islandhippy

This morning I had to yank Olive off a footpath before she was mown down by a victoria crowned pigeon from New Guinea which was being chased by a lemur from Madagascar which was itself being pursued by an angry spotted whistling duck from Australia. Like a scene from the movie Jumanji, this procession of bizarre animals came hurtling down the path causing panic among pedestrians. Olive and I were, of course, in the 20,000-cubic-metre Fragile Forest aviary at Singapore Zoo so I guess we shouldn’t have been too surprised by the selection of animals but you tend to do a double-take when you have a lemur running between your legs in hot pursuit of the world’s largest pigeon, followed by a mad duck.

Even more amazing, to me at least, was my discovery that the female Malaysian stick insect, the largest stick insect on the planet, doesn’t need a male of the species to reproduce! A zookeeper kindly fished one of the insects out of its cage to show to Olive and me and she explained that if the female mates with a male Malaysian Stick Insect then she can produce male and female offspring but without a male she can still produce offspring, only that they would all be female. Olive and I visit the zoo twice a month and we love it!