Meerkat
According to William Beebe, “Modern man’s trip to the zoo…is his emergency return to nature.” Today we headed to the west side of Phoenix to visit Arizona’s largest collection of exotic animals. The Wildlife World Zoo has more than 3,000 animals representing some 600 species. This privately owned and operated zoo opened in 1984. The Aquarium opened in 2008 and includes the Tiburn Restaurant where we lunched on the patio, enjoying colorful flamingos and macaws swaying to the beat of music. The following observations are based on those animals who posed for snapshots. The slender-tailed meerkats from South Africa belong to the mongoose family but are similar to North American prairie dogs. Schmidt’s spotnose guenons are colorful monkeys with blue on their face from Northeast Congo and Uganda. The patas monkey or red guenon is considered the fastest of all primates, running across plains up to 35 miles per hour. A white-handed gibbon from Southeast Asia kept its two week old baby close. Reticulated giraffes were continuously being fed by visitors.
Arabian Oryx
African spurred tortoises, the third largest tortoise in the world, growing to 200 pounds, were quite active. They fully mature between 20-30 years of age and live a century or more. They can survive for months without water just by eating plants and grasses. The Arabian oryx, saved from extinction through the breeding program of the Phoenix Zoo, displayed frisky behavior during our visit. The addax antelope is a desert antelope native to the Sahara Desert. A white rhinoceros, weighing two and a half tons from East and South Africa, has a broad flat mouth and lip for grazing savannah grasses. The South American tapir has an elongated snout and upper lip and enjoys wallowing in the mud. In the Kangaroo Walkabout we observed a mother kangaroo with her baby peeking out of her pouch. In the Aquarium, we saw several green moray eels sticking their heads out of caves. One eel, however, was looking for a new cave and we could see its long, ribbon-like body. The discus, colorful tropical fresh water fish from the Amazon River basin, played tag with one another.
White Rhino
The vulturine guinea of East Africa is a large and stunning guinea fowl whose head resembles that of a vulture. A vasa parrot from Madagascar and Comoro Islands pecked at the nylon meshing of its cage. The ocellated turkeys from Mexico, Belize, and Guatamala have iridescent feathers. The crested screamers from South America were quiet. Various breeds of macaws were abundant. A pair of blue and gold macaws posed for us. The king vulture from Central and South America has a colorful head. The common rhea is the South American representative of the ostrich family. Our visit to the Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium was an opportunity to “return to nature.”
