Effervescing Elephant*

12 March 2010
Our plan for today to visit Taronga Zoo in the morning and come back into the city in the afternoon and visit more places. Once again the plans went haywire – we caught quite an early ferry over to Mosmans Bay then the Sky Safari cable car up to the top entrance of the zoo where a most charming lady gave us detailed information about the Australian marsupials, animals and birds (including kookaburras, galas and cockatoos plus the Victoria Crowned Pigeon which weighs in at 2kg and is bright blue – imagine one of those on the broccoli at the allotment!) that we might see on our “Australian Walkabout”. This was a separate part of the zoo which gave us the opportunity to see koalas, kangaroos, wallabies (including one with a joey in her pouch), emus, platypus, Tasmanian devils and many others the names of which we had never heard before and sadly have forgotten now, except there was one called, we think, an echidnas. We also got to see some of the very poisonous snakes that are native to Australia – of the 15 deadliest species of snakes in the world, eleven of them are found in Australia. It was the koalas though that fascinated us they just hang around the trees nibbling eucalyptus leaves and sleeping. We found out the reason for this behaviour – ‘koala’ is an Aboriginal name meaning ‘no drink’, they eat only eucalyptus leaves which means that their diet is very low in nutrients so they conserve energy by sleeping for up to 20 hours a day. All of the animals are in huge natural habitat enclosures and it is possible to walk through many of them.
There are also a wide range of endangered beasts from all over the world and the zoo seems to be achieving considerable success with their breeding programme. One of them has been news in all the papers this week and that is about the birth of a baby Asian elephant. The mother had begun her protracted labour on March 1 and after six days of intensive effort on the part of both the cow elephant and her keepers it was announced that the calf was dead inside the womb. This even went out on TV with staff in tears. Then on Thursday a live male elephant calf was born which has captivated people and no doubt encouraged lots of people to visit in the hope of seeing the new calf. He was, of course, in an elephant incubator and not on view. All good stuff but the bit we liked is that the zoo had called in Dr Hildebrandt of the Berlin Zoo to give advice on what should be done – when the elephant was born Dr Hildebrandt announced “this will completely write the elephant birth textbooks”. Not only elephant incubators but also elephant birth textbooks – note the plurals.
They also have a programme of breeding Sumatran tigers that are rapidly losing their habitat as forests are being cleared to make way for unsustainable farming including vast palm plantations. Palm oil is now an ingredient in one in four food products and most of the world’s supply comes from Indonesia and Malaysia – including the rainforest home of the tiger. There is a campaign in Australia calling for the labelling of palm oil on food products stating its source.
Quite a thought provoking day. That’s right – a whole day at the zoo which we thoroughly enjoyed but which was tinged with a note of regret for all the things we wanted to do whilst in Sydney but just never had the time for. We have warmed greatly to the city over the last few days from being not too enamoured with it on day one to sitting on the ferry on the way home adding it to the places to which we want to return. candggortw2 is looking more likely.
Tomorrow we fly to Ayers Rock airport to visit Uluru.