Prospect Park Zoo - Wild Australia

The Wild Australia Exhibit officially completely opened on Thursday. In my opinion, that exhibit is one of the most important ones we have at the zoo in terms of conservation.

First we have the dingoes, which I've mentioned before. There have already been plenty of people thinking they are regular dogs or foxes, but once you tell them what they actually are they're very interested in learning about them.









Then there are the yellow-footed rock wallabies, which are classified as "near threatened." The rock wallaby population isn't in serious trouble, and they are actually increasing in number since a large part of their habitat was purchased by an Australian NPO called the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife. We have 5 or 6 of them at the zoo, but they aren't part of any breeding program that I know of.









We also have a grey kangaroo and 5 emus, but those species aren't threatened. We did just get 3 baby emus, which we are beginning to introduce to the exhibit with the adults. Something interesting about the adults as well: the animal department originally believed both adults to be female, but found out that one is a male (it's possible they caught them mating, but that could just be a rumor). We could have some emu eggs of our own pretty soon.

Last but not least are the Cape Barren Geese. I never knew this before working at the zoo, but they nearly went extinct in the 1950s. Thanks to conservation efforts they were saved from extinction, and now are classified as "least concern." The pair we have (Petruchio and Ethel) are very fun to be around. Petruchio likes to follow the docents around and honks very loud when we're out of his field of vision. It's pretty fascinating to see how much personality non-human animals can have.