Orana Park!!

On the 18th of September on Wednesday we went to Orana Park in Christchurch. Before we left to Orana park I put myself in so much trouble I woke up a 6am to just get to school early since I was so stoked to go. So we arrived at school an 8am since we walked, My feeling inside was the feeling of being a rocket just blowing up into the sky.  I don’t know why I was so excited to go when I already went there. To be honest with my opinion it was way better than going with family I still love going with them but it is much better when you get taught about them. The different thing was that if I was with my family I would mostly be shown the farm animals and all the common things and we wouldn’t get to stay at one animal long enough to admire them. But if I was with my zoo teacher We got to admire the animal, see the endangered ones and learn about it was a bit more fun than having to just actually walk around. The whole of year sevens was split up into four groups and I was in group 2 and my zoo teachers name was Elaine.

Some of the rules we learned about at the zoo were about the basics you climb over the fences to pet the big cats or poke you finger the fence of a cheetah but the one we had to talk about the most was HIPPO you might know or you might not know about it. No, it is not the animal a hippo but it stands for something and I will tell you what I means. The H means Habitat lost like animals if they lose their homes or it is demolished by us human to make farms or mall and stuff like that, that we have now. I mean Introduced species as in when other animals get brung into New Zealand that is not native in our country. The first P means pollution if you're polluting the animal habitat like if you litter in the drain it will go into our water source and that is the ocean so turtle they endangered and probably soon to extinct since we litter. The second P means Population growth there are more and more humans so that is more and more home then that means there are less and fewer animals and homes for them. Finally, for O it means Over exploitation that means when people killing animals for needs to much and the problem is that some people don’t hunt responsibly like some people kill the animals just for sake of killing or some people kill a rhino and just the horn.

Now I will tell you about what I have learned about the animals, the first animal we saw was the Kiwi everyone in NZ know what the kiwi is.

Kiwi - The kiwi is a nocturnal animal and if you have them in the and you want to feed them you have to feed them live insects because they won't eat them when they're dead.  They have strong bones in their legs unlike other birds when they have hollow bones to fly but the kiwi is a bird and they don’t fly.

Kea - the kea is national bird to NZ it’s a bird don’t give chocolate to kea because it is toxic to them and make sure you, before you drive the kea, is off your car if you do encounter that also if there are any kea around your location  if there is keep and shiny things safe.

Spider Monkey - Did you know that spider monkeys have a thumbprint on the end of their tail and also they use their tails to keep balance?

Lion - The cool thing about lion is that they have the loudest roar of all wild cats and their roar can be heard 5 miles away from them.

Tasmanian Devil - Did you know that Tasmanian devils are marsupials and they have a pouch and that pouch has the purpose of holding babies in it but it can only hold about 4 babies.

Tiger - Tigers live alone and spray to mark their territory.

Zebra - Did you know zebras are black with white stripes how do I know? It’s because they are born black and then slowly develop white stripes while they're growing up, and every zebra has a different stripe pattern.

Buffalo - The buffalos would go in the water and the nose would be poking out but the funny thing is that they hate rain so they go under the trees.

Cheetah - Cheetahs are the only big cat that can purr, cheetah need to rest after they have hunted their food since they use all their energy for it. So when they rest its food gets stolen by lions or hyenas.

Apes - The oldest ape is basically the boss of all the other younger apes and the younger ape must give him whatever he wants.

Orangutan - Orangutans put a sack over their head like sun hats.

Rhinoceros - Did you know that rhinos eat the giraffe's grass so the giraffes don’t get sick because the grass is bad for giraffes? Also they have to shape their own horn to get it in the right shape they want.                 

Giraffe - Giraffes tongues change from pink to purple so it doesn’t get sunburnt.

I had so much fun on that day and I would definitely recommend for you to come back again. There were so many things that I have learned about animal and how they are endangered. Also about hippo and that the kea was the only mountain parrot in the world.