The Zoo

How can a day be better spent than watching the Australian wildlife? Melbourne's zoo has from Koalas to Kangaroos over Elephants and wild cats a lot to offer!

Cost: 26Aus$ for adults (or go and visit their website for details: zoo.org.au/melbourne)
Private tours and getting close to the seals (for example) cost extra. Other public shows are free once you are inside.

I got lucky when I was just right in time for the seal-show/performance. These animals are very intelligent and well trained when they jump up on the water-stages and inside the water, make "saltos" or wave "hello" or "good bye".

It took me about 3h to get around the Zoo and see ALL of the animals they have. Especially the Koalas and the Kangaroos where one of my preferences once I got inside. The Koalas were a bit far away in the tree as super tired as they didn't move much. One of the zoo-keepers tool me the reason why I couldn't old them in my hands is because the are still wild and not use to people. They have massive claws and because they are quite moody they get aggressive really easily or when they get afraid.

Well, another time another wildlife park in Australia will have Koalas as well as there are so many around Melbourne anyways.

The most exciting area was the one of the Kangaroos and Wallabies. Once you get in, there are no fences or railings. You are totally unprotected inside the enclosure but you will find out pretty quickly why. It's because the Kangaroos here are very chilled and relaxed. They just lie around in the shades and aren't really bothered about people or just used to them. Some of them even came closer and believe it or not, we could touch and stoke/pet them without a zoo-keeper watching. Of yours you need to be careful, no quick and fast movements otherwise they can stand on their tails and kick you very hard.

A once in a lifetime experience!!!!!<3 love them!!!!!!*happy*

After wandering around a bit longer around I came to the "butterfly-house" another Zoo-keeper told me if the wings of a butterfly are torn or ripped it means it's probably an old butterfly, if the edges are sharp it's a young one, because from all the flying and coupling the wings will get damaged. What is old for a butterfly? About 3 weeks. And they can't hear, they can only see colours and flowers in rasters. I was also asking him how he can keep track of the number of butterfly which are in the house, I mean how do you count them? He said, that every species has only one bush or tree where they lay egg on. This is how the zoo keeper can collect them and breed them somewhere else. He also told me that if you have a lot of different butterflies in one glass-house they misunderstand their coloured wings and chase after each other as a sign of territory.

The monkey area was the loudest but they come very close to the glass, especially the gorilla (see picture below). Funny & fast climbers!

Last but not least, I came to the Elephant area, everything is nicely decorated in indian style with indian signs and it's close by to the tiger.