Look at this jellyfish! As I was kayaking around some of the islands on Halong Bay I saw one every few minutes and they were huge. They could deliver quite a sting if you got mixed up in their tentacles but that hasn't stopped people catching them and selling them to China where they are a popular in salads.
Have you ever wondered why zoos open when most of the animals sleep in the day? Well, Singapore Night Safari's solved this by only opening at night! A zoo at night is very different to one in the day, there is so much more happening and I thought it was brilliant (And a little bit scary at the same time).
I started with a 'safari ride' (Think Longleat but with a long golf cart style vehicle) and drove past some very interesting creatures. The most dangerous animals, like Asian lions and hyenas, were only seperated by moats instead of fences or glass and the others could come right up to us. I don't think the lady who had two kiss-chase playing tapirs accidentally run into her part of the cart at high speed will forget those creatures for the rest of her life!
Afterwards I was free to wander the rest of the zoo and got to see fishing cats on the hunt, porcupines battling over food and even a rare Malaysian tiger come out of the darkness and roar so loud it was heard in other parts of the zoo.
Activity: Google a picture of a binturong and for smell-o-vision ask your parents to make some popcorn because this curious, bigger than you think creature, makes a smell like popcorn to mark it's territory!
You would look twice if you saw a koala at a vets in Britain! This is Peri who fell out of her tree and broke some bones. Thankfully the vets at Australia Zoo Animal Hospital are nursing her back to health.
This is a photo of my favourite species of bird on the planet; the cassowary. They can't fly, only live wild in northern Australia and parts of Papua New Guinea and I think they are brilliant!
Not only can they be taller than me when they stretch to full height but they also have a very strong 'helmet' on their head which they will use to fight. On top of that, check out the huge claws at the end of it's legs! This photo was taken at Australia Zoo but I was gutted not to see one in the wild despite always keeping an eye out.
Did You Know?: If you ever met a cassowary in the wild, one on one, you should never turn your back on it. They are famously dangerous birds that will ferociously protect their territory and they're are not afraid to attack people. The best thing to do is back away slowly until there's something between the two of you and it moves away.
Anyone who knows me, or just reads this blog, will know that I love zoos and animals. On Tuesday I visited Australia Zoo which was made famous by the Crododile Hunter, Steve Irwin, who was sadly killed by a stingray in 2006. What a great zoo! There are over 500 animals and all the enclosures I saw were a good size and well 'decorated' for the creatures.
There were still a few animals I was desperate to see before I left Australia so I made sure I was able to cross cassowaries (Scarily powerful clawed feet), wombats (Much bigger than I thought), echidnas (Just visible in a hollowed log), a Tasmanian devil (Having a dip to cool down), dingoes (Which look just like regular dogs), kookaburas (I got to hear their famous 'laugh') and koalas (Very fluffy if a little smelly) off my list. I even got to see more crocodiles, stroke a small alligator and hand feed some kangaroos!
Did You Know?: Kangaroos don't just hop about on their two legs. When going at a more relaxed pace they will sometimes use their front paws and even their tails too to move themselves along!
The boat I travelled on when croc-spotting is solar powered so it's good for the environment but also very quiet which means it can get a lot closer to the wildlife than boats with noisier petrols engines. However, a few weeks ago it got a bit too close...
Scarface was having a fight with another crocodile and when these animals fight they will tend to bite something close to kind of say "Hey, look how strong I am!". Scarface went for a big branch and shook it hard, sending leaves and bugs everywhere while his opponent went for something a little bigger, the boat!
Luckily, no one was hurt but I've attached a photo of me comparing an average-sized saltwater crocodile tooth with my average-sized human teeth and a photo of the dent and bite mark left by the croc as he chomped on the boat's hard metal railing! A reminder to the tour guide to not get quite so close in the future.
Meet Scarface, he's a 50-70 year old saltwater crocodile and the alpha male on his stretch of the Daintree River (Home to crocs, bull sharks, box jellyfish and sea snakes, not a river to swim in!). Being alpha male means that he is the top croc around and if you want to get an idea of his size ask at school if you can put four metre sticks end to end and you'll have it, he is huge!
I've now seen the smaller caymen in Brazil and these Australian saltwater crocodiles in the wild and, although I was a fan before, my love for crocodiles has grown. I just love how dinosaur-like they are, they're brilliant!
Did You Know?: The sticky up bits on crocodile's tails are called scoots. One of their main uses is to add power as the crocodile attacks it's prey. Think of them as lots of tiny oars pushing water back as it thrashes it's tail through the water.
Here's a photo of me as I head out to snorkel around one of the Great Barrier Reef's coral reefs. I've got the black suit on as it's 'stinger season' and it helped protect me against any jellyfish that may have brushed past me with their stinging tentacles.
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the most famous natural landmarks on the entire planet, and it is so beautiful with clear turquoise waters, tropical islands and coral reefs. Once I had swum from the shallow sandy beach and through a large lawn of seagrass I reached the coral of all colours; pink, green, blue and yellow.
Just below me, in amongst the coral, there were many, many creatures swimming around. I saw so many colourful tropical fish that I couldn't name as well as some very colourful unicorn fish, black and white angel fish and a group of small squid swimming together. I even saw a couple of blue spotted rays that looked like they were flying instead of swimming. My best spot, though, has to be an octopus lurking on a rock, it moved across the stone after watching me for a while changing colour as it went to remain camouflaged before going a dark, dark red. I left it at this point deciding not to cause it any alarm, after all I was the intruder in his home not the other way around. Finally, on the way back to the boat home Nads had time for one more spot, a large sea turtle swimming amongst the seagrass! What a day!
Did You Know?: The Great Barrier Reef isn't one long coral reef but lots of smaller ones close to one another over an area of 350,000 sq km.
In this photo you can find the most venomous fish on the entire planet, the stonefish! Can you see it?
Stonefish can kill a person and are the second highest cause of anti-venom injections in Australia, behind snakes. That means they hurt more people than spiders! One diver who had been stung said the pain was so bad that before getting the anti-venom he would rather have had his leg chopped off!
Spotted it yet? If not, here's a clue: it's quite large, in the middle of the photo and you can see where it get's it's name from.
The creature in this photo is so unusual that when explorers first took a body of one back to Europe people thought it was a fake made from different parts of different animals! It is called a platypus and it can only be found in Australia. The one in this photo is called Jackie.
Jackie may look like she has odd eyes but they are, in fact, closed. Platypus close their eyes, nostrils and ears when swimming and use electrical impulses to find their way about underwater. The bizarreness doesn't stop there though; the males are the only venomous mammals on the planet and the females are one of only two mammals that lay eggs (The other is the echidna)!
I was really excited at the prospect of seeing a platypus here in Australia so I'm super chuffed that one was swimming about at Sydney Aquarium today!
Did You Know?: A baby platypus is called a puggle.
Look who were wandering around a park near the waterside in Sydney. Seeing as they are the only 'seagulls' I've spotted around the city it means they must be the 'mine,mine,mine' birds from Finding Nemo!
A roadsign with penguins on is not your everyday roadsign. Oamaru, though, is not your everyday place, it is home to the world's smallest penguins; the blue penguins. While staying in the town I went to the colony which is looked after by scientists to help protect these rare birds.
My visit kicked into life just after sunset (About 8:30pm) when I heard some squaking on the water from my viewing seat. Within a few minutes these penguins, which don't get much taller than a 30cm ruler, had negotiated the waiting seals and waddled up the rocky beach face on their way home after a long day catching fish at sea.
In the first gang, 32 tiny blue penguins emerged together and made a run for their holes through the fence that protects their colony from predators. These are possibly the cutest animals I've ever seen and every so often one would fall over onto it's belly before getting itself back up and running that extra bit quicker to catch up with the group. Once through the fence they all split up and head slowly towards their nest boxes to share their catch with their chicks.
Blue penguins pair for life and when those parents in the nest boxes know penguins are coming back they call out to their partners to direct them home. It didn't take long before the colony was alive with penguin calls. In total nearly one hundred penguins were at the colony that night and it was great to see such rare birds in the wild being cared for by conservationists.
Did You Know?: A blue penguin chick only takes two months to fully grow and will have around 10,000 feathers when it heads into the water!
What a morning, the 4:30am wake up was worth it! I am currently sat enjoying a breakfast after spending the early hours of this morning swimming in the sea with wild dusky dolphins! After donning a wetsuit, some flippers and snorkel mask onboard a boat I slipped into the sea, started to swim around and within a couple of minutes some dolphins were darting past me.
The visibility wasn't fantastic so we were encouraged to make noises but not splash, the noises make the dolphins curious so more come to investigate but splashes scare them off. We did three separate dives and at one point I had two circling around me under the water as we studied each other.
The company we chose to go with also work hard to not do any damage to the dolphins or their environment. The animals are truly wild, not trained or encouraged to interact with people in any way so the fact that we got to see and swim with them was absolutely incredible. A day to remember.
Did You Know?: A group of dolphins is called a pod.
Only an hour or so into our first journey on the South Island and we came across these guys down on the rocks by the roadside; wild New Zealand fur seals. There were at least 100 seals swimming in the sea or relaxing on the rocks and in the photo you can spy a bunch of younger ones crammed into a larger rock pool splashing about!
Did You Know?: Before hunting started in the 1700's there were more than one million fur seals in this area but although hunting has been banned for over 50 years now there are only around 100,000 left.
I have just seen the most peculiar combination of animals as I travel on the ferry to New Zealand's South Island...I just spotted three wild dolphins jumping in and out of the sea only a couple of hundred metres from the side of the ferry and then, off all the creatures to spot thousands of miles from home, I saw some Hereford cattle mooing away in a transportation truck on board the ship.
There can't be many places in the world where you can spot Hereford cattle and dolphins within seconds of one another!
Discovered by a Maori chief and an Englishman over one hundred years ago, Waitomo Caves are a very special place. Inside, glow worms dangle from the ceiling up above making a perfect copy of a clear night sky. There are thousands of the worms in each cave and each one makes a tiny, bright blue light to attract prey that gets caught in their sticky, dangling threads.
Nobody was allowed to take photos inside the caves so this photo was taken as our boat emerged back into the sunlight of the outside world. If you want to see a picture of the glow worms yourself I would recommend searching online for some.
Did You Know?: Glow worms will spend up to nine months dangling from the ceiling before turning into a bug that has no mouth or stomach and only lives for a few days before starving to death!
Last night I got to see an actual kiwi bird in the wild! Kiwis are the national bird of New Zealand, they can't fly and can live for around 40 years. It was very exciting as we had to wait until dark before venturing out into the forest next to our campsite (One of the few campsites in New Zealand found next to where wild kiwi roam) to start our search.
It is not good for kiwis to see bright lights so we wandered in to the forest with our dimmed torch. Our campsite was only small but other people came from further away to try and spot the birds and as we walked through we passed a number of people waiting quietly. Eventually, Nadia and I got to a deserted area and stood patiently and silently in the darkness with our torch off. After a few minutes we heard some rustling on the ground, a few minutes later and it had gotten closer. We decided it was time to turn on our dimmed torch and as we shone it around we spotted it! In amongst the undergrowth was the rare, brown bird foraging for food. It was much bigger than I thought, about the size of a small chicken and it stayed hunting for insects for a few minutes before disappearing off into the night.
It is probably the most exciting animal I have ever seen because; a) It was in the wild b) We found it ourselves and c) They are famously hard to spot.
Obviously, without being able to use a flash I couldn't get a photo but I have attached a photo I took the this morning. The forest we were in was a rare Kauri Forest and this is a photo of a large and rare kauri tree.
Did You Know?: The kauri tree in this photo is about 14 metres tall and over 1200 years old! It now has other plants living on it's branches but when it was younger it was so small that a kiwi bird could have crushed it if it stood on it!
Can you see the beautiful caymen on the banks of the Pantanal? One is lurking in the water by the boat and another is in the background basking in the sunshine with its jaws open.
Give yourself one team/house/effort point if spot them both (You can even show this blog to your teacher to prove I said it was ok!).
Check out this happy group! This was the scene that greeted us as we arrived at our lodge on Brazil's Pantanal. They are a family of capybaras, the world's largest rodents.
Did You Know?: Being rodents, capybaras are related to the guinea pigs, hamsters, mice and rats that you might have as pets in your home!
