calgary zoo- various exhibits

this is the last of my tour posts about the calgary zoo. not that i've done a good job covering the whole place mind you. in fact, i'm embarrassed to say, this is the worst review i've done (and i've covered a lot of museums, aquariums, and museums here before!)...

though i have a good excuse as you'll see at the end of the post. i had a very unexpected distraction during my visit, which caused me to not visit everywhere. the most noteworthy section i missed was the canadian wilds, which is an excellent gathering of canada's diverse (but mammal dominated) wildlife.

i did make it through a lot of the eurasia section...

one of the hold overs from my hatchlinghood was the flamingo pond. these guys always crack me up... even if these ones aren't made of plastic and on a lawn! if i ever get a house i need to get some. real or otherwise...

the calgary zoo has always made a big deal of its elephant enclosure, which had been upgraded and renovated since the last time i'd been. it is now elephant crossing. i have to say for the elephants the change in home was a real plus! they have way more space to do stuff in... or it might just be that we the public can now see it all...

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in any case i was pretty impressed.

it also has a healthy dose of cute, in the form of a baby elephant. the calgary zoo has a pretty successful elephant breeding track record, as i can think of at least 2 other babies in my lifetime!

sadly it was not all happiness in elephant crossing. a new tank had been put in for these rays, only there'd been a lot more of them in it when it first opened!

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out of 48 rays put in the public petting tank, shortly after being settled in all but two of them died! total bummer!!!

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making even more sad, due to the tragedy the public was no longer allowed anywhere near the tank. i had to take this shot on extreme digital zoom (hence the fuzziness... sorry, best i could do).

outside elephant crossing you hit a lot of outdoor enclosures. many of these are open year round, as the animals contained within are pretty hardy and adapted to the cold.

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i felt dumb going in, as i had a starring contest with this owl. why i felt dumb...

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1. owls don't blink anywhere near as often as i have to!

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2. i always think of owls as really smart, and looking at one for a while makes me feel like someone more intelligent then me is looking at me scoldingly for my tiny brain...

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moving on, there is also a small herd of the incredibly rare przewalski’s horse from mongolia. these guys are on the brink of extinction, mostly due to interbreeding with domestic horses :(
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turning around from the horses i was confronted with this swarm of sparrows.

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sure sparrows, the introduced pest they are here in canada (and most other places of the world!), are not typically associated as zoo animals. to be fair these ones weren't on display, or part of the official zoo tour. yet there were just SO many of them i had to include a photo of the mega flock... so there is a record of why i didn't make it out of the zoo alive!

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there was also the largest of goats, the markhor. which like, sadly, so many other creatures at the zoo are on the brink of extinction. you humans really need to smarten up. please?...

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next came the tiger enclosure. another classic zoo area.

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as i passed through this public viewing area, i caught a funny yet familiar scent. with my t-rex nose i can pick up all sorts of things. sadly as i haven't been out in the "wild" so to speak, i've learned to properly separate conflicting smells. the zoo with so MANY different types of animals in such a small area represents quite an overload for me, and i just don't know how to pick them all apart.

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yet there was a trace scent here in this spot that lingered with me.

rather then let this smell ruin my trip i went to watch the tigers. lucky for me they were in the middle of eating!

it was neat to watch one of the modern apex mammalian predators do its thing. way different from how i eat. these guys are all forelimb based manipulation. me i'm lucky if i can scratch my eye with my arms most of the time!

suddenly there was a shift in the air, and the scent that had bothered me earlier was much stronger... whatever was the source of said smell, was obviously getting much closer!

even the tiger reacted, and looked up alertly to check what was coming.

i knew that smell!

as i turned around from behind me came a powerful bellow... followed by a gruff angry voice. "traumador the tyrannosaur," the intruder addressed me by name! "you've got a lot of nerve, showing up at my zoo unannounced!!!"

turning around i let out, what i'm sure was a very loud audible, eep. towering over the public viewing area, was now the bulk of a massive bull ceratopsian... which instinctively had me slightly panicked! as the horned dinosaurs can be a titch on the reactive side. especially when facing down their ancestral predator...

however i remained calm. in fact i was suddenly overwhelmed with joy!

no i wasn't going crazy or craving an early death... as again with any other ceratopsian i'd have been concerned at the situation, me pinned between it and a tiger proof fence...

this wasn't just any ceratopsian though... this was norman a centrosaurus, and boy did the two of us have a lot of catching up to do!

to be continued with an odd old friend...

calgary zoo- african savannah

onward and upward through the calgary zoo we go!

our next stop is one of the several buildings of the african complex of the zoo. this first one houses some of the coolest african animals around...


this is the central "lobby" as it were. you get a great view of the giraffes, from across that really big pool...

of course the question you might ask, is why put a huge water tank in the middle of the african house?


so that the hippos have somewhere to hang out of course!

this has to be one of my favourite things at the zoo (besides the prehistoric park). partially as it is altogether much like an aquarium, and i DO love my aquariums... but it also gives you a rare view of what it is to be a hippopotamus!

my only compliant, is that due to their life style, it is hard to take photos of the hippos... the water gets all murky with hippo poo...

however in a cool true to nature fashion, the calgary zoo has stocked the pond full of fish that eat this gross hippo byproduct. sadly not fast enough for my photos to true out better then this...

getting back to the giraffes, i've always loved these guys. despite their being boring mammals... they are the closest modern creature you'll come to seeing a sauropod!
if you visit during a warm time of the year, you can view the giraffes both inside and outside... but we'll talk about outside in a second...

while i was visiting this time, i was lucky enough to see a baby giraffe running around and playing amongst the adults! man baby giraffes are just too cute! they're all legs, and legs that don't know where they are going!!!

back to the outside exhibits, though i'm sure in the winter there are indoor observation options, it is easiest in spring and summer to see the lions outside.
they also keep the ever funky zebras out here... (sadly they don't pack as many of the classic african zoo animals into one spot like melbourne. i only say this as a comparison mind you. both are fine zoos in their own way)

there are also some very interesting birds outside, like this marabou stork.

this is also where they keep the ostriches... which is the first time i've gotten close to an ostrich in a while.

there is a story to tell about what they had to say to me when i came to see them (remember i've been teaching myself to speak bird!), but it can wait till i've finished my review of the zoo... which has been fun so far! unlike what the ostriches had to tell me... (to be continued after the review)

the local aquarium

well its official. i'm depressed...

sending lillian off has done in the fun of this trip to australia (for that whole story click this). now i just want to go home, but am stuck here for another couple of days.

i'd already wasted one of my key cheer up places here in melbourne trying to improve lillian's mood. the problem was now i needed a happiness pick me up. fortunately there was one place left. i'd kinda wanted to save it for another lillian date, but that wasn't going to be a problem now...

the melbourne aquarium. man do i love going to aquariums!

now the funny thing about this aquarium is it is basically just a bigger version of the last aquarium i was at, kelly tarlton's experience. as you'll see. which wasn't a bad thing. i really liked the auckland aquarium. as a bonus it had some extra things i'd never seen before (though it also didn't have penguins).

the first thing you see, was COOL AS! a cuttlefish. i'd never seen one before. ubber cool.

there was a real nice reef section, like in most aquariums... oooooh pretty

see!

hey i found nemo! (oh wait i've said this joke before)

i also snagged the best pic of a tigger fish i've ever pulled off (they're just so dared fast!).

a lion fish.

a real big primitive fish (didn't read the sign... silly me).

they had a real awesome jellyfish tank.

these crazy jellyfish that don't float. rather they just sit passively on the bottom catching their food.

they also had some neat spaceship looking "normal" jellyfish.

this HUGE fish tried to eat me through the glass.

a cute little lobster... er sorry, again as they call them here crayfish.

than there was this HUGE reef tank. full of all sorts of new reef critters i'd never seen before.

just like this big clam. i'd seen fossils of similar sized ones from the cretaceous (though they weren't the same shape).

this pretty pokey dotted ray.

speaking of pokey dots was a cool new shark, a leopard shark. neato.

a moray eel.

a sea snake! wow that was a very exciting first!!!

a monitor lizard. something i'd more expect in a zoo. if they had a mosasaur in here the lizard would have made some sense.

wow horseshoe crabs. its nice to run into another fellow living fossil.

hey now there is something i'm not surprised to see. a statue of a great white shark. seriously i need to start a business making these things. they're everywhere kelly tarlton's, the auckland museum, and te papa. i'd be stinking rich.

of course this was to let me know i'm entering the shark area.

just like at the auckland aquarium there were school sharks.

a dogfish.

some horn sharks, hadn't seen these before.

just like auckland aquarium there were underwater tunnels one could wander through and check out the locals.

emphasising the aucklandness of this aquarium was a bunch of sevengill sharks.

there were nurse sharks. i'd always wanted to see some.

well hanging out with the fish did cheer me up a bit.

a few more days and it was back off home to dunedin. for the first time in a really LONG time! funnily enough i wasn't going to be staying though.

my birthday present was a trip back home to canada. a place i also hadn't been to for an even LONGER period of time. yet i can't say i have a lot of questions about what that'll entail.