113 – The Australia Zoo

Steve Irwin was known as the ‘crocodile hunter’ and for his famous ‘Crikey!’ Catch phrase. He is a national icon here in Australia, and this zoo, I must admit is amazing.
Perhaps it was the rain, or the fact it was not too hot today, but all the animals were out and on full display. The enclosures had many viewing opportunities, and all except the tiger were open air enclosures, so great for pictures.
We attended the crocodile show, because that is the thing to see here, and guess what? We saw crocs. Had to get out the big lens it was so crowded, but we did see them.

Crikey.

This little guy is a Tasmanian Devil. I admit I had only seen the animated version until today, and this looks nothing like Taz. They do not spin around, nor slobber on things. In fact, this one mostly sat here and posed for the camera before running off.

The Taz Devil is a marsupial, who mostly hunts at night and by hunt, I mean it looks for dead animals and eats them.

These are not dogs, they are dingos. I still am counting them as my daily doggo pic because they… are really dogs. Except wild and aggressive.

Dingos can reach up to 60km/hr when chasing down prey or running from danger. So, do not try to out run them. Or in my case, out hobble them.

Still, dogs when nature calls.

This is a cassowary. It is a flightless bird found roaming around Australia and some nearby islands. They are known for being one of the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, which explains the head thing in my opinion. They can grow to 1.7 meters tall, so a little taller than me. This one, we believe is the father.

And this one we believe to be the hyper child. While we were watching it, it ran around in circles and tried to climb the tree.

This Koala was having a day. Apparently questioning his life choices, or sleeping, or banging his head against the tree in frustration. Not sure, but I could relate to his pose.

This little one is a Quokka, which is the smallest of the wallaby family of marsupials. They live exclusively in the southwest region of Australia near Perth, but specifically on Rottnest and Bald Islands.
They can climb up to 2 meters to eat the tasty leaves, and have the ability to survive for extended periods without eating by tapping into the fat reserves in their tail.

I wish I could tap into the fat reserves in my butt and gut as easily.

I could not tell if this was a female or male, but I’m guessing it is a female. Maybe even a pregnant one. They can have up to 17 ‘joeys’ in their lifetime. I had 2 and looked as tired as this little one. I cannot imagine 17.

Which brings us to the wallaby. Looks like a kangaroo, right? Except it is not. This, I believe is a swamp wallaby.
Many similarities make it hard to distinguish between a kangaroo and walaby, but generally, wallaby are smaller. They have shorter legs between the ankle and knee. They have more coloring, as below a darker back, a redder front and a dark face. Kangaroos tend toward more uniform coloring. They also have shorter feet and less developed upper body. But it is still really hard to tell them apart. Especially when they are all in the same enclosure and I only got pictures of this one, so have nothing to compare to. I’m going with Swamp Wallaby, but I might be wrong.

This is a red panda. Native of the high forests of Nepal, Berma and China, this guy lives in the trees. He was very active, and enjoyed being concealed behind leaves a little too much for my taste.

The best thing I learned about the Red Panda is that they use their thick bushy tail as a scarf to protect themselves in the cold climates of their native home.

That is a giraffe. or at least part of one. They are really hard to get in one picture if you want to get any detail at all. Or if you are too close to one, as was the case here.

This is a rhinoceros. I bet you did not figure that out on your own.

Neither the giraffe nor the Rhino did anything interesting, so I moved on to the meerkat.

My entire knowledge of meerkats comes from the animated movie, The Lion King so obviously I learned something at the zoo.
They are native to Africa (that I figured out) and are part of the mongoose family. They live in mobs in underground burrows, and usually one, like the one pictured above is on sentry duty.

Honestly, he was a twitchy little thing, constantly looking around and following anything that moved. Must be exhausting.

This guy was more chill in his sentry duty, so I am assuming either a big lunch before work slowed down his perception or perhaps age, experience and arthritis has made him wiser. Either way, I only saw the two sentry meerkats, and they both upheld their reputations for having abundant, and very different, personalities.

Stealthy enter the cheetah. The fastest land animal on the planet, having the ability to reach 70mph in 3 seconds.

Yeah, I’m lunch. I will stay well outside of their enclosure.

Cheetah are not classified as ‘big cats’ because they do not roar. They purr like cats. Also, they hunt during the day to avoid becoming prey of lions and other big cats. Unique to all cheetah is the ‘tear stain’ that runs from the corner of the eye down to the mouth. Apparently those are an ‘anti glare’ mechanism mom nature outfitted them with.

My kids were a product of the “Kratt Brothers” Generation of kids TV shows, so of course, I had to snap a couple of pics of Zoboomafoo. The ring tailed lemur.

Native of Madagascar, Lemurs live in a troop of up to 30 individuals led by a dominant female. They have scent glands on their chest, wrists and below their tails that they use for communication, but males, being males are known to use them to ‘stink fight.’ During mating season, males will rub their scent on… anything, and even toss their scent at other males. Yuck.

Which hits most of the animals we saw at the zoo. The tiger was behind thick glass and that is a photographic nightmare. Especially with kids handprints all over the glass. There were a lot of birds and reptiles we passed over, but this was an impressive zoo. Well laid out, clean, a lot of variety – especially when I expected to see a lot of crocs and not much else. And it was not expensive. It helped that I got some decent pictures, which always improves my mood and general attitude.
So add this one to your list when coming to Australia. Well worth the visit.