Took the family to one of our provincial wildlife parks yesterday , and was surprised at the African and rare animals on display .
Apart from the rhino breeding programme these guys also have springbok - which I have never seen in a North island zoo/park - African Hunting Dogs ,cheetah , tapir , a camel , and at least four Sumatran Tigers.









I appreciate that these arent very Australaisian but at least we can see live species that are otherwise expensive to get access to .

The rhinos came from Kruger National Park in South Africa as wild-caught adults , and have produced one offspring so far - she will be going off to another park to help with future breeding programmes .

Also saw Bison , Zebra , Nilgai , Giraffe , Ostrichs and lots more .

I can post more photos if anyone is interested , including a chimp that looks a lot like the artist formerly known as Far Canal...

quote:

including a chimp that looks a lot like the artist formerly known as Far Canal...

Ohhh I wanna see, I wanna see

quote:

Originally posted by muzza:
including a chimp that looks a lot like the artist formerly known as Far Canal...

The front end or the back end? Or no difference?

Ok , by popular demand we have

the Artist Formerly Known As Far Canal in pensive mode



and also in a more familiar pose...



The more observant amongst viewers may detect the common " foot in mouth " pose here , and not a single Steve Irwin clone in sight....

While we are talking about african animals in Australasia, let me tell you about a fantasy I have always had....

....NO, not that sort of fantasy!!!!....

....But, when I perfect my time travel machine I am going to go back to the early days of Australian colonisation and infiltrate the acclimatization societies, beat their members around the head and talk them out of importing all those pansy European and English game animals and talk them into bringing in some real animals from Africa.

Can you imagine how the Australian landscape would look today with real animals roaming around it - the big five, plains game....WOW, they would thrive here and we wouldn't have to pay through the nose to hunt in the dark continent because we would have it all at our backdoor. Mind you, we might be able to cut a fair deal for some of those would-be-Aussies from across the Tasman Sea, like the ones who are members here, but we'd make the rest of the bastards pay through their collective noses!

...now I just have to fit this flux capacitor into my Delorian and I will be in business!

Down , Bob - you know all that thinking will only speed up the onset of altzheimers. You have left it 150 years too late man .