kangaroos, but failed to get good photos of the nucturnal creatures, since they were high on caffeine and constantly moving. Damn platypus wouldn't float still for the ten second night-time shot in my camera. Whatever caffeine they gave the nucturnal animals, they drained from the koalas, kangaroos, chimpanzees, and komodo dragon. Those were sitting in place like statues and refused to cooperate with tourists carrying video cameras.
I fell in love with the Komodo Dragon. Would LOVE to raise one in my backyard. Though I suspect the neighbours won't appreciate it.
There was a wonderful exhibit of birds - noisy and large. I thought about CultureShock and his post about fear of birds. I may have to email him some of my photos from this exhibit. I considered calling him just so he could hear the wonderful "screams" of these birds. But the 16 hour difference wasn't in my favour.
Odd thing about this zoo is that it seems to be a gathering place for all the misfits of nature. We saw so many amputated, scarred, injured animals that it was as much comical as it was tragic ("and over there you'll see the fishing cat who lost his leg"..."and the fiberglass cover on the turtle will fall off when he heals"..."and the lizard lost its tail in an accident"..."and a lawn mower got the scales off this lizard."). Apparently, this zoo accepts all injured animals and nurses them to health. In the meantime, they show them to tourists and let the tourists touch them and feel these poor injured creatures.
But overall this zoo was absolutely fantastic and definitely tops all zoos I've been to in my life (about a dozen).
Tomorrow we head out to the Blue Mountains for some time away from the city. It's 11pm here, I better catch some sleep.
I got plenty of photos of Kangaroos, but failed to get good photos of the nucturnal creatures, since they were high on caffeine and constantly moving. Damn platypus wouldn't float still for the ten second night-time shot in my camera. Whatever caffeine they gave the nucturnal animals, they drained from the koalas, kangaroos, chimpanzees, and komodo dragon. Those were sitting in place like statues and refused to cooperate with tourists carrying video cameras.
I fell in love with the Komodo Dragon. Would LOVE to raise one in my backyard. Though I suspect the neighbours won't appreciate it.
There was a wonderful exhibit of birds - noisy and large. I thought about CultureShock and his post about fear of birds. I may have to email him some of my photos from this exhibit. I considered calling him just so he could hear the wonderful "screams" of these birds. But the 16 hour difference wasn't in my favour.
Odd thing about this zoo is that it seems to be a gathering place for all the misfits of nature. We saw so many amputated, scarred, injured animals that it was as much comical as it was tragic ("and over there you'll see the fishing cat who lost his leg"..."and the fiberglass cover on the turtle will fall off when he heals"..."and the lizard lost its tail in an accident"..."and a lawn mower got the scales off this lizard."). Apparently, this zoo accepts all injured animals and nurses them to health. In the meantime, they show them to tourists and let the tourists touch them and feel these poor injured creatures.
But overall this zoo was absolutely fantastic and definitely tops all zoos I've been to in my life (about a dozen).
Tomorrow we head out to the Blue Mountains for some time away from the city. It's 11pm here, I better catch some sleep.
posted at
2/08/2006 07:00:00 AM
2 Comments:
You would have LOVED this zoo! It's so huge and spacious that it feels more like an open park for animals. What they do is that they take an area and fence it, then they put these double gates that you go through. So when you walk around this area you're there "caged" WITH the animals in their own environment. These are VERY large areas (enough for the Kangaroos to jump around rocks and sand and escape the people if they wish to do so).
These are far larger spaces for each animal than any other zoo I've been to, which is why I liked it so much.
I can't stand the National Zoo in D.C. because it tears my heart to see the elephant in a tiny cage where he can hardly move around. Not to mention it angers me to see all the mice infested cages. The place is definitely not clean and not kept. (Remember the scandal a few years back - I definitely think the director should have been fired).
I'll see about posting photos when I get back to the U.S.
By
Mybrid, at 3:09 PM, February 08, 2006
Dang. I saw the link to CultureShock and got excited. I thought maybe he came out of retirement.
As for zoos, they're a necessary evil, since humans are breeding like rabbits and destroying all the other species' natural habitats. One world! One people! One slab of asphalt!
I like zoos though. Santa Barbara had a cute little zoo. San Diego has a killer wild animal park, where they actually have enough land to let their animals run around.
By
The Zombieslayer, at 2:31 AM, February 09, 2006
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