Zoos victria site update » Melbourne Zoo

Zoos victria site update
12-12-2006

this is a updated site, it has details on the new tv show i told yas about, it airs this saturday at 4pm, and theres a preview on site.

info on new exhibits and so on, have a look

12-12-2006

also keep an eye out for me !!! im on there somewhere.

go watch the preview, has kool interactions between debrazzas and gorrillas

12-12-2006

hardly an update, just a few new images on the index...

full credit to melbourne for being one of the very few that reguarly adds news updates (auckland and australia zoo are the other two that spring to mind) but geez its a bloody boring looking thing!!

i wish someone told their web designer that in todays world of broadband, images don't have to be disgustingly low-res and that if ya just bump up the contrast on those photos, they look all teh better for it!!!

12-12-2006

oh - i'm sorry i stand corrected. they did add some new content - however removed almost all the old stuff. i may be acting a little unfair since they are obviously halfway through a rebuild but the designer in me just hates those low-contrast faded-looking images they use.

but the worst website would have to be adelaides. they just recently re-did it and its still aweful and cheap-looking! spelling errors, bad fonts, bad colours. but the absolute worst thing is that in about 8 years they still haven't updated their species list...

the best you may ask. easily perth. nice design, excellnt photographs, good navigation (just need to make that news section a little clearer) and lists pretty much the entire collection, by animal type or by place of origin with teh area they are found in above that. whats more is the fact sheets are informative and have a perth zoo involvement section.

12-12-2006

It would be nice, though probably unfeasible if the zoo could give up to date info about their collections. " Perth zoo currently have four rothschilds giraffe, 3 females, Misha, Marama and Mishas daughter Shani, and a young male recently arrived from Orana. The giraffes arrived in ? and Five calves have been successfully born at the zoo, including Makulu who is now the breeding male at Melbourne zoo and Nakuru, the breeding male at Western Plains. " and do this with most of their animals. This is what I trying to do with my website but gave up because I found it very difficult to get the information.

I like Perths website and the pictures are great.

12-12-2006

oh good old "zoos of australia and new zealand", those were the days! back then we used to communicate via email and you jason, were my first and only zoo friend (though i think you made buddies with nigel first!), bringer of all news zoological into my life. thankyou jason, thankyou for nurturing an obsession that has seen me spend yet another evening in front of the computer and distracts me periodically at work!!!!
have a look under my name attached to this post - thats 782 posts! (actually, it'll be 783 after this one) - not even zooboy could beat that...

jason, you turned me into a nerd!

12-12-2006

damn, i just realised zooboy is on 818 and he joined the forum way after me!

jeez that kids ethusiastic!!!

12-12-2006

chuckle!

13-12-2006

woop woop party time

some forum history
13-12-2006

Yes , Jay and I had been buddies for quite some time , and I even went to QLD to meet him . This was when he had a similar website under development , and I was helping by providing material from NZ
He told me that he had met another person who was keen on zoos called Patrick .
Not long after that I stumbled across Zoobeat Forums by accident , and recognised Jay from there .... he had also discovered it not that long before I did , and was about to alert me to it .
As the website has grown there has been alot of interesting discussions developed . The main reason why you havent heard much from me of recent times is that alot of you have more zoology knowledge than I do , and being in NZ it is limiting to what animals we can actually have in zoos here . I dont have so much new stuff to contribute !
But I still try and read all new posts on regular basis , and contribute where I can . .
Next time I go to Australia , I hope to meet some of you in person .....

13-12-2006

sorry nigel - we should talk a little more about snakes!

the most embarassing part is that i actually spool this stuff straight off my head. the other night a friend and i were out drinking and i discovered that he was secretly a bird fanatic. he has no pet birds, lives in the city, has never said a word about birds to me ever... somehow the converstion went there and the next thing he's throwing me quizes about pheasant distribution...

after a few minutes of heated, fast-paced trivia he turned to another one of our friends who asked "does he know his stuff?" and the response was "oh he's good, he's good!"...

he then started on how many tiger subspecies their were and were they were found... well, now this was my department!!!

we stopped there however since we could see people were at first facinated, but now starting to get bored. my friends fiancee clearly had no prior knowledge of her man to be's secret obsession....

the point is i had no idea that my freind was secretly a bird-brain. like me he must have kept a copy of national geographic stuffed under his matress as a teenager.

the forums great in that it does let us crap on about this stuff together, and truth be told, whilst we might be slightly obsessesed and drag our partners to one too many zoos on occasion, at least we arn't into train sets!!!

13-12-2006

so does that make Nigel, Pat, zoopro and I the 'elders' of this community? (god forbid!). As a naturally pessimistic post baby boomer, pre x gen person, I am impressed by the young people who contribute to this site. That so many of you, who are still in school, have such passion about zoos and the enviroment at large, with such knowledge and drive gives me hope.

So I say More snakes! more birds! more reptiles! and more frogs!

13-12-2006

saw the new blue poison dart frogs at melbourne. they were sharing an enclosure with the madagascan day gecko!!

kind of a shame because with the exception of this, most of the other reptile exhibits have been re-done to reflect a specific region rather than the hodge-podge of mixups that it used to have (like start tortoises with frilled lizards etc...)

anyhow the melbourne reptile house was looking good. they have such a great collection though i think they need to expand, make it more like serpentaria. i'm tempted to say that they should instead place more reptiles in immersion exhibits, i ilike the way they have asian reptiles on the trail of the elephants, but then again there is something attractive about viewing them in all their diversity in one go....

13-12-2006

Patrick I am rather ashamed to say that I have never seen the Melbourne Reptile House, somehow in all my visits I have never reached that area

13-12-2006

wht, tht was on e of the must do i had on my list, and i wasnt disapointed, though it may be time for a little renovation, attact out doors enclorures, render, so on.