I visited the park on the 22nd of August. It isn't a huge collection and contains a lot of animals which can be kept as pets, but it is well worth a visit. At the beginning of my visit I went to visit there newest arrivals being the ring-tailed coati which I did not see. They had a nice enclosure which had outdoor and indoor viewing areas. Next, I went to see the south american sea lion show. They have two sea lions a female born at a zoo in France and a male called Junior who was born at the park. The show was very educational showing the differences between seals and sea lions, sea lion noises and demonstrations on how they train them. When the sea lions are not in the show area they can be see opposite the coatis in there individual enclosures. A new enclosure is also being built close to the sea lions and coatis to house a new species. However, the new species was not mentioned and I could see through the barrier. Then I visited the reptile house which was in two parts. The first half housed larger reptiles including, a green iguana, a Argentine black and white tegu, two enclosures housing boa constrictors and the common chameleon. All the enclosures where very naturalistic and large. In the second part of the reptile house smaller species were housed these included, a bull snake, mud turtles, cane toads, royal pythons, Caribbean hermit crabs, two green basilisks, a bearded dragon, two caspian terrapins, three kleinmanns tortoise, a leopard gecko, a tokay gecko, a pacman frog and two Chilean rose tarantulas. All of the enclosures were very naturalistic, however some of the enclosures were quiet small for the species they held especially for the royal python and leopard gecko. There was also a pool outside of the reptile house which housed the red eared slider terrapin. Next, I visited the parrots and walk through aviary. I didn't manage to visit the aviary, due to it being closed. However, it seemed to only house a load of budgies. The parrots were difficult to see as you couldn't get very close to their enclosure. To view the parrots properly you need to watch their parrot show, which I didn't do. The species that were signposted however, were the blue and gold macaw, the green winged macaw and the orange winged amazon. Then I visited the three tortoise enclosures. The largest pen housed the sulcata tortoise, the pen next to them housed red foot tortoises and a large pen behind the two housed leopard tortoises. All the pens were spacious and had trees for shade. Finally I went to the bottle nosed dolphin show which was the highlight of the day. The show featured two dolphins a male and a female, however two more dolphins could just be seen in an off show pool. The show was very educational and covered topics including the dolphin anatomy, dolphin communication and how they train the dolphins. The dolphins however, cannot be viewed when not performing and therefore I am not sure how many dolphins they have. There is also a separate pool where people have the opportunity to swim with the dolphins. Overall, I think it was a great little collection and the welfare of the animals was pretty good. My only major complaint about the collection is that their signage was not very good and some animals had no signage at all. But if you are visiting Malta it is well worth a visit.
