Things that will eat us
Sasha, NHS, and mech crew headed off after lunch to buy PVC pipe for the solar array rotation system (SARS), so Ben, Erika, and I headed to the Melbourne Zoo. It didn't have a buffet with samples of its animals, which made Ben and I very sad, but we had a chance to scout out the animals that will be eating us in the coming weeks.
There were kangaroos, penguins, turtles, lions, giraffes, zebras, snakes, gators, and way too many other animals, so here's a condensed version of our trip.
One of the first, and by far the most awesome of the animals we saw, was the emperor tamarin. There were only two of them in the cage but they had enough energy to run the solar car across Australia. They would constantly leap around the branches in the cage and scramble across the fence for absolutely no reason. By the time your camera had focused they would be flying through the air. They are the ninja assassins of the animal world. To top it all off, they have beautiful white beards worthy of a Chinese martial arts master. In conclusion, TAMARIN!!!
TAMARIN!!!
None of the other animals were nearly as exciting. This giraffe's tongue came close to being as amazing, but the tamarin licked it in terms of sheer awesome.
slurp
The only animals that looked like they wanted to eat us were the little crocs and snakes in the reptile house, but it was more poison than actually eat. Other than that, the lions looked like they had the potential to eat us, but they were far too busy sleeping.
We didn't see any dropbears, but we found evidence of their existence in the aviary. Someone found this bird and brought it to the zoo to recover. As you can see, its head has been stolen by a dropbear. Poor, poor bird...
Victim of a drop bear attack
The Australian animals were actually very disappointing. They don't seem to understand the concept of predators. The koalas wedge themselves between tree branches and sleep...The kangaroos lie on the ground and sleep...Wombats climb into their holes and sleep... Every animal was extremely lazy. Maybe the kangaroos were pretending to be roadkill to hide from predators. We've concluded that if we are being chased by a stampede of hoop snakes, the best strategy is to immediately fall asleep. Here are many sleeping Australian creatures, for your viewing pleasure.
naptime
zzz
Afterwards, we came back, had dinner on the way, and then had gellato! Mmm... We got to the hostel before the PVC pipe crew returned, but after they got back, Ben then ate a second dinner with them. Ben is a monster.
In other news, SARS has been completed*! Hooray!
great success
*by completed, i mean not completed
More animal photos in the gallery
October 9th, 2009 - 13:55
we had a theorem that kangaroos were like schroedinger’s cat, as in, they only exist as roadkill, or not as all, so it seems like you have been the first people to see a real kangaroo in Australia. Congratulations.