Thursday, April 20, 2017

London Zoo Part V: Reptile House

The last set of my photos from London Zoo (for the time being) come from its reptile house. Here is a king cobra, one of the largest venomous snakes.

A yellow-headed water monitor.

The Annam leaf turtle exhibit had a very interesting design, a stark presentation of some of the threats that this species is facing.

An Utila spiny-tailed iguana, another reptile critically endangered by hunting.

A collared tree lizard.

A Rio Fuerte beaded lizard, formerly considered a subspecies of the Mexican beaded lizard.

A Fiji banded iguana, a species with a lovely color palette.

Some Feae's flying frogs. I imagine they don't get to showcase the "flying" part much in this exhibit.

"Jeff Corwin can hear it, and so can Sir David Attenborough..."

A Philippine crocodile.

A puff adder (the original, not just any species of Bitis).

A Jamaican boa.

A gidgee skink, a sociable Australian lizard, as indicated by the accompanying sigaage.

The White's tree frog exhibit is decorated to reflect one of the habitats wild specimens are commonly found in.

A Sardinian brook salamander.

A black mamba, widely considered to be the fastest snake in the world.

Monday, April 17, 2017

London Zoo Part IV: B.U.G.S.

I get the impression that the B.U.G.S. (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival) building is one of the most highly acclaimed exhibits at the London Zoo, and it's not difficult to see why. Many of its displays use quite novel methods to showcase its resident animals, most of which (as indicated by the building's acronym) are invertebrates.

The photo below shows one of these novel exhibits, their leaf-cutter ant display. The ants can march between several tanks, including one from which they can harvest leaves and another which houses their nest. The paths they use to get from tank to tank are exposed out in the open, providing no physical barrier between the ants and visitors.

A pile of leaves harvested by the ants.

A couple of giant house spiders living in a mock-up bathroom.

A fen raft spider, a large wetland spider that hunts on the water surface.

There is even a spider walkthrough exhibit. Shown here is the corner of the walkthrough where social spiders reside.

Some chocolate millipedes. (They are not actually made of chocolate.)

Some weaver ants with their woven nest, which is made out of leaves and larval silk.

Some shiny jewel wasps, a parasitic wasp species that lay their eggs on cockroaches.

Some sunburst diving beetles.

Some critically endangered giant magnolia snails.

Some African giant mosquitoes, one of the few mosquito species in which the females do not need to drink blood to reproduce. The larvae prey on the larvae of other mosquitoes. Accordingly, they are sometimes used as a means of biological pest control.

A medicinal leech.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

London Zoo Part III: Lions, Tigers, and Gorillas, But I was Distracted by Other Things

One row of aviaries at the London Zoo houses some large birds, such as this woolly-necked stork.

An African harrier hawk and its lunch. This species is known for its "double-jointed" ankle, which helps it to reach into crevices to capture prey.

A striated caracara, a scavenging falcon from the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

The London Zoo houses two species of penguin: Humboldt and northern rockhopper. Both are visible in this photo, but the Humboldt might take some searching to spot.

I tried to get some good photos of the blue-throated macaws, a species I hadn't seen before, but was unsuccessful.

A vicuña, the wild ancestor of the alpaca.

A newly-opened exhibit at the zoo showcases their lions. It's a good exhibit, but not even the fact that they had the Asiatic subspecies of lion (which I'd already seen at the Bristol Zoo) was enough to draw me away from this magnificent Rüppell's griffon vulture.

The Blackburn Pavilion is home to many species of tropical birds. Much of this building appears to be a walkthrough aviary and was thus closed during my visit, but a number of displays near the entrance remained open for viewing. Among its residents is this superb fruit dove (which is actually the name of its species and not merely my own description of it, apt though it is).

A hooded pitta.

A beautiful fruit dove (again, the actual name of this species), marred somewhat by the fine wire mesh.

A Mindanao bleeding heart dove.

A male crested partridge. I've found that the coloration of this species blends well into the lighting of forested environments, which makes getting clear photos of them fairly difficult.

A male red-legged honeycreeper. Not a close relative of the famous Hawaiian honeycreepers (which are finches), but a tanager.

An orange-headed thrush.

The Casson Pavilion is home to a rather miscellaneous variety of animals, including this large hairy armadillo. Armadillos are surprisingly active when they're awake; it took me many tries to get a photo that wasn't (too) blurry.

The pavilion provides indoor retreats for some animals that also have outdoor exhibits, such as these Malayan tapirs.

Despite signs claiming that this exhibit was empty, this rock hyrax was present.

A yellow mongoose. In the wild, this species may share burrow systems with meerkats and Cape ground squirrels.

Just outside, the tiger exhibit is accompanied by some humorous signage.

Gorilla Forest displays gorillas, as you can guess, but it has many other species of primates as well. This is a white-naped mangabey.

More importantly, it also exhibits some African bird species, like this green woodhoopoe.

A northern helmeted curassow, which is... South American, not African. Hmm.