Sydney: Toronga Zoo

Being a little disappointed about not seeing much Australian wildlife actually in the wild, I was even more so determined to get a little up close and personal with its animals! I hunkered down and booked a backstage Australian Wildlife tour at the Taronga Zoo - or the "Zoo with a View" - as it is situated on the north shore of Sydney Harbor and has amazing views of the skyline.

I got there a few minutes before my tour and it was suggested I check out the Australian bush birds, reptiles, and the little koala enclosure right at the entrance. I learned that Australia has 11 of the world's 15 most venomous snakes and they range from ocean habitats to bush habitats to the outback. Doesn't that just want to make you strap on your hiking boots or flippers and go out for a walk or swim? I also found this gem in the koala habitat:

I'm going to use this excuse the next time I'm drunk

Then I met up with my tour group, which consisted of myself and an older, but fun, couple from San Diego. The man was deaf and so he would sign questions to his wife and she in turn would sign answers back to him. Both of them were great joksters and you could tell their relationship was a fun one! He would sign, "I just have a question," and his wife would hit him and sign back, "Stop lying. Don't say that when you know you have more than one!" Ben, our tour guide, throughout the tour joined in as much as he could and began gesticulating more and more his answers with his hands. He was a very knowledgeable guide as he and his wife had worked at the London and Melbourne Zoos. The man in my group kept asking Ben if he had been to the San Diego Zoo and insisted at least five times that he go! Our tour included the cassowary, platypus, wombat, koala, wallaby, emu, kangaroo, pottaroo, long-beaked echidna, southwestern pygmy possum, and the bilby.

Wallaby with a joey in her pouch!

 

Cassowary: these flightless birds are TERRIFYING! They stand about 5 feet tall and when threatened jump and kick their assailants in the chest with razor-sharp talons! They life in an electrified enclosure and are rated with the same danger level as the zoo's tigers and lions! The thing on its head is made of finger-nail like material, is hollow with a honey-comb type of structure inside, and no on really knows what it is for. It is not for fighting!

Ben holding a wombat and my first experience petting an Australian animal! They're so cool! They have this really hard bony plate behind their rump (which koalas also have) and they use it to evade predators by going head-first into their burrows and sealing it off using that plate as a door. Crushed fox skulls have been known to be found in wombat burrows when the wombat uses that bony plate to pressure the fox's head up against the roof of the burrow!

Wombat!

Koalas are kind of dumb but extremely impressive animals! They sit in the crooks of eucalyptus trees, supported by strong claws and that bony rump, and sleep around 20 hours each day due to the lack of energy and nutrients in the leaves. They don't drink water but get their supply from what is in the eucalyptus leaves. Koalas have adapted to have two thumbs on their front legs, and two of their back leg toes have fused together to form a single scratching claw. When their joeys are old enough to come out of the pouch, they climb on the mother's back and because they can't quite stomach a diet of eucalyptus leaves, the mother defecates, and the babies eat it... Not so cute now are you?

The Taronga Zoo doesn't allow any visitors to pet the koalas because they stress easily and it shortens their life span, but we finally coaxed Durrel out of the tree! He pooped and then right back up to his perch and passed out. Amazingly, if koalas run out of leaves in one tree, they can actually jump a distance of 3 meters to get to another tree. They hate being on the ground, so if they are forced there for one reason or another, they will run like a bat out of hell to the next tree. Unfortunately, when they are on the ground, they are subject to pet and feral dogs chasing them down and cars...

Feeding a wallaby (which are just small versions of kangaroos)

Pardon the terrible dark photo quality - the temporary camera I bought is awful. These cute guys are bilbies! They are little rabbit-like animals native to central Australia. Recently their numbers have sharply nose-dived but thanks to an impressive marketing strategy are on the climb. To make an effort to raise awareness of the plight of the Bilbies, some chocolate candy companies started promoting the idea of the "Easter Bilby" instead of the "Easter Bunny" and any chocolate Easter Bilbies sold in stores shared their profit to protect fragile bilby habitat. The ploy worked like a charm and awareness was raised almost overnight! These guys were even on the Sydney Morning News before we got a chance to see them!

Here's the infamous Tasmanian Devil! (Don't worry, that isn't a real kangaroo!) The Devils used to range all over Australia, but after the introduction of the Dingo about 4,000 years ago, it went extinct on mainland Australia and now only exists in Tasmania. They are scavengers and their numbers are declining even now since they will go out to the roads and munch on roadkill. So they get hit by cars frequently and are also being afflicted by facial tumor disease - a genetic mutation that can be transferred between devils through bodily fluids such as saliva left by one devil on a roadside carcass. There are specific breeders who work specifically to increase the genetic diversity of different populations of endangered animals, including the devil, hoping to increase their numbers. An effort is also underway to introduce the devils back to mainland Australia.

 

 This little guy is the Southwestern Pygmy Possum, named Mickey. He was too quick to get a photo, so I took this little video. They are one of the smallest marsupials and are gliders which live in the treetops! We got to hold him and let him run all over us, but his favorite spot was right in the middle of Ben's back, just out of reach. Smart little guy, eh?

These fun parrots are kind of like colorful pigeons. Their only goal in life is to steal food.

Finally, this little guy is Eddie, the potaroo! Eddie loves to eat peanuts on your lap and refuses to get off once he's there! He is soft and cuddly and though he likes long walks along the beach, he'd rather just hop around looking for food.

Eddie's Zoo Danger Classification: Utterly Gorgeous

All in all, the zoo was an excellent day! It was a little expensive, but I figured that since I didn't know when the next time I'd be in Australia would come around, I couldn't miss out on doing this! Later that day, I finished preparing a talk on the research I did in the central Appalachian Mountains for the following day at MacQuarie University, where my research group has some colleagues. It was part of the deal I had to agree to in order to do this trip and it ended up going really well.

But the last night I had in downtown Sydney, I arranged to meet up with my friends, Greg and Austin, from the Glee Club. I mentioned a few posts back I saw on Facebook that they had changed their profile pictures to ones of them with the Opera House in the background, so I knew they were in town. They had just flown back to Sydney after spending a weekend up on Whitsunday Island, on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef! We met up on the steps of the Opera House and then caught up over a few beers and ciders at various pubs over on The Rocks. Too short of a get-together, but it was fun to see them anyway!