Tarunga Zoo

Yesterday Ashley & I went to Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. It was exciting from the start because we took a ferry to get to the zoo. On the ride we had beautiful views of the city, the harbor bridge & the opera house. Here are a few of the sights we saw.
The Taronga Zoo is really large, and unfortunately we were not able to see it all. We first went to the Australian Animals section. There we saw Kangaroos, wallabies, emu, echidna, quokka, wombats, birds, reptiles, bats & koalas. We were fortunate enough to see most of these animals at their feeding time, which made them all very active. When we went to the koala exhibit not only was it feeding time, but it was also the Koala Keeper Talk time. The keeper told us all about the koalas. Here are some facts that I can recall:

- They sleep 20 hours a day (I wish I could do that every now & again) because the eucalyptus they eat is so hard to digest.
- If a human ate as much eucalyptus as a koala we would die because the leaves are actually toxic.
- Koala babies are born after only 35 days & then spend 3 months in the mother’s pouch attached to a teet. Then 3 more months till it leaves the pouch.
- Koalas can jump (which we saw them do)! They jump from tree to tree & try never to touch the ground because that is when they are most vulnerable.
- Koalas are not endangered, but they are threatened due to a loss of habitat.

In addition to the Australian animals we also saw lions (the female lion, who was 5 years old, was enormous!), a tiger, Asian elephants (they did a little show with the trainers & played soccer & catch), birds, bats, chimps (some were using sticks to eat ants), crocodiles, a fennec fox, orang-utans (as they spell it) & giraffes. The giraffes have the best habitat because they have a view overlooking the harbor. Most of these were also feeding when we went by. Watching the lioness chomp away at the meat was gross, yet cool.

It was worth braving the rain today to see all these great animals & we were so luckily to catch them all feeding.