Animal Diaries Archive

Sneaky Water Dragons

9 February 2007

As you all know we have a huge range of animals under our care here at Australia Zoo, and this means we have an equally huge range of breakfasts, lunches and dinners to serve up every day to keep our animals happy and content. With all the display animals this often means feeding them on display in their enclosures.

Now this can bring with it several problems for the animals. If they are housed together with other animals they have to be quick to get their share of the spoils. In the case of our Giant Tortoises they don’t move too quickly but they still have to try and divide the food up evenly. Quite often you will see one of our mischievous boys wander over to the food pile and sit right on it. It is almost as if they are trying to hide it from prying eyes while they pick off the best bits from the stack.

Now this is with good reason! If you have ever watched the boys during the demo feeding time at 10am you may have noticed several other sets of eyes watching the food pile from afar. We have a substantial population of wild water dragons that call the zoo home, and they are always on the prowl for a free feed! It just happens that they are quite fond of a lot of the same food as our tortoises and they will think nothing of running out in the middle of the demo and start chewing away on the food. It is always amusing for the visitors to witness this act of thievery but the boys will usually wander off and try to chase the dragons away. The dragons are obviously a bit quicker than the tortoises and will simply wait until they sit down again and then run back to the food pile to finish their feed.