Wild about the zoo

The first thing you notice, after dodging the official photographers, hundreds of kids, and the possibility of being completely sidetracked into the gift shop, is that there are monkeys. Yup, monkeys. Sitting in the tree above your head, jumping from branch to branch. Running along the top of the signboard that I couldn’t tell you what it says, because who reads a sign where there is a monkey sitting on it? Eating oranges, as apparently they do (I would have expected bananas, but whatever).

Singapore Zoo is a wild place to be. Its meandering footpaths allow you to happen upon the animals in their “enclosures”, which often appear more open than enclosed. Next to the tiger area was a painted line showing the range of a tiger’s leap. The dueling visuals of this factual representation and the big tiger pacing and staring menacingly at us was a little unsettling. I was almost convinced he could have leapt the moat and eaten us all, and that he wanted to.

Clearly, I loved the monkeys and their various relations: orang-utans (fun fact: means man of the forest in Malay) from Borneo and Sumatra, proboscis monkeys, gibbons, capuchin monkeys, mandrills, spider monkeys, baboons and many more. Grant enjoyed the snake house, with its display of local poisonous snakes. There were more of those than I really needed to see. You seem so close to the animals that it feels like they are really interacting with you. It was fun watching the cheetah watch Grant as if he was dinner, and the giraffes gave us a stately nod.

After the zoo, we walked over to the Night Safari. This is really a one of a kind experience; it feels like you’ve been let loose in the zoo after dark. Then, as it gets darker, it feels as if the animals have gotten loose in the zoo after dark! Every noise had me jumping a mile in the air, convinced that the glass between me and the leopards had disappeared, or that the lions weren’t just across the road anymore. The most relaxing way to enjoy this experience is to take the 40 minute tram ride that takes you past most of the animals, with a very informative guide.

You also have the option of walking a couple of trails, and that was when it really got spooky. Well, cheesy at first, as you walk through the bar called the Z-Bar with its zebra theme, and then spooky as you walk down pitch-black paths up to big cat viewing areas, and into giant flying squirrel and bat enclosures. I thought I would hate the bat enclosure, but a docent offered to walk us through and really made the experience more interesting than scary. We got very close to the largest bats in the world, the flying fox, aka fruit bat, and watched the lesser dog-faced fruit bats digging into their bananas very happily. The docent was telling us that it was good there was so much fruit available that night, so they weren’t fighting over it. I was pretty happy about that too.

Definitely a must-see for a trip to Singapore, and a great way to spend our last full day there!