"Boring" animals

Pertinax said:
I visited several Kiwi houses when I was in NZ(long time ago now)- I must have seen Kiwi in one or two but mostly the experiences were much as you describe. I also saw Kiwis(including Lesser Spotted) at a breeding station on the North Island though I can't remember where it was. Even better I met a wild one out foraging one night on(if I remember correctly) Little Barrier Island... :)
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the place on the North Island was probably Otorohanga, or maybe Mt. Bruce (these are the only ones that have ever had little spotteds). If you got to Little Barrier then you're pretty lucky, not many people are allowed on there, and you're even luckier to have actually seen a wild kiwi because not many visitors (or even locals) do (although hundreds of tourists around the world go home believing they've seen kiwi in NZ.....which are actually weka, lol). Even funnier is checking out Welcome to Flickr - Photo Sharing and searching for "kiwi bird" -- there are pictures of weka, partridges in India, turnstones in Florida, scarlet ibis(!), white ibis, hadada ibis, pretty much anything with a long beak is labelled a kiwi, doesn't matter where in the world the photo was taken.
 
It was Otorohanga...

The Little Barrier Island visit was a filming trip and the DOC people were with us.. I wandered along the beach one evening and there was a Kiwi snuffling around in the tussock grass- after a few minutes it must have smelt me as it froze and then ran off speedily! I'm pretty sure it was a Brown?

I've held a Kakapo too :):) - that was on Maud Island.
 
yes the ones on Little Barrier are North Island browns (there's quite a few white individuals on the island too). Who was the Maud Island kakapo, it wasn't Richard Henry was it?

What was the filming for?
 
I agree with Patrick's comment about HOW animals are displayed can contribute greatly to whether they are interesting or not, even if the species is 'boring'... For example:

At Taronga's Nocturnal House I watched the Plains Rats for some time... When reading them on a list of animals at the zoo you may think, rats hmmph but they were displayed in two terrariums linked by transparent tunnels with a transparent nesting box between the two, it was interesting watching them piled up in there and running up, down and across...

I just got back from the National Aquarium in Napier, NZ and their Kiwi's were very active, much more so than Auckland Zoo's... Signs were posted throughout the aquarium saying, "no flash photography" or "noise in the Kiwi area" and their exhbit had soundproofed glass (according to the signs)... It seemed to work too... It is one of the few exhibits where I have seen (multiple) parents reprimand their children for tapping on the glass or making excess noise, one family group even removing themselves when their little laddie got upset...
 
NZ Jeremy said:
I agree with Patrick's comment about HOW animals are displayed can contribute greatly to whether they are interesting or not, even if the species is 'boring'...
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Another good example would the the leaf-cutter ants in the Spirit of the Jaguar at Chester Zoo. When it first opened may people just passed by them and tryed to spot the Jags, but now on some days the ants appear to be the exhibit's 'stars' as it is often hard to find a Jag.

Visitors will stand and watch, for a good amount of time, the colony of ants move about their tree and can see the ants inside the nest via a glass window...
 
Don't get me started on formicariums..! I love them..!

The Auckland Museum used to have a working beehive (with a transparent vertical cover) in the insect collection area, with a pipe through the wall to the outside and the queen with a white mark put on her back... I vividly remember being about 6 years old and watching them for about an hour before my parents dragged me away, it is to this day the most facsinating exhibit I have ever seen..! Maybe I'm easy to please or because I was so young but it was fun, entertaining, educational all at once..!

Usually terrariums, plaudiums, formicariums and aquariums with highly active animals are by far my favourite exhibits in institutions...

While most people here (I think) one day would like to work at or own a zoo, a Vivarium would be the one for me..!
 
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NZ Jeremy said:
I agree with Patrick's comment about HOW animals are displayed can contribute greatly to whether they are interesting or not, even if the species is 'boring'...
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You can scold me once again fro leading this thread "off-topic", but I dare to repeat what I once stated in a discussion with patrick: there are animals which even the greatest display in the world couldn't make interesting for the majority of the zoo visitors.
 
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I'm sure your right Sun, would you like to cite some examples..?

Maybe Diotomes, Maggots, something along those lines...
 
Sun Wukong said:
or do You want me to go off topic...?
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How can you be going off topic if your talking about animals you find boring, i.e. the name of the thread...

You want me to mention the other thread when I rightly stated you pushed the thread off topic so you can say I'M going off topic don't you..? Ha ha, you lose...
 
Partula snails might not "do" much but an exhibit of three or four species for comparison together with well written signage can be informative and interesting, even for the plebs
 
I'll tell one snail species I did find interesting was the aquatic Apple Snails at the National Aquarium in Napier, New Zealand...

They were in a small aquarium and were voraciously eating some, strange but true, green lettuce and boy were they large..!
 
the plains rat enclosure at taronga has just got even better. they now have an exercise wheel which calabrates the metres the animals run per day and compares it to a wild rat colony. collectively, a wild colony of plains rat can run up to 52 kilometres a day!
 
How many rats would you say the have in their Glyn 100, 200, +..?
 
Hmmm, 70 according to ISIS, sounds low to me...
 
Chlidonias said:
. Who was the Maud Island kakapo, it wasn't Richard Henry was it?

What was the filming for?
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No, it was about 1990, well before Richard Henry was moved to Maud... it was PiriPiri (named after Prince Philip) - he may not be there now? Isn't RH now on Chalky Island?

Richard Henry is a wonderful bird. I did see the spot on Little Barrier where he was filmed with David Attenborough. I think he (RH) must have still been there on my visit. We were filming for the New Zealand TV. I also saw a Kakapo recaptured on Stewart island- a transfer to Maud.
 
NZ Jeremy said:
Don't get me started on formicariums..! I love them..!
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you should visit the melbourne museum. they have (or had, but i think it was a permanent exhibit) a "bugs alive" gallery with the green tree ants and bulldog ants of potential interest to you.
 
Hey Patrick I think I saw that in March 06...

Not sure if it is the same one your talking about but they had live Goliath beetles (I think) + many more species, in an exhibition hall near a mounted thylacine + other stuffed extinct mammals? Either way I enjoyed it very much...

I think the various 'ria' (?) I was talking about are underulitised as attractions in their own right especially in major metropolitan areas...
 
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