Creatures of the Night
On my last night in Singapore, I headed to the Night Safari Park. Wow! It's an amazing place.
The park is open from 7:30 pm (which is always just after nightfall-- no seasonal change in sunset at the equator) to midnight. It's a tropical forest filled with real wild animals in fairly large pens. While the visitors are there, the pens are bathed in pale light, about as strong as the moon, from lamps facing the animals so they can't see the visitors very well.
The result is that the animals that are normally asleep when you visit the zoo-- all the big cats, for example-- are active. And the Night Safari Park allows people to get much closer to them than at most animal parks.
There are two ways to see the park. There is quite a nice tram tour that takes you by lots of interesting stuff-- African wild deer, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, lions, rhinos, elephants, capibaras, etc. In fact, you have to take the tram to see everything because the walking trails (see below) don't extend that far. And the tram really gets quite close to the animals. In some cases, there is only a small stream between the animals and the road! No fence! We went right by some kind of antelope about 10 feet from the tram. In other cases, there was an actual barrier (like for the golden jackals), but it was still just some vines and a small fence; I had the impression the jackal could have leaped out if he wanted to.
They feed the animals at night, so they are often up and about getting their dinner. Apparently for the scavengers they hide the meat in a different place each night. So we saw several hyenas wandering around quite energetically, while the tram guide explained that they were "searching for their dinner."
In addition, there are walking trails -- and I mean real jungle trails like you'd go hiking on. Some visitors to the park could probably only do the tram because the trails would be too strenuous/rough. These trails go past some of the same animals as you see from the tram, as well as some different ones: leopards, various kinds of "fishing cats," etc.
When you go by a pen, it tends to come up suddenly. You round a bend in the overgrowth, and -- lo! -- the branches are cut away and you are looking at a wild deer about 20 feet away. Probably behind a small moat and a short wire fence. But it's really up-close-and-personal. There are signs everywhere saying not to yell at the animals, throw things at them, use flash photography, or otherwise disturb them.
(More than once I encountered things where I felt certain it could never work in the United States. People would do something stupid, get hurt, and sue the park out of existence. It's too bad-- we really limit ourselves this way. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see the animals with almost no barriers between us. The park was run in an orderly way, and I could tell that the guides, although superficially friendly and helpful, were well-trained for emergencies, sort of like airplane personnel. There were plenty of park staff around the trails to help out.)
The neatest thing I saw was the Malaysian tiger. The window on his pen was reinforced glass, but that was the only barrier. Read it again-- there was only glass between us and the tiger. In fact, while I stood there, the tiger walked over and paced around in front of the glass, cocking his head as if he could see/hear/smell something nearby. Perhaps he could-- human scent. Anyway, he was quite active, sniffing in the grass, running to and fro, coming up to the glass, sitting down for a few minutes at the foot of a tree.
None of the stuff you usually see from tigers in the zoo-- pacing around a mind-numbing track in a mostly-cement pen, or sleeping behind the log so all you can see is the tail. This tiger was vibrant and clearly aware of his surroundings. He looked healthy and powerful. And he was just an inch away from me! I'm not sure how the lighting was, so I don't know if he could see us or not, but I felt like we locked eyes for a moment, and I could see his tigerness.
A wild evening to end a wild trip.
The park is open from 7:30 pm (which is always just after nightfall-- no seasonal change in sunset at the equator) to midnight. It's a tropical forest filled with real wild animals in fairly large pens. While the visitors are there, the pens are bathed in pale light, about as strong as the moon, from lamps facing the animals so they can't see the visitors very well.
The result is that the animals that are normally asleep when you visit the zoo-- all the big cats, for example-- are active. And the Night Safari Park allows people to get much closer to them than at most animal parks.
There are two ways to see the park. There is quite a nice tram tour that takes you by lots of interesting stuff-- African wild deer, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, lions, rhinos, elephants, capibaras, etc. In fact, you have to take the tram to see everything because the walking trails (see below) don't extend that far. And the tram really gets quite close to the animals. In some cases, there is only a small stream between the animals and the road! No fence! We went right by some kind of antelope about 10 feet from the tram. In other cases, there was an actual barrier (like for the golden jackals), but it was still just some vines and a small fence; I had the impression the jackal could have leaped out if he wanted to.
They feed the animals at night, so they are often up and about getting their dinner. Apparently for the scavengers they hide the meat in a different place each night. So we saw several hyenas wandering around quite energetically, while the tram guide explained that they were "searching for their dinner."
In addition, there are walking trails -- and I mean real jungle trails like you'd go hiking on. Some visitors to the park could probably only do the tram because the trails would be too strenuous/rough. These trails go past some of the same animals as you see from the tram, as well as some different ones: leopards, various kinds of "fishing cats," etc.
When you go by a pen, it tends to come up suddenly. You round a bend in the overgrowth, and -- lo! -- the branches are cut away and you are looking at a wild deer about 20 feet away. Probably behind a small moat and a short wire fence. But it's really up-close-and-personal. There are signs everywhere saying not to yell at the animals, throw things at them, use flash photography, or otherwise disturb them.
(More than once I encountered things where I felt certain it could never work in the United States. People would do something stupid, get hurt, and sue the park out of existence. It's too bad-- we really limit ourselves this way. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see the animals with almost no barriers between us. The park was run in an orderly way, and I could tell that the guides, although superficially friendly and helpful, were well-trained for emergencies, sort of like airplane personnel. There were plenty of park staff around the trails to help out.)
The neatest thing I saw was the Malaysian tiger. The window on his pen was reinforced glass, but that was the only barrier. Read it again-- there was only glass between us and the tiger. In fact, while I stood there, the tiger walked over and paced around in front of the glass, cocking his head as if he could see/hear/smell something nearby. Perhaps he could-- human scent. Anyway, he was quite active, sniffing in the grass, running to and fro, coming up to the glass, sitting down for a few minutes at the foot of a tree.
None of the stuff you usually see from tigers in the zoo-- pacing around a mind-numbing track in a mostly-cement pen, or sleeping behind the log so all you can see is the tail. This tiger was vibrant and clearly aware of his surroundings. He looked healthy and powerful. And he was just an inch away from me! I'm not sure how the lighting was, so I don't know if he could see us or not, but I felt like we locked eyes for a moment, and I could see his tigerness.
A wild evening to end a wild trip.
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