Taronga Zoo

Fair warning: This could be a long post.

First a recap from last night (Friday night). The happy hour at work was fun. About a dozen or so of us stayed until 7pm-ish then went to a place for food and another beer. The crowd got a little thinner towards the end and it ended up being just we 3 secondees heading out. Just guess where we ended up....

If you guessed the Scary Canary then you are one dedicated follower and probably realizing that Scary Canary might end up being a blog inside joke for a while... But yes, we ended up going there because at first it seemed to be playing more hip-hop style music and had no cover (it changes from pub during the day to club-type place at night). We had a lot of fun, but I swear half the bar/club was under 20 years old. It's a backpackers bar.

Oh, before heading out to the Scary Canary, at the place where we grabbed food they were showing The Ashes. It's a cricket test between England and Australia. I'll get into that at a later post (it would add too much and I don't have a firm understanding yet, anyway).

On to the zoo! Growing up I'd known the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. That is a pretty awesome zoo (for those of you who don't know, don't scoff. It's legit). Sydney's zoo is called Taronga Zoo (taronga is an Aborigine word for "beautiful view"). It costs $44 to get in (steep, I know, but everyone said we had to go). We bought a pass for $51.50 that included a ferry ride to and from the zoo.

When you disembark from the boat, you take a gondola ride up to the top of the zoo. Really cool views of Sydney behind you and the zoo beneath you.

After some initial confusion on where the entrance of the zoo is, we made it in. First up, the koala walkabout. They were sleeping when we first saw them, but we later came back at feeding time (Editor's Note: Sorry for the poor quality in photos. I only have my camera phone and sometimes I have to digitally zoom in, losing quality).

awww

AWWWWWW

They are pretty cute

During the 3:30 feeding time, the zookeeper told us a little bit about these guys. They live in eucalyptus trees and only eat eucalyptus leaves. Apparently eucalyptus leaves are very low in nutrients and are very fibrous, so koalas sleep as much as 20 hours a day, saving that energy to digest these leaves. On top of that, in the volume that they eat it, eucalyptus leaves are poisonous, so they have a special gland (similar to our appendix) that secrets an enzyme or something.

Now, when I say they only eat eucalyptus leaves, I mean they ONLY eat eucalyptus leaves. And not just any tree. Certain species. They're like eucalyptus connoisseurs. Or, to put it a different way, the animal kingdom's pickiest eater. Seriously. What happened to adaptation that I learned about in 8th grade science? They will just go hungry if they don't have eucalyptus trees, thus requiring Australia to become very vigilant to protect eucalyptus forests. Koalas eat a ton of this stuff each day (I thought long and hard to think of an analogy to describe how much koalas eat. From what the zookeeper showed us, it looks like about the equivalent of 3 big potted plants you'd see in an office. So, yeah, a ton). This makes the 4 koalas  at Taronga the 2nd most expensive animal to keep behind the fish-loving seals. The Tokyo zoo had some koalas and would fly in eucalyptus leaves each day to feed them because after a few days they are not fresh and koalas won't eat them.

Koalas - I realize we're destroying your habitat, but if you don't want to go extinct, how about trying just a little bit harder to survive and add maybe one more plant to your diet?

After that, saw some birds, lizards, and snakes. Then the most picturesque part of the park is at the giraffe exhibit where you see these majestic creatures with the Sydney skyline behind.

Picture doesn't do it justice but great sight of the city and harbor

 Next up we went to the big chimpanzee exhibit. One thing to note, overall, I felt like the animals were a bit more active than in other zoos I've been to. Watching these chimps was a lot of fun.

Using a tool to get food

And here are some zebras. The Aussies (and maybe Brits too?) call them "zeh-bras" rather than "zee-bras." I'll have to post about other different pronunciations later. A lot of it comes from emphasizing different parts of words.

And the famous kookaburra!

Of course, we also had to see Australia's other famous animal, the kangaroo (which, after typing "kangaroo" so many times, I realize I say "kan-ger-roo." Of course, I also think I pronounce "pitcher" and "picture" the same way...).

Kangaroos!

Wallabies!

In the Australian walkabout, we got to walk amongst the kangaroos, wallabies, an an emu. According to the sign in the exhibit, the different between a kangaroo and a wallaby is wallabies are smaller, faster and more nimble, but don't jump as far as kangaroos. Their heads are shaped a bit different, too.

And here's an emu.

He was following the zookeeper who was watching us.

I swear I'm a lot closer to this emu than the photo makes it look. Also, we thought this zookeeper was there to keep us from touching the animals, tell us to stay on the trail, etc. But he didn't seem to care. The other person in our group ended up chasing the emu and even got to touch it. Heck, if I knew that, I would have taken a better photo with it.

One of the more bizarrely fun areas was the wetlands exhibit. You could walk down to water level to watch all the ducks, swains, pelicans, etc.

This pelican was huge. Stood over 3 feet

The fun part was the unexpected friends I made. As we were watching, a black swain beelined it for me.

Then his buddy joined. I was just inches from them. The people I was with wanted me to pet it, but these looked liked like some seriously pissed off birds (angry birds?). I felt like they were going to take my nose off. They would not leave me. I'd walk up and down, and they would follow me (I tested this multiple times). It would have made a great YouTube video (dangit!).

I'd start at 1 end and go to the other, and they'd follow

Maybe they knew I killed many of their brethren in Pierre, SD.

At 3pm we made it to the spider keeper talk.

The keeper with a funnel-web spider

Not sure if we enjoyed this one or not. I walked away convinced I did the right then in checking my apartment and bed for spiders when I first arrived.

He first passed around the Sydney funnel-web spider. I believe he said this was the most venomous spider in the world. It's a couple inches long and you can see its massive fangs. It's a "primitive" spider which means its lungs are on the outside. I had no idea there were spiders like that, but apparently all burrowing-type spiders are primitive spiders that need humidity and moisture or else their lungs will dry up and they'll die.

Next up was the redback spider. It's closely related to our black widow spider and next in line in toxic speaking terms.

Finally we saw the huntsman spider. Consistent with the video I linked in an earlier post, he assured us that this spider is not poisonous to humans, but they do sometimes crawl under a visor in a car. An unsuspecting motorist will flip down the visor while driving and be greeted by a 4 inch spider falling on their lap.

The zookeeper assured us that spiders are more afraid of us and they do many beneficial things. However, I'll still check my bedsheets...

We ended the trip by seeing the elephants, then hopped on our ferry home to Sydney. Definitely a great zoo that takes a least 1 full day to see it all.