My Trip to the Zoo - 17th of July

On Tuesday (17th of July), I had a trip to Taronga zoo in Sydney with a uni friend of mine. We were luckily enough to have gone on tuesday because the weather was absolutely perfect. It wasn't too hot and because the weather is much cooler (since it's winter in Australia) a lot of the animals which are used to cold temperatures were up and running about. All my photos were taken with a 60D.

The first animals we visited were the koalas. Luckily enough, not all of them were sleeping. One of them was happily munching away on some eucalyptus leaves. It would place one leaf in it's mouth, and without using it's hands, munch continuously until the whole leaf was gone. It kinda looked like an old grandpa chewing without teeth.

#15 A Tree with Dragon's blood

Off the coast of Yemen, the island of Socotra has been isolated for about 10 million years after Arabia and Africa split apart. In this ruthless, prehistoric and scorched environment, a large amount of unique species can be found here and no where else. Even if the soil is thin, sandy and stony, the most remarkable trees can be found here.

The Socota Dragon tree or Dragon's-blood tree can stand up to 6m (20 feet) tall and is perfectly adapted to this brutal landscape. However, due to the harsh conditions of it's environment, the tree is slow growing and takes about 200 years to reach maturity. The tree gets its name due to the blood-red resin that oozes from it's bark.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

#14 The Australian Easter Bunny

Yesterday I went to the Sydney Royal Easter show and there was a tent for Featherdale Wildlife Park. There I learnt a horrible fact....that there was only about 400 Bilbies in the wild. This shocked me so much that it has inspired me to write about bilbies and how everyone can help with their conservation and protection from extinction.

Source: natureswonderland.com.au

The bilby is a native Australian animal which is endangered. There was once two species of bilbies but after the European colonisation of Australia, the lesser bilby became extinct by the 1950s. Now the greater bilby, the largest of the bandicoot family, is left but is still considered endangered. Of the six bandicoot species that once lived in Australia's arid lands, the blby is the only one left.

#1 The Little Kiwi

My first Natural wonder is a national icon and native to New Zealand, the Kiwi Bird.

Photo taken by Chris McLennan Photography

The Kiwi bird is quite an amazing species, being able to lay the largest egg relative to their size of any species of bird in the world. That goes to show, how dedicated these birds are if their mother's are prepared to lay an egg, half their size, as seen in the photo below.