How is it possible to ask why 'petting' such zoo animals should be important (to anyone?), or desirable - without using the words...? What 'other way' is there of asking the question?
Dierenpark Zie-ZOO Best collection of the day for me, and an excellent way to finish the day! This is both the collection itself and the enclosures, some true rarities kept here. I also saw a certain ‘elusive’ animal here which might make a few jealous . Here goes: Tree porcupines: in a very large enclosure with prairie dogs and a pigeon breed (Dutch cropper?). When I visited the enclosure, the porcupines were up and about, something I don’t see very often as they are usually asleep elsewhere. Siberian weasel: although unseen, I feel like I still have to comment on their enclosure as it is the best weasel exhibit I have seen! I believe it is fairly new as the weasels didn’t arrive long ago, and the exhibit was not present on the map. Quite proud of this one: Plains viscacha: visited twice, the first time being invisible, and same with the yucatan squirrels. But the second time we arrived in the Knick of time as a keeper had just been to check on them, meaning the viscacha was disturbed and poked its head through the entrance to its indoors. The yucatan squirrel still alluded me however.
wow you saw The viscacha!! The Siberische wessel enclosure is new indeed. When I visited ziezoo in may they were building that enclosure.
Day four: An oopsie in Belgium Welcome to the day I was (supposed) to be visiting Antwerp zoo and reptilienbeurs! The sun was shining, the birds were singing, nothing could bring this day down. Except for one thing. Around five miles outside of st niklaas, where the reptilian sure was to be held, the car broke down, which we had brought from the uk and apparently didn’t have eu insurance (according to the RAC) even though we had 7 hours. 7 hours of nothing to do, burning under the blazing sun Highlight exhibits: A small plain field swarmed with bright green grasshoppers of some sort, very nice exhibit, lets you see them well A motorway, exhibits cars nicely, but very noisy, maybe find a way to calm them down A human exhibit, featuring, me! Very strangely shaped, almost looks like a jaguar XF. So in short, a wasted day, we missed reptilienbeurs but managed to reschedule Antwerp zoo back into the trip.
3 months???? Where have I been? Anyway, I’m going to bring this back from the dead... Day five Ar-‘‘tis a new day So, we had to knock another zoo off (because we had to sort out a car rental) and it had to be dolphinarium haderwijk, as it was the least important. So after some digging we got a car and we’re on our way to artis! It turned out that I didn’t actually have many targets at artis, as I had already seen padlopers at plzen, so they were narrowed down to Guatemalan spinytail iguana and some of the many fish there. My favourite exhibit there is micropia by a long way, followed by the monkey/ bird house and the aquarium. I’ll describe them now: Micropia: outstanding. A museum (which is technically not part of artis but you can buy a combo ticket) filled with interesting information all about possibly the most overlooked living creatures in the world, microbes, along with the microbes themselves. The living microbes I saw were: Cyanobacteria, green algae, water fleas, white mosquito larvae, rotifers and copepods. Monkey/ bird house: the contrast between the exterior and interior of this house is unreal, as the exterior shows how old the building is in full glory whereas the inside shows a modern rainforest walkthrough, topped with free-roaming tamarins, iguanas, and somewhere, a cuscus (which I believe is gone now). This is followed by a lovely bird walkthrough with a nice exhibit for weavers, and the birds all have access to some nice outdoor enclosures, which run along the outside of the building and some exhibits contain interesting mammals like tree porcupine and alpine marmots. Guatemalan spinytail iguana: had to take a double take on this exhibit, as I didn’t see any iguanas anywhere, until I looked at the exhibit from further away and saw a low burrow viewing window, where the iguana sat contently. Overall, a lovely city zoo, and I came out with a cuddly tardigrade
