Malmö reptilcenter
Malmö’s Folkets park is frequently ranked as one of the city’s top sights and has a number of attractions, including a standalone reptile house, Malmö reptilcenter. The list of reptiles at the centre shows some fascinating rarities. On walking into the reception area, it immediately becomes clear that this is not a standard reptile house. The queue for the ticket desk stretches a few metres towards the door down what is also the main aisle of the souvenir shop. There is a strong scent of burning incense, and different items in the cabinets stick out, like the lamps, bongos, masks and wooden sculptures. Stuffed toy animals and plastic animal models are also abundant.
After buying a ticket, the first room is more of a corridor, and similarly themed to the shop. An aquarium with wood panelling houses a small group of red-bellied piranhas, and nearby vivaria house some recent hatchlings, crocodile eggs and various invertebrates including black widow and huntsman spiders. Several other vivaria don’t contain any animals at all, but rather armies of little plastic soldiers or dioramas with plastic model animals.
So far an irregular and eccentric collection, it’s something of a relief to walk into the main (central) reptile hall, with rows of large vivaria lining each wall from the ground to above head height. A few exceptions include a tall panther chameleon enclosure, and a couple of series of enclosures for tarantulas and other large invertebrates. Highlights among these include the two less common Theraphosa species (Goliath bird-eating spiders). The first few reptile enclosures house more common species, like king cobra, Texas ratsnake, bearded dragon, cave racer and yellow anaconda, but moving down towards the end of the house, steps up are definitely noted, with Indochinese spitting cobra, white-lipped tree viper and Fiji banded iguana with a huge New Caledonian giant gecko. Another vivarium houses a large Gran Canaria giant lizard (one of only two European holdings, although they’re common in the wild in some Gran Canarian collections). Other interesting lizards here include a Halmahera giant gecko and some Chinese crocodile lizards.
At the end of the hall is a large pool for an Alligator snapping turtle and West African dwarf crocodiles (whose eggs are being incubated by the entrance).
The next hall consists of pools for turtles, tall enclosures (mostly with outdoor access) for mammals and reptiles, and trees for the free-roaming marmosets to use. Striped mud turtle, Eastern water dragon, rhinoceros iguana and a variety of callitrichids are among the residents here. A nice enough area, but not quite as exciting as the main gallery.
An outdoor area offers viewing areas for the outdoor aspect of some of the enclosures, along with a couple of aviaries and some small enclosures for native species of reptile. Sand lizard, wall lizard, green lizard, eyed lizard and adders (several individuals in a larger enclosure) all showed quite nicely for me. Aviaries for lovebirds, cockatoos and doves and an outdoor enclosure for some timid tiger salamanders.
Back through the main gallery a side entrance leads through to the third hall. Similar to both of the previous rooms, this combines elements of both, with aviaries for macaws, an indoor room for African spurred tortoises, a small snapping turtle pool and a chipmunk cage. Vivaria for scorpions, treefrogs and geckos line the walls, including for grey treefrog, helmeted gecko, Atlas day gecko and Yellow fan-footed gecko. Some of these more unusual inhabitants were very well-hidden during my visit. One of my favourite enclosures here was quite an open wetland exhibit housing grass snake, Italian wall lizards and slow worm (which I couldn’t spot). Plenty of cover and climbing opportunities, and it was nice to see the snake at eye level.
The eccentric theming continues here too, with a rickshaw containing a money plant and some of the empty vivaria holding skulls and skins, although here there is often some educational signage available.
One of the things which struck me here was the effort to which the other visitors would go to spot and identify residents of the enclosures. Without photos on the signs this led to a number of incorrect identications, but it was encouraging to see that most visitors would spend quite a lot of time at each enclosure. I don’t know the Swedish for ‘it’s just another lizard’, so I may be wrong, but there was a lot more interest shown than I had expected and I was frequently asked what was in the enclosure in front of me. In Denmark too I noted that visitors would spend a lot of time trying to spot zoo or aquarium inhabitants and many would follow my camera only to be baffled when I take entire exhibit photos.
After a repeat visit to some of the no-shows, a quick corn snake encounter and a brief chat with the friendly owner I took the nearby bus back to the old town.
