Australia Part II: Weird Animals

Of course, Australia is known for having weird ass animals. The second day we were in Sydney, we headed straight for Taronga Zoo to check them out. This was just the first of many animal visits during our three week trip. We visited Sydney's Featherdale Wildlife Park a week later, and went to a Tasmanian devil sanctuary in Tasmania.

Both Wacky Chinawoman and I were in agreement that we didn't really care about seeing non-Australian animals; after all, we've seen plenty of giraffes and elephants at the local zoos (and of course, when I was growing up, it seemed like we had a field trip to the Cincinnati zoo every other year).

Here are a few of the Australian animals we saw. The first is of a wallaby. From what I could tell, it's some sort of kangaroo (and yes, that's his TAIL, so get your mind out of the gutter). The second is of a long-necked turtle. The third is your run-of-mill koala (Featherdale). And the last is a Tasmanian devil, taken when we visited Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. The reflection of my camera flash in his eye makes him look more menacing than he really is.






Both Taronga zoo and Featherdale wildlife park have a bunch of Australian animals, but Featherdale actually lets you interact with animals that have been acclimated to being around humans. So we were actually able to feed the animals and pet them. This didn't seem like the best thing for the animals, but I have to admit that most of them looked pretty fat and happy from being constantly fed all day. This guy actually stole the cup of food from my hand and wouldn't give it back:



And lastly, the Tasmanian devil. This creature is pretty cool. One of the few carnivorus marsupials, they are also solitary creatures, yet they are not territorial nor are they particularly aggressive. They tend to feed on the carcasses of animals that others have killed, and though they do not hunt together, they often call out to share food. At the same time, they have weird rituals where they snarl and hiss at each other over their food, though no real damage is ever done. In fact, the only real injuries are inflicted during mating, where the female claws up the male pretty badly. Basically, it's some seriously kinky sex. Males only live for about 5 years, at which point they are pretty much worn out, with tons of visible scars on their body. It's a pretty fascinating, unusual animal.

The devil population is seriously dwindling and has quickly become endangered, though not because of humans. Apparently, a disease called Devil Facial Tumors has popped up in recent years and is ravaging the already small population. The Tasmanian government is selectively breeding devils with a resistance to this disease in the hopes of saving the species. This brings up an interesting question in my mind: if the species is being threatened by natural forces, is it really appropriate to intervene? Isn't this the natural course of evolution?

At the sanctuary in Cradle Mountain, I took this video of Tasmanian devils feeding on some roadkill. At the end, one of the little guys decides to get aggressive and steal the food away:



Notice how loud they squeal. These guys pretty much make loud, piercing noises all night long to let each other know when they've found food. That and their feeding habits make them seem like a terrifying animal, but for the most part they are quite harmless.

More Australia stuff to follow...

Australia Part I: Sydney

I'm scared to think of what may have happened to the readership of this blog in the past month, given that I've been traveling and doing other stuff during that time. Perhaps the number of readers has shrunk from 3 to 2?

So what have I been doing all this time? Surprisingly, I have not been watching much football. I did go visit some family in Orange County right around the time the fires were blazing. And I also went to New York City for a wedding, and hung out with the famous yoga mime (aka Skinny Indian) for a bit.

But for the past three weeks, the Wacky Chinawife and I have been traveling in Australia. What a beautiful country! The locals were quite friendly and fun-loving, the cities were clean, and though the cuisine was very average, the food was very good.

We kept a very long, detailed travel journal to help us remember this trip, and though I won't post it here, I'll try and recap the highlights in this space over the next several days.

The first thing we did was land in Sydney and check into our hotel, which overlooked the Circular Quay (pronounced "Key"), which is smack in the middle of Sydney. Sydney is quite a big place, with a fair amount of places to see, so we stayed here for nearly a week. Here's a picture of the Quay at night:



The first thing we did was make the obligatory visit to the Sydney Opera House and take a tour. To me, this is pretty much the big symbol of Sydney. It's quite a nice building, with an interesting history, and great views out of the rear balcony, but it wasn't particularly exciting.

That same day, we took a bus out to Bondi Beach, where an outdoor sculpture exhibit was on display all along the cliffs overlooking the beach. As with most art (especially modern art like this), there were some things that sucked and some things that were cool. My favorite piece was this one of the giant ants on top of the car. If you look closely, you'll see that the ants are made entirely out of car parts (notice how the antennae are made from windshield wipers).



That's just the first day. More in a future post...