Singapore Zoo

We spent our last day in Singapore at the Singapore Zoo and Night Safari. It was definitely time well spent as it's one of the worlds best and most humane zoos, on par with the San Diego Zoo. The zoo is 28 hectares and houses 2800 representing 240 species. There are no cages anywhere in the zoo. Instead, the animals are seperated from the visitors by dry or wet moats. To prevent random maulings, some animals (like the leopard and jaguar) are kept in large glass enclosures since the moats would be rather useless.

The night safari is the world's first, and is a really neat concept. It is completely different from the zoo, with 1200 animals representing 110 species. It allows you to wander around (or take a tram ride) through the safari at night when all the nocturnal animals are active. They light the grounds with special lighting made to look like moonlight. Very cool. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to use a flash camera, so we don't have any pictures. You'll have to be satisfied by our pile of zoo pictures instead.

You'd think it would hurt a little having a tusk grow through your upper lip... it doesn't really look all that effective either.

Now THERE's a case of some really bad hemorrhoids!

This is one of 4 orangutans that were sitting in an area used to take photos with people. They were quite the showmen, playing with everything and anything they could get their hands on.

It was amazing how active many of the animals were. This lion is in mid roar... and continued to do so for over 10 minutes. You could hear it from all over the park.