When we arrived it was just about time for the meet the bugs talk so we headed to the inside exhibits first. These take you through a fascinating journey through evolution:
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| My son's favourite shell |
There was plenty of hand on stuff including this magnifying glass:
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| Examining bugs close up |
Or this bugatelle where your choices of things such as number of legs resulted in a different bug at the bottom. Both my two had several goes on this:
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| Bugatelle |
Then we got into the actual live exhibits. My son was entranced by the leaf cutter ants who were so busy going back and forth from their colony collecting food:
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| Leaf cutter ants foraging |
He was quite happy to stay there whilst big sister was keen to handle bugs including this cockroach:
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| Girl holding a cockroach |
Only the keeper was allowed to hold this nasty looking scorpion:
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| Scorpion |
My daughter did also have a stick insect on her hand though interestingly she was less keen on this than the cockroach:
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| Girl holding stick insect |
Eventually as it was nearly snow leopard feeding time we dragged the children away from the creepy crawlies and outside. There were plenty of cute furry creatures to see and one of the fun meerkat bubbles for the children:
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| Looking for meerkats |
Typically the meerkats were hiding in their nice warm hut but they did pop out to say hello! My children then burned off some energy in the little play area:
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| On the monkey bars |
The snow leopards are in an enclosure right at the end of the zoo. What made it really special was the see through viewing tunnel that we could walk in and get really close up to them:
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| "Look up there!" |
We were so close it was almost as if you could stroke their tails:
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| 'Stroking' the snow leopard's tail |
Their paws were right above our heads:
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| Snow leopard paw |
Whilst waiting for feeding time there was time to make the most of the big bench and large viewing window to admire these beautiful creatures. Such a shame that they have almost been hunted to extinction in the wild so need to be brought up in captivity.
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| admiring snow leopards |
The leopards knew when the keeper was coming with their food and got quite animated. She had to lock them in their sleeping compartment before she could spread the food around their enclosure so that they would have to hunt for it:
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| Snow leopard feeding |
There was some very close up viewing as the meat was put in a variety of places including the ledge of the tunnel:
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| Getting close to feeding time |
The leopards seemed to like getting close to the humans. I am not sure who is eyeing up who in this shot:
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| Eyeballing a snow leopard |
We finally had enough of the snow leopards and headed off to see what else was on offer. This included a walk through aviary:
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| In the walk through aviary |
Like many zoos there was a walk in section with the lemurs. When we first went in the 2 different species of lemur were having a bit of a set to over who was allowed out into the enclosure. Eventually some ring tails managed to get out to eat their dinner:
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| Watching the ring tailed lemur |
One of my favourite creatures at the oasis was this red squirrel. Its a shame that one of the few places you can get this close to them is in captivity but hopefully the offspring will go on to re-colonise parts of Cumbria:
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| Red Squirrel |
We needed warming up with a very nice coffee inside before returning to the inside exhibits. We all had a go at lifting the amount of plankton a cod needs to eat for us to get one fish finger:
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| Lifting 28 kg of 'plankton' |
It was hard to drag my son away from the ants again he was so fascinated! All in all a great little zoo that I am sure we will return to.
