July Visit To Dartmoor Zoological Park
Nearly a month has gone by since I went to Dartmoor Zoological Park (on 11th July 2010) and I’ve only just realised that I haven’t written about my fantastic day out!
This picture is of one of the Lowland Tapir that’s at the zoo.
I love going round animal parks and seeing all the different animals, exotic and native to the UK, so 5 or so years ago when I discovered this zoo which was practically on my doorstep I could not wait to go!
This latest trip there must be my 4th or 5th visit! This time (as usual) I made my way straight to the tigers. My favourite animals I would say are the big cats, lions, tigers, pumas, jaguars e.t.c and out of those the Tigers are my favourite. The very first time I went to this wildlife park it was hard to see any of the animals, and the only ones I remembered seeing were ‘Soloman’ the lion and ‘Tazmin’ the Tiger.
The first time I visited the park, it had different owners, and to me seemed to be pretty run down. Since then the zoo is unrecognizable as the same place as it is miles better and some of the animals have bigger enclosures too. Indeed Tazmin now has a huge enclosure all to herself, I believe before she was sharing her run with her sister, (who I believe now to be at another zoo) and I think they were let out on alternate days.
Tazmin’s new enclosure is so much bigger and the landscape is much more interesting for her, with trees and different levels she can ‘perch’ on. This environment I believe reflects the natural environment where a wild Siberian tiger could be found. Indeed, the time before last a peacock flew into the enclosure and we even saw Tazmin stalking the bird (the peacock got away).
Whenever I go to any places with animals I always take a camera to take as many pictures as possible, many of which are included on this website. When I went I had my new Sony Camera (which my Dad has gave to my that very morning). I was so excited about taking pictures with it (normally I use the camera on my mobile which is 5mb) that by 20 minutes into looking round I had used up all the memory! I soon found that I had endless copies of each picture so I was able to delete many. My family also had their cameras and took so many pictures I don’t know what I’m going to do with them all! Some of my very best pictures in my ‘Dartmoor Zoo’ photo album are taken by my brother who has a professional photography camera and takes amazing photos to a very high standard. This picture of a meerkat is one of them.
Yes, meerkats – this was the first time that I saw this exhibit! That’s the great thing about this zoo; there’s always new animals arriving. The meerkats were so much smaller than I thought they were; well I’ve only ever seen them on television before!
Other animals I saw to name a few are: wolves, owls, ostriches, bears, jaguars, agoutis, capybaras, deer, otters, foxes and pygmy goats.
I’ve heard somewhere that Dartmoor Zoological Park is hoping to get some giraffe sometime in the future; I hope this is true as the only other zoo I’ve seen giraffe at is Paignton Zoo, which is quite a journey away.
It really was a fantastic day out and was such a brilliant start to the summer!
August 5, 2010
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Maddia (Admin) В· 
3 Comments
Tags: dartmoor zoo, exotic, lions, tapir, tigers, wild animals, zoological parks В· Posted in: My Animal Experiences
3 Responses
I’ve been there!
Nice blog, and I 100% agree what a fantastic place it is. I’m eager to get back, if it were only on my doorstep.
Whenever i have spare time then i go to zoo and i bring with me my camera, i click lots of pictures of animals.