Description of the attraction
The Perth Zoo was founded in 1898 on an area of 17 hectares. The idea for its creation arose a few years earlier by the Acclimatization Committee of Western Australia, which intended to introduce European animals on the new continent. Already in 1987, caves for bears, a monkey house, enclosures for various mammals and pens for guinea pigs were built. And the first animals were an orangutan, two monkeys, 4 South American ostriches, a pair of lions and a tiger. During the first year of operation, the zoo was visited by 53 thousand people, and in the entire history of the zoo - more than a hundred years - it has never been closed! Today the zoo contains over a thousand animals. An extensive botanical collection is also collected here. The zoo's first floristic displays included roses, lupins, tropical plants and palms. By the way, those palms, planted more than a century ago, still grow in the zoo - there are about 60 species, including the rare palms of the Canary Islands. It is interesting that crops used for animal feed are also grown here - lettuce, alfalfa, carrots, and onions.
The zoo is divided into three main areas: Walking in Australia, Asian Rainforest and African Savannah with small additional exhibits (for example, Birds of South America or Lesser Primates). All zones recreate the natural habitat of animals.
The Australian Zone includes exhibits introducing the country's wetland and bushland dwellers, reptiles and nocturnal animals. Here you can see black swans, black-necked storks, Australian brolga cranes, cormorants, speckled ducks and other interesting birds, as well as freshwater crocodiles, turtles and frogs. In the same zone, there is a pool with 50 thousand liters of water, in which penguins and brown-winged terns live. The inhabitants of the Australian bushland are represented by emu, koalas, quokkas, red kangaroos, echidnas, wombats, wallabies and Tasmanian devils. A separate exposition is dedicated to the endangered Australian animal, the nambat, a marsupial anteater.
In the African savannah zone, in closed enclosures, you can see lions, cheetahs, Grant's zebras, baboons, Rothschild giraffes, ray turtles, meerkats, hyenas and rhinos. Visitors observe the animals, passing along the trail, made in the form of a bed of a dried-up river.
The Asian Rain Forest is home to endangered Asian animals. It is home to Asian elephants, Nepalese red pandas, eastern clawless otters, Sumatran orangutans, tigers, sloth bears and gibbons. The Perth Zoo is investing in the conservation of many of these species in the wild. Thus, his program for breeding Sumatran orangutans is considered the most successful in the world - since 1970, 27 orangutans have been fed here. In 2006, one of the zoo-born orangutans was released into the wild in Sumatra as part of an international recovery program for these animals.
Other conservation programs at the zoo include breeding programs for Rothschild giraffes, white rhinos and Sumatran tigers. Australian animal species participating in the programs are also usually released into the wild.
Interestingly, every zoo visitor can get a huge amount of digital information about animals for free.
