Zoo Negara #9

Reptiles
The house of snakes, crocs and tortoises.

I can't really remember how many snakes and crocs they actually have. Also the types of species (I really shouldn't be a zoologist lol I can't remember any species name..).

Reptiles are also looking after 6 porcupines, which will be transferred to the Mammals once their enclosure is done building. It's rather interesting that they have spines pointing out towards the back of their body, it seems more similar to feathers than fur. It probably is about the same compound that makes the feathers (I'll need to read about this). One of the porcupine was blind in one eye and when I was told that it could be accidental by other porcupine spines. I guess it could be rather common in the wild if you're a little careless, especially when you live in groups. Hrmm..

You can probably tell that I am not really into blogging about this post today. But I hope I can continue sharing the experience without boring the crap out of you (sorry!).

Next were the tortoises, given the diet of vegetables and fruits. Some have developed a favor of fruits over vegetables, some would just eat everything that is given to them. I could not remember what kind of tortoises there were, but one had adabra which are the massive tortoises. Their food were pretty much left the way they were before being fed, while the smaller tortoises had somewhat of a fruit salad with chopped vegetables and fruits. There were two babies born to different tortoises. Not sure if they will survive to be as old as the others, fingers crossed I suppose.

Crocs and snakes were fed once a week, normally during weekends with live rats and chicken. The reptile section has their own rat house, where they would breed their rats. When I firsr stepped in I thought alot of these rats will have to be given to the animals due to its small size. But the next day I found out that universities will give this zoo their rats that they would no longer need and these are normally twice to three times the size of the rats that they breed here. It depends on how many the universities would give, but a truck will always be used as a transport medium. Somehow the keeper only managed to leave the zoo at about noon that day, which meant that the rats returning from the universities were just sunbathing under the treacherous sun of Malaysia on a hot afternoon. As it was also fasting month, the keeper had forgotten to "shower" the rats before transferring them into their box here in the rat house. He also forgotten to check on the rats before calling it a day. the next morning, almost half of them died. It was rather saddening for me to see this and I tried to figure out why before I asked the keeper, 'what happened?'. The rats were overheated and didn't get enough water to drink that night and died.

I tried saving the rest and spent the rest of my third day looking after the rats by making sure they had enough food, water and sawdust. The moment that they found water, I could feel as though they were relieved and were brought back from the dead. Only the remaining one or two that were very close to their death that the water didn't help them at all. After a while, there begin to have some tension in this box of rats; a couple of rats will start screeching and would pause facing each other, as though to watch if the other rat would attack it or not. One inch of movement by the other rat would trigger the other rat to screech and that screech itself is enough to rattle the whole population of rats in that box where all the rats would be seen trying to run for their lives hoping to find somewhere safe.

I felt kinda bad and wondered if it would happen to humans as well; you're at the brink of death and you somehow miraculously survive and your survival instincts kick in so that you would do whatever to protect yourself from going anywhere near that death sentence again. :(

But anyways, I developed a liking for snakes now. Haha. I can't believe how tame a snake can be! Yet at the same time, I would feel bad for it because it isn't feeling like how it should be feeling anymore.