Singapore - At long last

Almost two years after I was first supposed to go, before plans fell through at the last minute due to events out of my control, I finally arrived in Singapore yesterday.

Apart from a week in Bali, with visits to Bali Bird Park and Bali Zoo, this is my first zoo trip outside Australia. I've been starved up until now of dozens of species that are common overseas, including some that are such zoo standards that I'm sure many Zoochatters breeze on past their enclosures. For this trip, then, I've at last broken free of Australia's quarantine paranoia.

Today was supposed to be an acclimatisation day, with little planned other than a trip to the Asian Civilisations Museum (which I did do later in the day) and maybe a wander around my local area here in Little India, before delving into the zoo visits tomorrow. Events back home, though, made that plan a bit more tricky. As much as I love zoos I'm even more absorbed in Australian politics (both as an interest and for work) and the governing party, of which I am most passionately NOT a member, appears to have chosen this week to self-destruct. Great timing. I'm now expecting to spend Tuesday morning at the hostel trying to follow the premature downfall of a Prime Minister I had every intention of humbling at the ballot box next year, not being torn down by his party while I'm not even in the country to savour his ignominy at close hand. Gah.

So on a whim today (really - I was about to board the train to take me to the museum and instead took the one going the other way for the zoo precinct) I made for River Safari, to free up a bit of time later in the week. River Safari is really the least exciting of the five zoos I intend to visit, but it had the virtue of not being the venue of a big running race, as Singapore Zoo is this weekend. I expected to find RS crowded but in truth it was relatively deserted. If I get anything near similar crowds for the rest of the week I will be very happy.

River Safari is basically made up of four exhibit complexes - Rivers of the World, the giant panda building, Amazon River Quest and Amazon Flooded Forest. I'm not going to do a 'walk-through' because they just get repetitive so will just make some observations about each.

Rivers of the World - this is the most unambiguously riverine of the four exhibits and is made up primarily of freshwater aquaria for fish, reptiles and amphibians. The tanks themselves are great - big, open tanks, lightly though adequately furnished, to provide plenty of swimming room for the big fish that live in them. Mississippi paddlefish, alligator gar, Chinese sturgeon and Mekong catfish are the stars here. I'd seen alligator gars before but only juveniles - the adults are huge! As Chlidonias has mentioned in the past, though, these tanks are let down a lot by sunlight bouncing off the glass, which makes photography - already difficult enough through glass and water as it is - all but impossible. I gave up on trying.

The other main attractions of this part of the RS are crocodilians. There are three species, African dwarf crocs, Chinese alligators and Indian gharials, all of which were lifetime firsts for me. There are two gharials (which share their exhibit, strangely, with what I think was a pig-nosed turtle), and they were massive. As big as any saltwater crocs I've ever seen. Again, photography was next to useless because of a combination of sun and turbidity of the water.

The remaining notable exhibits were:
- Alligator snapping turtles, of which I couldn't get a good view.
- Painted storks and a lesser adjutant, in a really nicely done glass-fronted aviary that was themed as a rice terrace. All this exhibit needs is regular scatter feeds and people get to see these birds displaying natural behaviours. One of the best parts of the entire park. Incidentally, these were not the only painted storks to be seen - there was also a large flock of them living wild on the banks of the reservoir adjacent to the Singapore Zoo giraffe enclosure.
- Chinese giant salamander. A dark and featureless tank in which the salamander was a dark and featureless blob. I saw it the first time I went around, and moved on in the hope it would have adopted a better viewing position when I came back. Instead it vanished altogether.
- Crab-eating macaques. A troop of at least six including one juvenile, in the glass-fronted enclosure (have you spotted that 'glass-fronted' is a thing here yet?) with a pool at the front. I wasn't lucky enough to see them fishing for crabs but there weren't any crabs I could see to be fished for anyway.

All in all - Rivers of the World was solid, with some very generous tank sizes and genuinely exciting species, but with just a couple of little design flaws that stop me giving it more than an honourable credit.

The next exhibit complex is smaller and is, I suspect, what makes this place viable as a standalone attraction. Giant pandas, of course, with their usual accompaniment of red pandas and golden pheasants. They all live in a freezer - sorry, I mean an air-conditioned building. It was so cold that the staff selling merchandise (that was all black, white and furry-looking) had to wear jackets, scarves and gloves.

I took very little interest in the pheasant aviary, which was nothing special. Nor was the red panda exhibit, I guess, but they're probably my favourite mammal and they will always win plenty of my time just for being red pandas. This enclosure had the interesting feature of including an artificial log that crosses over the visitor path into what, I presume, must be the pandas' night den. The main attraction here, though, is the two giant pandas. One was asleep when I went through but the other was surprisingly active, both eating and then roaming the enclosure at a brisk pace. Both bears appeared, from what I could tell, to have full access to three different exhibits areas, two inside and a third, smaller, outside yard. So they can get fresh air if they want it, they just have to step in the sauna to get it.

I've only ever seen giant pandas before at Adelaide. The two exhibits are quite different but I give RS the win on a points decision. The bears here had more space, of pretty much equal quality (ie, climbing opportunities, limited view areas etc) and better climate control.

I then took a slight break from animal exhibits to go on a quick cruise of the Upper Selatar Reservoir, which River Safari faces on to. This cruise gave me my first taste of Singapore Zoo, as I saw the white rhinos and giraffes. I gather I also saw part of the elephants' enclosure at Night Safari, though I didn't see any elephants.

Now back to the RS, and the most soul-crushing disappointment of the entire place. Amazon River Quest is a debacle. A rolled gold, certified waste of money, time and most of all animals. I knew not to expect a lot of this thing - a ten minute boat ride around half the zoo's mammal collection - but what I got was even less satisfying than I feared. In the first three minutes you race past peccaries, capuchins, spider monkeys (a no show), red howler monkeys (a first for me, they were much smaller than I expected), tapirs, guanacos, maned wolves and maras. But most upsetting of all for me was the giant anteater. I got shunted past the exhibit in the space of ten seconds. I saw a shadow at the back of the enclosure that I recognised as giant anteater shaped, but that was as much as I got on my first ever view of one of my bucket list species. It was worse than nothing. The feature species on this ride is the jaguars - two exhibits holding three cats between them. One I got a good view of as it was prowling along the glass. I would have loved to stay and watch, as it has been many years since I saw jaguars (does anybody know when they left Melbourne Zoo?), but of course I was there and gone again in 20 seconds. After the jags I was raced past black howler monkeys, capybaras, Caribbean flamingos and scarlet ibises. There was also a saki monkey exhibit somewhere along the ride but I can't remember whether it was before or after jaguars. Either way they were a no show.

In short - tear this thing down and start it again. Given the opportunity to walk past exhibits for these animals of the same quality as shown in the rest of the zoo and I would happily call River Safari an excellent, high value zoo, overall. As it is, they've buried more than half the mammal species at the zoo in a few minutes long, extra-fee-attached, glorified carousel. What a waste. As if to give insult to injury, it's only now that I sit and write this with the aid of the zoo map that I see I missed an exhibit for golden-headed lion tamarins, which appears to be tucked in behind the boat plaza where you go into the boat ride.

At this point, RS had some making up to do. Thankfully it managed it with the rest of the Amazonian section, which I've grouped together into the Flooded Forest section although a couple of the exhibits are better thought of as standalones. The first is for jaguarundi, another new species for me. There was one fairly active cat on display, yet again behind glass. The area on display was smallish (though not any smaller than a similar small cat would get in Australia), but if I'm not mistaken the cat had access to more space off-show to the right. A solid, if unremarkable exhibit.

Squirrel monkey forest was one of the highlights of the zoo. 22 squirrel monkeys in a walk-through, aviary style enclosure. Monkeys everywhere - criss-crossing the paths on vines overhead, crashing through the trees, walking along the handrails... And, the moment I sat on the ground to get a good photo angle, sure enough there was also one on my head. Such an improvement on the limp attempts at lemur walk throughs at Melbourne and Taronga, where the lemurs just sit on the ground trying to avoid the screaming children. I don't know if it's that squirrel monkeys are naturally more inquisitive and bolder than ring-tailed lemurs, that the supervision was alert but not paranoid as Australian zoos tend to be, or that the design leant itself more naturally to interaction. Probably all three. Anyway, it was great. On the way out of the squirrel monkeys is a lounge room sized glass-fronted enclosure for a lounge room sized anaconda.

The final major exhibit was the Flooded Forest itself. At first I was quite agitated because I walked through a tunnel that was for giant otters but I could neither see giant otters (one of the biggest attractions about this place for me) nor any sign of above-water viewing of said otters. Thankfully I found them later on. Like most exhibits here it's quite a bit more generous in size than I had come prepared to see at a Singapore zoo. Four otters that were just as much fun to watch as small-clawed otters (my only previous species) but BIG.

Of course I knew they had manatees in a large tank, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Maybe about ten manatees, along with 50 or so massive Amazonian river monsters including several Arapaima (a bucket list species ticked off). This is an aquarium on a scale I've only ever seen devoted to saltwater. It was magnificent, and I literally gasped as I turned the corner. You get several views into this tank. The first is from a viewing window that must be close to 200 square metres, then a couple of side views (including one that gets you quite up close and personal to the manatees by virtue of where the main feeding station is) and then finally you get to see the tank from the top. The combination of squirrel monkeys on my head, giant otters and a breathtaking final feature tank allowed me to forgive RS for the shambles that was Amazon River Quest... But I shouldn't have had to.

Tomorrow: Jurong.

 

An interesting review that predictably slammed the boat ride (zoo nerds don't want to be whisked past animals in seconds) and the squirrel monkey forest appears to be superb from the photos that I've seen. I'm looking forward to your thoughts on Jurong and the rest of the Singapore animal attractions.

 

Exciting review CGSwans, definitely looking forward to the rest of your trip! It does indeed sound like you have had a similar experience and thoughts on River Safari as most others have, although I am intrigued by your praise for the Giant Panda exhibit. I have yet to see an enclosure better than Adelaide's, and I've seen a few (Vienna, Madrid, Berlin, Edinburgh, San Diego), so it will be very interesting to see River Safari's effort.

In response to a couple of your other comments - you now have more time for zoo exploring (as I'm sure you're well aware), as the leadership vote was brought forward and nothing happened. Which should allow you to watch him crumble at the next election, although you'll have to hope he doesn't crumble Australia first.

And Melbourne's pair of Jaguars (1.1) were lost in 2008, they last appear in the census for end 2007, but not end 2008.

 

Glad you made it CGSwans! How long are you there for?
Interesting RS review, I look forward to Jurong and the other parks.

 

Sorry for neglecting this. I've now been to all five zoos and aquariums, though haven't quite done all of Jurong yet, on account of a rather rude Russian lady. So will be making a follow up visit there on Thursday.

Just got back to my hostel after a little over 12 hours exploring Singapore Zoo and Night Safari.

More tomorrow.

PS. Success, Chlidonias. Success.

 

Pangolin? Shoebill? Giant anteater? What success?

 

My second zoo visit was to Jurong Bird Park on Sunday, accompanied by Singapore tour guide par excellence Mr Zooish. This was to have been an all day visit but that plan was scuttled by the afore-mentioned rude Russian lady, who thought it appropriate behaviour to sit up at 2AM talking loudly with her friend in a hostel dorm. Unfortunately I didn't get back to sleep at all, which meant fronting up to Jurong on about 2.5 hours of sleep. Suffice to say, by 2PM when I finally called it quits I was completely and utterly exhausted. I ended up paying to upgrade my room from a 12 bed dorm to a six-bed one.

We did an entire circuit of the park, but we didn't do it in depth and I had only brief looks at the three big multi-species aviaries (Waterfall, Jungle Jewels and Wings of Asia). So I'm going back tomorrow morning and expect to be there from as close to opening as I can manage. I'm going to post about the place properly after that visit, but a few quick thoughts:

- The photos of Lory Loft I'd seen led me to imagine a much barer, busier aviary. The number of birds in the aviary is quite a bit down on whatever they used to say (was it supposed to be 1000?). I think Zooish put the number in there at about 200. This has come along with the full maturing of the trees inside, so it's now very well planted. Unfortunately for me the dominant species are rainbows (I forget which subspecies but that's not uncommon for me anyway). Don't get me wrong, they're beautiful birds but I only have to go into the park beneath my balcony in Melbourne if I want to see them on most mornings. I'd love to see a more concerted effort at increasing the diversity in the aviary.

- Everything said about the nocturnal and penguin exhibits is true. I know that with the park relocating in five years nothing will be done to improve the World of Darkness house - so instead I would close it altogether. Move most of the birds to Night Safari but the snowy owl could have an aviary within the Arctic exhibit at Singapore Zoo. Still inside but they could at least give it a bit more space.

- So many flamingoes. I think Zooish said there 50 greater flamingo chicks last year. I still don't understand why ZAA aren't pursuing an expedited Avian IRA that *only* allows birds sourced from Singapore, which would be code for Jurong. The birds we in Australia desperately want - flamingoes, hornbills, crowned pigeons, palm cockatoos, toco toucans, hyacinth macaws (or is that just me?) are all breeding very well at Jurong. Surely confining the approved source to a single collection mitigates the risks massively.

- Yes, the parrot section is old-fashioned. No, I don't want them to change it. Large scale taxonomic displays of diversity within a single clade are dying out as an approach to zoo exhibitions, but I think they retain their place. It wouldn't surprise me if the future Jurong has fewer small aviaries and more big, walk through ones, which will be excellent if true. But I hope there's still a dedicated parrot section.

 

SEA Aquarium. Whether it's WRS or a private company, Singaporeans don't do zoos by halves do they?

This was my first aquarium visit, believe it or not, since soon after Merlin took over Melbourne Aquarium. I can't remember when that was but 2011 or first half of 2012 seems about right. I haven't been able to bring myself to visit for fear of what they have become under that pack of aesthetic vandals. I did make one abortive attempt at a visit to Sea World in January 2013, but it was in the middle of a major tropical storm so didn't go very well.

Although SEA is surely one of the world's largest aquariums, it's still just a regional aquarium in the sense that it has a unifying geographical theme - the tropical marine waters of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. It just happens to be a really-bloody-big one. This does mean that its collection is less comprehensive than other super-aquariums out there (Shedd, Georgia etc) but it does give it the capacity to treat its subject matter with greater depth (boom tish!).

I went through the aquarium twice through the course of the day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, when I was once again the beneficiary of Zooish's encyclopaedic knowledge of Singapore's zoos. I think Chlidonias said in his review that after a while all the coral reef tanks tend to meld together and while I agree with the statement, I wouldn't want to reduce the number of them. I'm pretty sure if I went looking for a notable coral reef fish from the region covered by SEA I'd find it in one of the tanks. Repeatedly I remarked to Zooish that I hadn't noticed a species - clown triggerfish at one point, various larger wrasses at another. Invariably those species turned up in the next couple of tanks. It was uncanny, really. Another thing I like about the sheer number of reef tanks was that the aquarium is able to showcase lots of different reef micro habitats. A generic 'coral reef' tank doesn't cut it here.

Anyway, I'm not going to attempt a walk-through, not least because I will just get confused. Random thoughts below:

- Honestly, what are the Lake Malawi cichlids and tigerfish doing here? I hadn't read any of the various Singapore reviews or looked at the galleries for some months before coming here because I wanted to experience them all afresh, as it were. So I had forgotten the tanks were at the aquarium. I know this is one of those things that only us Zoochat nerds are going to care about but, really, it's just jarring to suddenly come across freshwater tanks out of nowhere. Get rid of it.

- Whilst fish are the big deal here there's some nice representatives from various invertebrate classes, including giant clams and a very good jellyfish section. And the biggest, most active giant octopus I've seen. The one that Melbourne had some time ago was such a home body that they gave it a transparent box to curl up in, if I recall correctly. Not necessary here.

- So much live coral. Or so it seemed at the time. I think Zooish and I counted nine live coral tanks, but upon reading Chlidonias' review he says all the hard coral was fake. If so they are very well done. Zooish, an adjudication please?

- The walk from the entrance through the marine museum, entry corridor and incredibly large atrium is so long that towards the end I overheard a school kid say "Ah! I thought we were going to the Aquarium!" Obviously his conviction had waned over the journey.

- Zooish tells me there's supposed to be 130 sharks in the last tank, but didn't think it was quite that high (or did you? I may have the conversation muddled up). I thought it was closer to 50 or 60. We met roughly half-way at 80.

- I like that sharks are at best the co-leads of this place. The absence of 'classic' sharks, if you get what I mean, is notable from the main tank (thought I'd forgotten about that, hadn't you?). SEA have dolphins and hammerheads which would be the main draw card at 98% of aquariums in the world. But they're not because MANTA RAYS.

How is it that in a tank of a gazillion litres, I only really had eyes for three fish? Well, the simple answer is MANTA RAYS! Of all the lifetime firsts this week they rank number one. I was pleased to see that they didn't look out of place, size wise, in the tank. You wouldn't want to fill it up with them but they looked to be doing pretty well. Not that I'm an expert.

This tank is so vast that all the major ocean tanks I've seen, apart from Sea World's outdoor shark lagoon, would fit inside it. Together. Species that are big deals in any other tank - Humphead Maori wrasse, leopard shark, honeycomb ray, smooth stingrays, guitarfish, Qld grouper - just sort of blend in amongst the scenery. I did remark on the small school of barracuda but, really, the manta rays are the only species that loom large in that tank for me. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. I don't care because MANTA RAYS.

I haven't yet decided but it's possible I will make a return visit to the Aquarium on Friday before I fly home.

 

Have fun tomorrow CGSwans, and have a safe journey home.

 

Jurong's Lory Loft - when it first opened it had 500-600 birds, for real! When they took off en masse it was quite a sight.

SEA Aquarium corals - I *think* there are a small number of live hard corals, but yes most of them are plastic and of varying degrees of fake-ness.

SEA Aquarium's Shark Seas - I got the 130 figure from one of the aquarists.. hard to believe but I don't see why they'd lie about the number of sharks.

 

I wonder how and where they got hold of such a big number of lories? Did they come from zoos, private collections, or where they perhaps captured from the wild? This question also applies to Jurongs massive quantity of flamingo individuals.

 

My initial plan had been to split Singapore Zoo across two half days, tacking Night Safari onto the first of them without getting too exhausted. But I was restless enough on Tuesday morning that I was at the Zoo at about 10:30 anyway. Whilst on the bus I spotted not only wild plantain squirrels and a water monitor, but also a long-tailed macaque!

Another initial plan that I didn't end up following had been to head straight to the top right corner of the zoo (home to Fragile Forest, Critters Longhouse and the Snake House). Instead I just wandered, going to see the proboscis monkeys first and then the rest of the exhibits in the lower portion of the zoo. I confess my first half-hour at the Zoo was a slight disappointment, but I think that was more the pent-up weight of years of expectation. As the day went on I got happier and happier with my visit.

On balance, I don't think Singapore Zoo is a better zoo than Melbourne or Taronga for exhibit quality. The Zoo dates to the 1970s and it looks like it, with lots of mock rock everywhere, compensated for by heavy planting in most exhibits. I may be wrong but it looks like the majority of the Zoo is still, at least structurally, the same as it was when it opened. This means that it looks old - the zoo itself has recently passed 40 years of age. But against that, there's a consistency across the Zoo that Australian zoos, which have been undergoing varying degrees of rebuilding over the past 25 years, certainly lack.

One thing I had in the back of my mind was that many people have regarded Singapore as beautiful, but with too many very small exhibits. I found this to be the case with some but by no means all exhibits. The ones that do stand out in my mind as too small are the leopard and puma exhibits, the giraffe yard, the red river hogs and probably the chimps and rhinos. Most enclosures weren't generous in size, but wouldn't have looked out of place in the Australian zoos I've visited - and they're certainly guilty of having some too-small enclosures as well.

Where Singapore has its Australian rivals covered is, of course, the collection. It's not a great zoo for birds - naturally enough it doesn't want to cut Jurong's lunch - and I was actually left wanting by the reptile collection (why isn't this place home to the best collection of Asian reptiles in the world???). But it makes up for it with what is surely one of the best primate collections in the world.

The collection itself is magnificent - 26 species (of which I saw 24). New for me were the buff-cheeked gibbons, Bornean orangutans (I had seen hybrids before at Melbourne), proboscis monkeys (not the most active of primates, are they?), douc langurs, Sulawesi crested macaques, patas monkeys, brown-headed spider monkeys, black howler monkeys, black tuft-eared marmoset, golden-handed tamarins, red ruffed lemurs and brown lemurs. There are also white-faced saki monkeys but unfortunately I missed them. I thought I'd missed the douc langurs, too, when I saw I had missed a token feeding and laid eyes on the very-densely-planted island they're on. But a keeper was completely awesome and offered to do their final token feed for the day, which is usually in their night den, out the front of the island instead. 'Twas very nice of her.

Not only is the diversity fantastic but the primate exhibits are of a very high standard, on average. Large groups of orangutans, high up in the trees directly above you. Several other species also roaming at least relatively freely - at various times brown lemurs, lion-tailed macaques, Javan langurs and cotton-top tamarins all caught me by surprise where I wasn't looking for them. I didn't see any sign of staff supervision in the Fragile Forest but the ring-tailed lemurs didn't seem at all fussed, calmly sitting and grooming themselves as I sat just 30cm away. I'm increasingly convinced that Australian zoos are completely over-paranoid about walk through exhibits. There are lots and lots of well-planted islands - maybe about 10? - and all are decent enough in size with plenty of climbing opportunities too. As mentioned above the mandrills and chimps miss out a bit, but that's really all.

The carnivore and ungulate collections are less diverse but still very solid. Off the top of my head I can think of 14 carnivore species and about the same number of ungulates (including elephants). As much as I didn't think much at all of the Frozen Tundra complex, with its completely indoor exhibits for wolverines and raccoon dogs, seeing the animals themselves were a highlight. The first time I went through both species were just nondescript fur-balls at the back of the exhibit. Later I came back and found the wolverines both near the glass, gnawing on bones. When I came back through a third time I was finally rewarded with awake and active raccoon dogs too. There's only one elderly-looking white tiger now and hopefully it's the last one. The exhibit should be housing Sumatrans. Also, mouse deer are awesome and I would like a few dozen sent to Australia now please. Yes, now.

The siamangs and Australian species weren't on display when I visited (neither were any great loss to me), but of the species on display I think the only ones I missed were the saki monkeys and the sloths that are in the Fragile Forest.

One recurrent theme throughout the day as I saw new species was that I was consistently surprised at how small they were. This happened with the wildebeest (only one there - presume these are phase-outs?), the Sulawesi crested macaques, the raccoon dogs and the naked mole rats, which should probably be called naked mole mice instead. I guess they all literally loomed large in my imagination.

I walked around and around the zoo from 10:30ish to 5:40ish, when I was exhausted enough to give up and wander down to the Night Safari plaza for a rest. I'm pretty sure I covered nearly everywhere in the zoo at least twice through the day, and if I only went through an area once it was because it wasn't that interesting.

As much as I loved Singapore Zoo (and will visit it again one day) it was actually pleasing for me to see that the major Australian zoos do hold their own against one of the most famous in the world. The only thing holding Taronga back, in particular, is our absurd quarantine restrictions and ham-fisted collection planning. Both it and Singapore have many of the same things going for them - extraordinarily picturesque settings in major international cities, good climates for much of the world's fauna and real financial clout. Now if only Australian authorities were as inclined to be as enabling for their zoos as the Singaporean Government is for theirs.

 

Also, an addendum to my previous post on SEA Aquarium. On my first go-around earlier in the day I had noted how much the aquarium's design and presentation mirrored that of the pre-Merlin Sydney Aquarium. They also both had/have a similar level of commitment to a specific theme rather than simply holding a random assortment of marine life. So I was quite interested to learn from Zooish that the current curator at SEA is the former curator at Sydney! I'd love to know whether he was there during the design phase as well as the similarities are very obvious.

 

Most of lories came from private breeders in Europe. I'm not sure of the origins of the greater flamingos, but a large number of lesser flamingos were wild birds from Botswana that had been displaced by droughts.

 

@CGSwans: You really lucked out on the Saki monkeys! There are 3 separate free-ranging groups at the Treetops Trail, Fragile Forest (outside the walk-thru) and along the Elephants of Asia boardwalk. But you did get lucky with the buff-cheeked gibbons, they only went on display a week ago.

You're right about the Zoo's infrastructure being old. The park's physical layout has not changed much since the 1970s. The Zoo has avoided remodeling entire sections (such as San Diego's example) but rather opted for re-building individual exhibits or small exhibit clusters. One important point to note is that everything ages really, really quickly in the heat and humidity of the tropics, so nothing can look new for very long!

I can confirm that SEA Aquarium's current Director Craig Sowden was head of Sydney Aquarium for 21 years prior to joining SEA. He came in when SEA was already under construction and had focused on building the collection. The aquarium was designed by an Australian company (Crossley Architects) in any case.

 

After stumbling around the Zoo for seven hours, I then backed up with the Night Safari. Both Chlidonias and Zooish had counselled me against trying to do too much on one day, and I ignored them both in my enthusiasm.

The wait between the Zoo closing and Night Safari opening is a fairly annoying 1.5 hours (though they make a lot of money from this, as there's nothing to do other than buy one of the rather exorbitantly priced burgers from Bongo Burgers or whatever it's called. BUT. Pro tip. They'll let you in earlier to join the queue for the bus ride. I didn't know that's why people were entering early but I followed them in anyway, and rather than line up just loitered around the entrance to the Fishing Cat trail. My reward was to be allowed into the trail at 7PM rather than the official opening time of 7:30. By the time night had fallen I'd already made it as far as the clouded leopard exhibit on a first, quick walk around to get an idea of the place during daylight hours.

The walking trails were where the animals I really wanted to see are: the pangolin, the tarsier, the giant flying squirrels and, most of all, the slow lorises. Three times I've come close to seeing a slow loris only to fall over at the last hurdle. Slow lorises and giant anteaters were the two biggest species on my bucket list before this trip. I'd flunked out with the anteaters, but Night Safari was going to give me my slow loris.

So you can imagine my horror when I get to the exhibit only to see a sign along the lines of "we are upgrading this exhibit to serve you better. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Oh no. No, no, no, no.

I'm sure everybody is familiar with the five stages of grief. First comes denial, and for that I'm profoundly thankful. Rather than accept that it would be another international flight and another couple of years before I finally, finally got to see my slow loris, I stubbornly styed at the exhibit. I stared at the sign, willing it to disappear. I looked around the exhibit for some sign that the loris was still there. And at that moment the door into its night quarters opened, and a little alien started tip-toeing out onto the branch in front of me, stepping very carefully in the hope of minimising the observer effect during its study of life on Earth.

Or at least, that's what a slow loris looks like to me. Because now I've seen one! This was the success I alluded to earlier, Pat.

The rest of the big names on the walking trails were rather underwhelming. My first hog badgers were cool and the binturongs were rather, ahem, enthusiastic at feeding time. But the pangolin, as Zooish predicted, was rolled up like a scaly used tyre in its den. The tarsier was a fuzzy shadow. I could barely see the clouded leopards. The flying squirrels were out in the open, so that was cool, but were also inactive. I'm inclined to think that whether a nocturnal animal is active (and therefore an effective zoo exhibit for the average visitor) has less to do with when they're on display, and more to do with whether there's something for them to do at that specific time. After the Fishing Cat and Leopard trails I walked rather more quickly down the East Lodge Trail and breezed through the Naracoorte Cave complex. I get what makes it a cave but how it's related to Naracoorte escapes me somewhat.

By the time I'd walked around the trails the first time I was a little bit wobbly on my feet (remember I'd been going since 10:30), so I lined up for the bus ride. Being on my own was of great benefit; most people were in groups so once they'd filled up most of the bus they asked down the queue for any single people to step forward. Not only did I get to cut in front of a bunch of people, but I got a much-coveted end seat.

I've been on these sorts of bus rides before, most notably at Werribee. This one was much more rushed because there were far more exhibits it was passing through - it would have been nice to stop at a few of the more interesting exhibits but it's nowhere near as bad as that disaster area at River Safari. My biggest regret is that I didn't see either the Asiatic black bear or the sloth bear. I did see my first striped hyenas, and the spotted hyenas were effectively new too since all I'd seen at Monarto 4 years ago were a few brownish lumps in the grass.

I also saw my first Malayan tiger and Asian lions. This is going to be an unpopular view here on Zoochat but I'm going to repeat something I said to Zooish earlier in the week. Not only do Malayan tigers look much like Sumatran tigers and Asian lions virtually identical to African ones... but I don't actually see the point in maintaining multiple sub-specific programs.

We are living through the fifth great extinction event in Earth's history; most of the megafauna is already gone and those that remain are almost all dependent on fairly intensive conservation management. We are not going to have enough resources to save everything, so we need to triage. Does anybody seriously doubt that African lions couldn't adapt to the Indian bush, or that Sumatran tigers couldn't make it in Peninsular Malaysia? I believe that an ability to fill vacant niches in a damaged ecosystem should be more important than what I'll call genetic fundamentalism.

Anyway, off my soap box and back to the zoo. Two things about the bus ride experience that I want to heap praise on are that a) you can go around as many times as you like, unlike at Werribee and b) some of the animals are really, really close. Even I got a bit of a shiver at how close I went past animals like Cape buffaloes and even things like Malayan tapirs, without any visible barrier between us. I assume there was hot wire or something but when I went looking for it I couldn't see it. Very cool.

I checked out the Creatures of the Night show, because by this time of night (9:30PM) I was really, really exhausted and the sitting-down time was welcome. Then I powered up for one last walk through the Fishing Cat and Leopard Trails before riding the bus from the East Lodge Station back to the entrance. My Fitbit tracker told me I'd walked 24km that day, which I'm pretty sure must be a personal best.

I'm not entirely sure what I think of Night Safari. I'm inclined to say that it's an excellent idea, excellently executed, which still doesn't quite work. There's nothing *bad* about it, in fact much of it is quite cool. I'm just unconvinced that night time is the best time to see many of the animals on display. Having said that, throughout the week it was only the Aquarium and Night Safari that were even remotely busy, despite being the two most expensive facilities, so they must be doing something right.