Taronga Zoo

Bird show
Originally uploaded by timbo262

After a heavy night of boozing last weekend Mel and I decided to take a leisurely trip to Taronga Zoo to visit the animals. To be honest we did leave it late in the day and really only had around 2 hours to get around but I'm not the biggest Zoo fan anyway so focused on the bird show and gorillas - anything else was a bonus. Once you've been to African on safari it's really not the same. It's not cheap to get in either, (around $40 p/person) although you do get a discount if you've arrived by ferry (or at least say you have even if you've come by car/bus/foot/emu etc).

The bird show was genuinely good, hawks, doves and other birds I can't remember the names of all trained to cleverly do as the bird-keeper says (although the birds weren't behaving that well for the women running our show). They claim the bird show at Taronga Zoo is world renowned, I can't say I've been to many bird shows of this kind so will have to take their word for it.

The funniest thing of the day happened when watching the gorillas, they are so human like in many ways but not so much in others. There are cross sections of skulls (well not real ones, made of metal and wood) of both human and gorilla next to each other by the gorilla enclosure, you look at those and the teeth and hands of both and there is very little difference at all - then you walk over and watch the real gorillas for a while and there is big daddy gorilla eating his own crap (or his mates), fortunately most humans have moved on from that by now!

I'd recommend Taronga Zoo if you generally like Zoos and it does have the best back-drop you'd imagine a Zoo to have (the Sydney harbour) but allow plenty of time and don't miss the (apparently) world renowned bird show and the crap eating (if you're lucky) gorillas.

Cheers
Tim