Friends of Wildlife and the Singapore Zoo

We got ourselves the local resident "Friends of Wildlife" Pass today, which gets us annual admission to the 4 wildlife parks in Singapore. Sounds silly, but I was giddy to get a resident rate. I'm always jealous of people and their local zoos. This is one of the first things I looked up when when we started talking about moving to Singapore.

We checked out the Singapore Zoo for the day, and after 6 hours with the kids and we were about 50% through. We took a long lunch too. The zoo was huge and amazing. This zoo is very focused on conservation, which goes along well with this Spring's homeschooling focus on Endangered Species. It was an hour trip on the bus to get to the North of the Island were the zoos are, but we didn't get lost and the trip out was so worth it for such a fun day. On the way back we took a shuttle to the nearest MRT station for $1 each and that was easy too. It was a Friday and pretty busy. It is summer break though. We saw a lot of pre-school groups too, in their matching shirts. The gate warned us to get early seats for shows. We decided to skip the shows that day.

My favorite part was seeing the white tiger and realizing that Tigers are found in Asia and not Africa. Ms.E even made up a bit of a story about the tiger for her pen pal:

"I went to the zoo yesterday and saw a tiger. He was in the water and he was fishing and he was going for a swim. He found something in the water. It was a crocodile and he shouted, "Oh no!" and "Goodbye" to the crocodile.

I've been mistaken about this my whole life.

Jonathan pointed out the irony of going to Asia to learn about North America. This was a nice air conditioned exhibit. I'll be remember this place for future, for when we get too hot - a few minutes inside does wonders.

Some other highlights were:

At the Orangutan exhibit we saw a Mom and baby climbing around on the wires connecting trees. Ms.I was worried they would "fall down".

Many exhibits were without fences where you actually entered the enclosure and then were surrounded by the animals.

We saw Tree Hares (smaller kangaroos that live in trees), which Ms.I insisted were tree bunnies. At home in Canada, she calls the squirrels "tree bunnies".

Many exhibits had more than one animal in open enclosures, like how the zebras and ostriches were in the same pen; and there were a number of different types of kangaroos all together. It made the exhibits seem a lot more interesting.

Ms.E wanted a picture taken, but was a little concerned about taking her eyes off the Iguana 3 feet behind her.

That monkey is on the handrail behind Ms.C. It's actually part of an exhibit. There are also signs warning about the wild monkeys roaming around the zoo - though we didn't see any.

The girls asked if they could pet this sloth. No, but they could have easily reached it.

Ms. I right before she took a nap in the carrier.