Wonder Wednesday – Manila Zoo
It’s a day at the zoo, and another wonder Wednesday! The weather seemed a bit cloudy during our time at the manila zoo, luckily we didn’t experience any drops of rain so thank God for that. We were separated into groups with each tour guide to help us.
The first one we saw was a Asian elephant who was born in Sri Lanka, and her name is Mali, our tour guide says that she hates the color red, because she is traumatized from a past experience related to the color red. She is almost 50 years old, she older than both of my own parents! She is the only elephant there and when we were visiting her, she was eating a bunch of banana leaves and drinking water. Next to Mali was the gift shop, we look inside and you can see from inside the gift shop was a bunch of peacocks and some ducks. It was a very cute sight to see I drew some of them in my sketchbook which you can see in my personal works section.
Anyways after that, we went to see more birds, there were ducks, peacocks, Brahminy kites, gooses, flamingos, and so much more! Some birds are even out of the cage, flying free around the zoo, at first we thought they were statues since they were so still but once we saw some moved their heads or flew away it was a surprise. Next, we were passing by some other animals like the capybara, which were all sleeping, capybaras are almost related to guinea pigs, and the area they were sleeping on had no grass since they ate them all.
Near the capybaras were the predators, and of course, there was gonna be a lion, but the lions were eating so we couldn’t seem them, yet. The guide said that we can come back once the lions are ready, so while looking at the lions we saw a bird which was one of the animals that could go into extinction, the species name Double Wattled Cassowary there was only one the zoo because his mate died and their species mate for life, so it is a sad story for this little birdie. After looking at the dinosaur bird the lions were back and we were greeted with roars and them jumping on top of their tiny shelter roof.
Soon we were passing by turtles and crocodiles, it was very hard to see the crocs through the glass but when I used my phone to see more clearly I could see how big they are. There were also different kinds of turtles, the most prominent turtles we saw are the box turtles, some of them have red spots on their shells and there was a whole bunch of them. After that are,a we went to a room that was full of snakes, lizards, and iguanas. I was sketching the Burmese python, which was a big yellow snake with beautiful patterns and it’s body curled up in a corner of the glass.
Lastly, we went to the butterfly garden, we first saw all the preserved butterflies some of them have been turned into beautiful pictures and designs. Once we went past there was a room in which you can see the butterflies’ chrysalises and some have already gotten out and are hanging on the wall to dry their wings, you cannot enter the room since its locked but you can watch them from the glass.
After passing that, there was a garden full of butterflies flying around, unfortunately, we cannot touch the butterflies according to the zoo’s rules. But if you remember from my previous topic about butterflies, you can make them go to your finger if you touch their antennae 3 times, anyways after that we can go to the butterfly gift shops which sell preserved butterflies. And that was the end of our trip to the Manila Zoo, I hope you enjoyed what I had shared, and please visit the zoo if you have the chance!
