Day 10: Australian Animal Encounters

Today I made the trip back to Cleland Wildlife Park, in hopes of seeing some animals and patting a koala.  My first challenge was navigating my way to the park via car.  I borrowed Eve's car and thanks to her good directions I made my way there with no trouble.  It makes me a bit nervous to be on the left hand side of the road, but I think I did well.  Once I arrived at the park, I encountered heaps of Australian native creatures.  The park was wonderful because most of the animals were able to roam around in large enclosures that you walked through gates to enter.  Thus it didn't feel like they were caged.  Here are some photos and information that I learned about the creatures that I saw.

These colorful parrots are called lorikeets.  They are very pretty but don't sit still for very long so it can be difficult to get a good photo.  They are fairly common and I have seen many of them flying about Adelaide.

 

This little guy is a wombat, a hairy-nosed wombat to be precise.  Here he is eating his dinner and then a closeup of the wombat face.  He is a little pig like in his appearance.  Tiny hairs on his nose help him to retain moisture in his breath so he does not dry out as fast.

This is an echidna.  He is spiky with a tiny, long black nose.  Echidnas have no natural predators.  They eat ants and insects with a long, sticky tongue.

The next area that I wandered through contained a bunch of wallabies.  Wallabies are like miniature kangaroos.  They are very soft and cute.  The wildlife park allows you to purchase food to feed the kangaroos and wallabies, so they came right up to me to see if I had anything to share.  The wallabies were my favorite animal of the day.

Next I saw what I think is a potoroo. And an emu, in the distance. There were also some more wallabies, lying around in the shade to keep cool.

 

Here is a Tasmanian Devil.  The Tazzy Devils' ears turn bright red when they are under stress.  When I saw them they were being fed and very anxious about the upcoming food, so they were snarling and making a lot of unpleasant snarling noises.  Apparently this is what earned them their name as devils.  Tasmanian Devils only live on the island of Tasmania, and are rather rare these days.  Part of the population has a genetic disposition to some type of facial cancer, so their numbers are being decimated by this.  The next generation keeps inheriting the gene and passing it along.  There are efforts underway to remove the genetically unblemished animals from the island until the affected members have died off, and then to reintroduce them.  Tasmanian devils and scavengers.  They are not very good hunters because they have poor eyesight and are kind of clumsy.  They will eat carrion or roadkill which also results in them getting hit and killed by cars.  A wild Tasmanian Devil will stuff itself full of as much food as it can eat, never being sure when the next meal will come.  Their tails will become engorged with fat from their meal and they can live on this supply until they find something else to eat.   Tasmanian Devils are marsupials.  This means that their young are born very underdeveloped.  When they are born they are about the size of a grain of rice!  Mini-devils!  There are about 20 born in each litter but as only 4 can nurse at a time, it is only the first four to crawl into their mother's pouch and begin nursing that survive.  

 

Next to the Tasmanian devils was an enclosure with monitor lizards, Australia's largest lizard.

From there I moved on to pat a koala.  The koalas at the wildlife center are orphaned, and have been raised by hand so they don't mind being touched.  A wild koala could do real damage to you with its very sharp claws.  Koala paws are designed for climbing.  A koala has two thumbs on its front paws and a special grippy pad on its rear paws, all to help with climbing.  Koalas are very sedentary; they sleep 19 hours every day and spend most of the rest of the time eating.  They only eat eucalyptus leaves (of which there are many varieties in Australia, but the koala only eats a few of them) and must eat about a kilo of leaves every day.  Normally the koala would not be able to digest eucalyptus, but when they are old enough to start eating solid food, their mother will secrete an enzyme from glands in her cheeks that the baby will ingest, and this allows its digestive system to handle breaking down the leaves.  The koala I got to pat is named Peter.

I watched dingos and water birds being fed.  Here are some photos of them.

 

  

  

The funniest bird to watch was the pelican. He would open his mouth wide for the keeper to toss in a fish.  It's interesting to hear the bird songs in Australia, because they sound nothing like any birds that I am used to in the states.