Fota Wildlife Park

Today I went to the Fota Wildlife Park with one of my housemates. It's kind of like a zoo, but there aren't as many animals and not all of them are in enclosures. It's on a kind of island (not really, but sort of) in the Cork bay so we were able to drive out there for the afternoon. Definitely worth it.

The first animals that you encounter when you come into the park are the meerkats. This one was watching 3 of the others fighting. It was actually pretty cute.

Every day they have certain times where they have the cheetah run. This is where they attach meat to a zipline and the cheetahs chase it to get exercise (as well as dinner). We arrived at the park about 10 minutes before the next cheetah run so we hung around their enclosure for a while just watching them. They were definitely very amusing with some pretty hilarious personalities. This one was just super excited that there were a bunch of people hanging around (because he knew dinner was coming soon).

This guy was very patient. He just sat there for a couple of runs until some of the (probably faster) other cheetahs got their food first.

This one was just lazy. He had no interest in moving until he actually saw the meat on the zipline.

Run!!!

This one is either the really stupid one or the really smart one. He didn't run for the meat the first couple of times and instead grabbed the empty rope thing as the zookeeper was bringing it back to put more meat on. Then he just sat there kind of tugging on it and refusing to let go until the guy dropped some meat down for him to distract him.

Buffalo!

That one was massive!

Zebra!

These are the scimitar-horned ornyxs. They are extinct in the wild.

Ostriches!

The peacocks were allowed to roam around free.

So were the maras, but they were a bit skittish.

Becky tried to sneak up on a group of them really slowly...

But they still freaked out and ran away.

 Black swan.

I loved the fro this bird had going on!

They sold food to feed to the ducks.

So pretty...

Penguins!!!

Flamingos.

I cant remember exacting what this one is called, but I do know that it's endangered. I just thought he was funny siting there scratching his butt.

Sleepy.

All I can think when I see this is: NOM NOM NOM!

They were cuddling :)

These guys were hunting the gophers.

This one was just kind of hanging out in the swing. So adorable.

I thought that this sign was hilarious: Lemur house. Not playhouse.

Kangaroos! These are also allowed to roam free, but at this point they were in a pen for other animals. The lemurs are also allowed to roam free, but we never saw any.

Lunch! Garlic chips and cheese. Terrible for you, but oh, so delicious!

Until this guy flew into my garlic sauce. After that he couldn't fly and just kind of walked around my food and eventually made his way onto the table when we left.

Just taking a nap on the rocks.

Becky was mimicking the way that the maras sit with their legs crossed.

You cant really see it, but in the background of this picture there is another mara and he's sitting up with his back to the other one. We thought that it looked like they were angry with each other and refusing to speak or look at each other.

Giraffes!!

Lesser panda? What a sad name!

I dont even know what this is, but it definitely looks pretty scary. It was really big too.

So that's a little bit of our adventure at Fota. It was really fun and I'm really happy that I went. Becky and I are already planning other little day trips around Ireland and since she has a car I'll get to see a lot more than I ever would on a bus. I'm super excited!