Taronga visit. » Taronga Zoo

Taronga visit.
28-12-2006

Me and a couple of mates from Northern Territory went to Taronga today. It has been a while since my last visit.
I have been reading on this site that some people think that the elephant enclosure is to small. I am not an expert and i am not trying to sound like one, but it seemed to me that the 5 elephants had enough room to be comfortable. Taronga also still has room to move the bull to the old elephant enclosure like they planned.
I may be wrong ( and know i will be told about it if i am) but i think they will be fine where they are.
Glyn do you know any more about the disease that you said the silvery gibbon has? It would be ashame if they are unable to breed.
Does anyone know when the zoo plans to get more Francios Langurs? I understand that it takes time to obtain new animals but the exhibit looks a bit bare with just a pair. More females are needed to get the troop started.
As we were leaving we were told that there was over 10 000 visitors at the zoo today, the biggest crowd this year.

28-12-2006

why the sad icon boof? does that mean that you didn't enjoy yourself?

29-12-2006

with 10 000 other people there I probably wouldn't have enjoyed my visit.

29-12-2006

Yeah I had a good day. It was crowded, but you have to expect that during school holidays. The sad icon was for the francios langurs. It was not for the whole post. Sorry.

20-02-2007

I have just spent two very enjoyable days at Taronga, the whole purpose of a trip to Sydney. I especially wanted to see the elephants and was not dispapointed. They seem to have settled in really well and I enjoyed watching two of them being bathed and scrubbed in the barn. Young Gung has quite well developed tusks for his age and I'm wondering how he will look in ten years or so. The snow leopards were a joy to watch and the two young ones, now the same size as their parents, were playing chasy, bringing them right down to the front of the exhibit. The lions were very active too. Does anyone know what will happen to the two young ones. I would imagine that the young male especially will soon be seen as a threat by his father.

I even managed to watch an ACTIVE malayan tapir. Every other time I have seen them they have always been asleep. This one didn't have the eye covers and moved about its exhibit with ease. I have a question for those who are familiar with the layout of the asian rainforest exhibit. Do you think that thesecond tapir exhibit, the one combined with the otters, is big enough?

Enjoyed as always the various birds. Got to see Kua only briefly as she stayed in her hut all the time. (Too hot, not enough shade?)
The bongo saddened me as everytime I saw it it was in the same place up at the back. This was at various times of the day, both days. Somehow I don't think it is a suitable exhibit for it.

I'll post some pictures later.

20-02-2007

hey jason.

ive often seen tapir asleep in asian zoos, but the melbourne female is usually a pretty active girl (though no longer displayed to the public). she often enjoyed galloping around the exhibit that had a good land/water ratio to allow for such. the brazilians at melbourne (now at mogo) were very active too. when i saw zooboys pics of the tapir exhibit at taronga i questioned its size. obviously, i haven't seen it in life but from the pics it looked like there was very little land area - which would be dumb as hell since tapirs are not anywhere near as aquatic as hippos and do appreciate a large area of land. is that what you mean by small?

the bongo has been hidden up the back of his exhibit every time i have visited the zoo also. they are particuarly shy antelopes i suppose.

now that you have seen "wild asia" what do you think of the elephant exhibit? how does it compare to melbournes and australia zoos? in fact how does the entire asian section weigh up against that of others that you have seen?

20-02-2007

Did you get to see the Francios Langurs or were they up the top of their enclosure. I've been through wild asia about ten times and they have always been up the top of the exhibit almost out of view.

20-02-2007

i would of liked to have seen more room given to the malayan tapirs, although the whole area, if you include both exhibits and the holding facility is big enough, it obviously meets standards. and it does extend along quite a bit, beyond the holding compound. i guess its on balance really. the old tapir exhibit at taronga was quite big, and as a result you never saw the tapirs who were always hiding at the back. it would have been nice if the tapirs had access to the elephant paddock, if only at night.
the new exhibits give the animals room and i suppose meet one of the zoos primary objectives which is to have animals on display. i am sure that one of the fundamental outcomes from the conceptual planning stages with these new animal exhibits is visibilty. all the new exhibits are designed to maximise this. i just hope it doesnt compromise animal welfare, though you can be sure Life Sciences will be there, fighting to strike a happy medium with the designers.
the bongo herd at taronga has shrunk in size quite markedly, and is nowhere near as effective an exhibit as it used to be. the design elements are quite rudimentary, but the original pair used to always hang out at the front, particularly when the first couple of calves were dropped. now the bull and sub-adult bull are rotated, i think, and the result of having one animal on exhibit is pretty lame.
the lions are a bit of a project i think, an experiment in terms of husbandary. as Johari and Ashali matured the zoo had stated it would maintain the family unit for as long as possible. perhaps with both females on contraceptives there is less tension.
ive got some grea pics of the francois langur utilising all the areas of their exhibit, but they do seem to like the back wall a bit.
jay, hows the grass in the elephant paddock holding up???

20-02-2007

hay put up some pics of the langurs plz plz pretty plz glyn

20-02-2007

The main tapir enclosure between the langour and the biturong is bigger and has a better land water ratio than the one I'm talking about.
I did see the langours, they were running all over the place at one stage, other times they were right up in the corner, alomst out of site. Is that where their night dens are?

Compared to Melbourne it feels very different. Melbourne has the old tiger/otter section which is well establisged with vegetation. Given time Tarongas will be even more lush. Because Mels orag wasn't designed to be naruralistic, it gives a totally different feel compared to Tarongas which doesn't have anything similar. The larger variety of creatures incorporated at Taronga makes it more varied. I do have to wonder why more of the smaller animals weren't incorporated though. There are Indian palm squirrewls and the tree shrews, both very active species that are currently tucked away in hard to find places. I felt that they could have easily been moved. They were certainly more active than say the biturongs.

The grass has fared very well with the elephants but suprisingly there are still patches of it around, it does look very bare though. Would it be possible to enclose a small area and put in fast growing vegetation (bamboo, palms etc) whicj the eles could get at later?

I thoroughly enjoyed the zoo though I felt that the African waterhole needs a lot of work and other big picture exhibits (wollemi pines and backyard to bush) looked a bit neglected.

Did anyone see the article about echidnas in Wollemi? I saw two of them there, very active they were.

20-02-2007

I've just posted some photos of the lions. I'm really rather pleased with the results as I felt I was really up against it to get them. I was at the back of a crowd six deep and was blindly taking photos over the tops of peoples heads. There was a group with telescoping lens about a foot long, hogging the spaces right by the glass and I was limited with a digital camera with 3x zoom. Plus the light was bouncing off the glass panes, hence the reflections you can see. I personally really like the two with the lions framed by the grasses.

20-02-2007

melbourne supprisingly opted out of squeezing in more small asian species also. for example their is a big somewhat isolated peppercorn tree just after the second aviary before you start the "trail of the elephants" a few thousand dollars would have been all that was needed to turn that into a very good binturong exhibit (and the zoo does have about five of the creatures!). but who knows?

backyard to bush was a great idea in my opinio, but failed to impress me. the one idea i loved was how the "friendship farm" animals had been incorporated into an australian theme in a barn on a farm. that was great. but was there really a need for an urban house AND a farm? couldn't they have been incorporated together. the region seemd somewhat cramped and it isn't really "backyard to bush" moreso backyard to wombat mineshaft. the bush section was pretty pathetic. when i was there there where a couple of freaked out red kangaroos hopping around in an area planted to the max with small cabbage palms or something. hardly invoked the feel of the bush to me.

woolemi though? a great exhibit! absolutely...

21-02-2007

i think this exhibit, whic was supposed to be the flagship of the ZOOTOPIA redevlopment, would have been more effectively positioned near the top of the zoo, say on the site of the current bush-bird aviaries, than way out of the way where it is currently.
B2B is a good concept, but needs more animals. the interp features are great, and when school holidays are on and the place is brimming with kids, volunteers and animals to be molested, well i can appreciate the idea behind its devlopment. but go there on a quiet day, and whilst you might miss out on stamping on toddlers, the place seems empty. it needs more macropods. some small free-ranging species in the walkthrough, plus echidnas. the barn needs reworking, with more species. cram them in. invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians. g for cane toads, and red-eared sliders, native frogs in cases of banannas and show how were transporting wildlife around. London Zoo had a great Leaf-cutter Ant exhibit, where the ants actually walked along ropes reinforced with wire that snaked out of the exhibit into the visitor pavillion. the ants couldn escape because the ropes only point of contact was an island. B2B needs exhibits like that. and the house needs more animals too, live exhibits of possums in cut-away sections. it would be a great venue to set up a wildlife rehab unit, staffed by say, WIRES volunteers, who could raise awareness about their organisation, recruit help and fill B2B with animals.

on Wollemi, this has to be my fav exhibit, but i also thought it was looking a bit run-down last time i went too. not many aniomals, too many patches of bare dirt, which is a shame because the horticulture in this exhibit was amazing. Guy Cooper, if youre reading this, get your depts to fix it !!!

21-02-2007

this is one of the exhibits i actually expected to see! and i totally agree.
a possum sleeping in the wall of the house. i expected even rats, a fox sleeping under the floor. indian miners nesting in the chimney. geckos under the weatherboards. cockroaches, all that!

instead all the animals in the house are some ficticious kids "pets". defeated the point a bit in my opinion.

B2B
22-02-2007

theres a whole range of animals that could have been incorporated into the house section of the exhibit with a little creativity. it looks like Taronga has started to give into peoples complaints about the precinct being empty of animals, and have now started filling it u with tanks full of amphibians and fish. but on the other hand, this defeats the purpose of B2B, which was supposed to be a journey of discovery and surprise exploring the wildlife around us, not an assortment of terrariums in a laundry.
exhibits of skinks would be great, and even have some frogmouths or cockatoos with trainers on hand to discuss how birds have adapted to the suburbs.
cut-away sections in the wall could reveal starlings and miners, as you said, even if they were dead. but live possums could easily be displayed if a nestbox opening to the outside of the house was positioned in the wall wit a small viewing slide. thereby, standing in the house, you could look through the wall and see a sleeping possum. functional, keeping with the theme and telling a story. outdoors in the garden, a number of attractive terrariums such as those in Melbourne Museum's Forest Gallery could showcase garden reptiles.