It is Friday morning at 8:00 on Friday the 13th in Australia. They are 16 hours ahead of us in the U.S. The zookeeper is showing us around the zoo and describing the animals currently living there. One thing we learned is that the mountains there are not as high as in the U.S.; they are more like tiny little hills.
They showed us pictures and live footage of the habitats for sugar gliders and kangaroos. Wallabies are smaller animals and have thin ears. They also have woodbirds, red pandas, and stickbugs. We saw examples of a stickbug and learned that their first form of defense is camouflage. Also, stickbugs don't need a male to reproduce!
There are lots of different frogs in Australia. They have different designs and only reproduce during the wet season. We also saw snakes; the scales of the rough-scaled snake are actually rough. They can eat things four times the size of their head, and they’re not venomous. A snake's tongue is used like human ears because of their sensing pits. The one we saw was 1.5 meters long with a forked tongue.
We also learned about lizards. Lizards are happy if they have food and shelter. The habitat for the lizard has a heated lamp, rocks, and a serious amount of plants for the lizard's health. We saw a bearded dragon, which has a tongue, making sudden movements.
Because Australia is on the other side of the world, their seasons are different from ours. We saw red kangaroos and emus, which like eating. The zookeeper described what an emu looks like and, in my observations, it looks about three feet tall. We also learned that emu eggs are green! Even though they look similar, ostriches and emus are different, but cassowaries and emus are related. Finally, we learned that Vegemite is salty.
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