Hello everyone

27-06-2007

melbourne used to have them, but they are now located, along with the recovery program for our indigenous brush-tailed rock wallabies, at the zoos sister institution heallesville sanctuary.

monarto have heaps...

27-06-2007

yeaqh heap and heaps, there a little handraised one behind rthe scenes who is very freindly

27-06-2007

Yes, I remember noticing how different they were from the smaller, shorter-furred ones further North from e.g. Queensland. Its the same rule as for some animal subspecies in the Northern Hemisphere- the further from the tropics, the larger the body size and thicker the coat e.g. Siberian/indian Tiger, Leopards etc. Its all about heat retention- I think there is a name for this biological 'law' but I can't remember it. Anyone?

Glad to hear the Yellow-footed Rock Wallabies are doing so well. I guess they have had a bit of a turnaround...

06-07-2007

Virginia opossums do occur in the US in cold climates--I leave in northern Indiana and we have them everywhere. Id certainly gets cold here--last winter we had several days below 0 F. My dog once cornered on in my back yard on top of a very tall snow drift.
Eastern grey kangaroos can tolerate fairly cold temperatures, but don't do well on ice at all! The don't know how to control those skis that they have as feet! We also had one female who sat out in a freak snowstorm and had a few inches of snow on her head when I saw her first thing the next morning.

Elaine

06-07-2007

Quote from Fodders (sorry, still haven't got the hang of doing this quote thing)

That's pretty classic too! Press Office(r)s in some zoos do have a lot to answer for sometimes. The ZSL one put out some pretty erroneous info when Gorilla Kingdom opened recently- how it was the first time the gorillas had 'seen the open sky since they were babies in Africa' A nice idea but totally untrue for all three of the animals- so where are they coming from...?

One staff member at Chester Zoo used to inform everyone that Axolotls (which are kept in the Aquarium) were fish. She was the Education Officer.