The Singapore Zoo offers a night safari, the only of its kind in the world. What is cool about the Singapore Zoo (and a little bewildering and unsettling at times), is that they are the only zoo that offers "free enclosures" for their animals. Which means, you'll seldom see any "cages", if any at all! Some of the animals are free to roam - monkeys, orangutans, antelope, deer, kangaroos - others have only ditches or brush that inhibit the animals from crossing over into the pedestrians' paths. Honestly, I'm not sure how it all works. But, it is hands down the best zoo that I've ever been to in the world. And I'm not always a fan of zoos. Definitely not the circus. Cirque du Soleil, yes. Barnum and Bailey, no. But, I like what this zoo looks like and what it stands for and the conservation work it does.
In my last life, when I was modeling, I went to South Africa for about 5 1/2 months. While there, I went on a few real safaris on private reserves during the days and nights. They were some of the best experiences of my life. I was so impressed and learned so much. (Picture me and a friend on these elaborate safaris, the only young ones, with our DISPOSABLE cameras...with other older mature adult tourists with their expensive cameras...we must have looked like such a joke to them. ha!) Our safari rangers would have their Bachelor's in Botany and Master's in Zoology and sometimes even their PhD's. The information I learned was fascinating. To see so many animals living together harmoniously in their natural environment was amazing, to say the least. I saw things I've never seen and learned things I never knew before. I hope to take my family there again one day. But for now, we tried the Night Safari at the Zoo.
I was actually pretty pleasantly surprised. The quality was much higher than I originally expected. Once inside the park, it did not seem as there were many tourists. You could take walking paths, listen to expert guides and ride in a driven tram along a (dark) route throughout the entire zoo. The whole zoo was very dimly lit. No flashes or spotlights were allowed on cameras or phones. There were no lights on the trams. The dim lights within the zoo did allow for the people to see any animals well. However, it was not enough to take very clear pictures. Hence, the reason for my horribly unclear and few pictures. We weren't able to see all the animals, as every safari (real or not) is always a gamble. Some were in their dens, some within the brush. But we were pretty fortunate to see the animals we actually did see. Most animals feed at night, anyway. We were able to catch the lions feeding, which was neat for the kids. I've seen a pride kill and feed on a zebra (because it was in their natural environment for survival purposes, I was totally okay with it, of course!), which was absolutely amazing. These lions in the zoo, since they're not supposed to get used to feeding on the other zoo animals, were thrown meat from afar. Nevertheless, it was neat for the kids to watch.
Animals we were able to see included a few monkeys, leopard cats, tapirs, antelope, birds, elephant, rhino, hippo, maned wolf, some gigantic bats (yikes!), guanaco, lions, and more. We've also been to the zoo during the day a few weeks ago...and we still haven't been through the whole place! We got annual passes, at the end!
leopard
wolf
lion pride
pride feeding
tapir
elephant
