Bilby and sticknest rat

Nocturnal Tour,
November 2013

Are these all captive animals on the night tour or were you doing spotlighting for wild animals?

These are all captive. They are kept in a large predator-proof enclosure (about 4.5 hectares). Just after sundown they get fed by a keeper, and a short time later the tours come through. The groups stay on paths, and if the animals are shy they can keep well away from the public. Tours run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (if I remember correctly). And this enclosure is not open during the day either. In fact, it's not even near the public areas in the park.

Lights and flash photography is not permitted. The guides have spotlights with red filters casting a red light. The best way to clean up the photos was to convert the red images to black-and-white. The original photo is attached below.

Lovely animals. I understand that the rats can be difficult to maintain, but might a population of Bilbies be exported to Europe or North America if suitable zoos asked very, very nicely indeed?

The bilbies need to que behind the platypus and numbat lobbying efforts, Ian

Ah, but I think that Bilbies could be kept more easily than Numbats, and would surely be more visible than Platypus...I can dream anyway...

I think that we need a Zoochat Australian zoo tour to see all of these critters and get it out of all of our systems.

This made me laugh! By the way, the bilby is the Aussie Easter Bunny.

Quite right. By not exporting them we are increasing tourism revenue.

The rats seem to breed quite easily, there were plenty on this enclosure and they were - almost quite literally - underfoot. Bilbies, however, appear to be more skittish and on the shy side.



Hix