I visited this zoo in August 2012, and for a very obvious reason! I came to see the two giant pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang. There were other creatures there that my family and I had not seen before, such as the koala and the cassowary. Like Belfast zoo, it is situated on a mountain overlooking the city. While we were driving to the zoo, we saw advertised posters of the pandas (people in suits), including one where they get married! There were a lot of animals that we had already seen, like the sun bear and the Indian rhino. One of the most notable animals in Edinburgh zoo is the penguin, including Nils Olav, who was knighted in 2008. Interestingly enough, I had been at Belfast zoo 3 days earlier and then I visited the Highland Wildlife Park 3 days after Edinburgh. Seven years later, I visited Edinburgh zoo again, but only with my mother this time. I was extremely lucky to have seen Tian Tian and Yang Guang again, as they had moved to a new enclosure, and the outdoor viewing was mostly restricted to give the bears time to settle into their new home. More recently, we visited the zoo for my 21st birthday, and I was really lucky to get my best view yet of a giant panda, as I saw Yang Guang enjoying his bamboo. I also got to see the koalas nice and active, whereas they seemed fast asleep on our previous two visits (koalas can sleep up to 22 hours a day!).
Here is a link to their website: http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk
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Fota Wildlife Park – David Twamley
[…] Like Dublin and Belfast Zoos, I attended the park’s summer camp when I was 12 (I did it a month before Belfast Zoo’s camp). While there, I was lucky to get to go on the Fota train, and I also learned about the new Asian Sanctuary that the park was developing. As of 2022, the sanctuary is home Sumatran tigers, Asian lions, Visayan warty pigs and spotted deer, and Indian Rhinos, along with the red pandas, lion-tailed macaques and gibbons already living in the park. In the future, the Asian sanctuary will also become home to some interesting species like the takin and an (as yet unknown) Asian bear species. In the years since I attended the summer camp, the park has developed new South America and Madagascar exhibits, and become home to drill monkeys, the less colourful but more endangered cousin of the mandrill, which I had seen before at Edinburgh Zoo. […]