Ueno Zoo Part VII: Other West Garden Exhibits

The majority of the remaining exhibits in the West Garden of the Ueno Zoo were displays of African animals. Many were species I'd frequently seen in other zoos, and as the zoo's closing time was swiftly approaching, I decided to omit most of those exhibits from my trip. However, there were a few exceptions.

The translation here is rather garbled, but it gets the point across.

This shoebill, however, was staying behind the glass-fronted part of its enclosure, beyond the reach of head- and hand-standing visitors.

In general, the zoo does a good job of providing its inhabitants with shelter while still allowing visitor viewing and many of the animals had both outdoor and indoor viewing areas. As it happened, most of them opted for their indoor accommodations on my visit. Here's an okapi, a species I haven't seen since my first trip to the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park (long before I started this blog).

An exception from the African theme was this giant anteater, pacing around its exhibit. Other South American species, including maned wolves and two-toed sloths, were kept nearby.

Other neighbors were its African ecological counterparts, these aardvarks.

Japan really likes penguins. Everyone does, but it was particularly noticeable in that every zoological institution I visited on my trip had a penguin exhibit. After the giant tank at the Sumida Aquarium though, almost any other penguin display looked like a let-down.

Next up will be the final report from my Tokyo trip!

Ueno Zoo Part VI: Small Mammal House

A cotton-top tamarin.

This zoo might have a larger collection of small rodents than any other that I've been to. This is a Japanese grass vole.

A large Japanese field mouse. (Does that mean there's also a small Japanese field mouse? The answer is yes. In fact, there was a display for some next to this one, but I was unable to get satisfactory pictures of it.) You might notice the PhyloPic t-shirt I'd been wearing reflected by the glass in this photo.

Some Cairo spiny mice.

A Pallas's cat, a somewhat peculiar-looking wild cat from the Central Asian steppes.

Some Ryukyu flying foxes.

Up to this point, many of the other species here had overlapped with the roster I regularly see at the National Zoo. But my visit wasn't quite over yet...

The pathway detoured outdoors and sloped downwards toward the lower floor of the Small Mammal House, where the nocturnal exhibits were kept. Along the way there was a pen for a North American porcupine.

The sloping walkway was decorated with photographs of juvenile animals that had been born here at the small mammal house, in case the adult inhabitants weren't already cute enough to induce diabetes.

A kinkajou, an arboreal frugivore closely related to raccoons.

A short-beaked echidna. (A moment of silence for Victor the echidna, the oldest resident mammal of the San Diego Zoo at the time of his death. I'm glad I got to see him one last time before he passed.)

A Japanese giant flying squirrel. Several individuals lived in a fairly large exhibit, which they shared with a Japanese hare. (Is there also a Japanese dwarf flying squirrel? The answer is yes, and they are famously adorable. As a matter of fact, there were some in a nearby display, but the viewing area was cluttered with the bodies of unprepared visitors suffering from heart attacks. I may have lied about that last part.)

A brush-tailed bettong. The one at the National Zoo is frequently a no-show (despite being kept in a dimly-lit habitat), but this one was quite active.

Some Seba's short-tailed bats.

Some common dormice. Although I didn't get pictures of any others, this zoo almost certainly has the biggest collection of dormice species I'm aware of. Dormice are more closely related to squirrels than to mice.

Also worthy of mention were the harvest mice (which are true mice), which I spent a long time unsuccessfully trying to take photos of.

A group of lesser bushbabies.

They lived alongside yet another rodent, but one significantly larger than them, a springhare.

One of the best species (in my opinion) was saved for last: the spectral tarsier! Tarsiers are the only primates that are entirely carnivorous and are very rare in North American zoos.

Ueno Zoo Part V: Vivarium

Japanese giant salamanders were an appropriate entrance exhibit for the Ueno Zoo's vivarium, though my photo of one turned out less than stellar due to reflective glass.

Easily the best-decorated giant salamander exhibit I've ever seen (at least aesthetically)!

There were a number of smaller displays nearby (mostly highlighting reptile and amphibian species with unusual adaptations), but there was substantial crowding in front of them so I didn't stick around for long.

The main display area here is set in a greenhouse with open- or mesh-topped habitats for the larger inhabitants and more traditional glass displays for smaller animals. The path was comparatively narrow as far as zoo trails go, so I found myself funneled along with little time to spend at each viewing area. As a result, I probably took fewer photos than I otherwise would have. The original Japanese name of the vivarium is the "amphibian and reptile house", but this may be a strange case of the translated name being more fitting, as there were also a few species of fish exhibited here. These are Australian lungfish.

An African dwarf crocodile.

A quince monitor. A new species for me, with some nice colors to boot!

A tomistoma or false gharial. It used to be that I never saw this species in zoos, but I've been to at least three zoos in recent years where they've been housed. While no longer as rare a sight as I remember it once being, its unusual morphology and striking color pattern retain their appeal.

A male leaf-nosed snake. While I'm not confident that this is a first for me, I only remember seeing this species in one of my children's books.

This picture I took to demonstrate what the general environment inside the greenhouse was like. There were some small free-flying birds around, as suggested by the presence of the birdhouse.

Unexpectedly, the end of the path was decorated with models of various fossil specimens! This one was the most recognizable among them (and most pertinent to this blog).

Outside the greenhouse, a room off to the side exhibited native Japanese reptiles and amphibians. I found this Chinese soft-shelled turtle with its head submerged underwater. I thought it was a somewhat humorous sight because, in a sense, it's the reverse of how one often sees soft-shelled turtles: submerged with their head reaching up towards the surface to snorkel. I suspect what it may have been doing though was quasi-urinating through its mouth!

Ueno Zoo Part IV: Shinobazu Pond

As previously mentioned, a long bridge connects the East and West Gardens of the Ueno Zoo. There's an emu enclosure towards the east end of the bridge, but not much else in terms of exhibits.

One of the first things one sees upon reaching the West Gardens is Shinobazu Pond (or at least, the quarter of it that sits within the zoo's perimeters). The pond is home to big flocks of wild great cormorants.

Some captive waterbirds live in or near the pond as well, such as these white pelicans.

An African spoonbill.

Some Inca terns. Their aviary was significantly taller than those of the other waterbirds, giving these aerialists more room to fly around.

More Inca terns with a waldrapp ibis and a Canada goose.

A Madagascar ibis.

A short distance from shore was a small island on which Steller's sea eagles were kept. (Presumably they have been rendered flightless one way or another.)

Another corner of the pond had a Madagascar theme, including displays for radiated tortoises, hedgehog tenrecs, and hissing cockroaches. Here's one that I have actual pictures for, Madagascar's largest mammalian predator alive today, the fossa.

You can't have a Madagascar exhibit without lemurs, naturally. There were many species here: ring-tailed lemurs, ruffed lemurs, brown lemurs, gray gentle lemurs... but most exciting for me were the aye-ayes. Aye-ayes are incredibly unusual creatures and this was the first time I'd seen any in real life. There was at least one kept in a diurnal exhibit (predictably, it was sleeping), but a few others had nocturnal exhibits, in which they were very active. That activity, combined with the darkness, made them difficult to photograph. This is one of my more successful efforts (so you can imagine how the others turned out!).

Ueno Zoo Part III: Bird House

Further into the East Garden of the Ueno Zoo, I came across a well-planted dhole exhibit. Dholes are not common in North American zoos in my experience, so it was a welcome sight.

There was a small nocturnal house nearby. Interestingly, this zoo is the second one I've been to that exhibits pangolins!

Other inhabitants of the nocturnal house included mouse deer, leopard cats, slow lorises, and Leschenault's rousettes. As it turns out, this was not the only nocturnal exhibit the zoo had, but we'll get to that down the line. Arguably of even greater interest, however, was the bird house next door.

Well... I did say most of the small animal exhibits looked decent. This cage contained a red-shouldered macaw. Large parrots are difficult to accommodate properly, but this still stands out rather negatively among otherwise presentable displays, especially the other (fairly large) enclosures in the bird house.

A shorebird exhibit. From left to right, the species visible in the picture are a wattled jacana, reeve, redshank, and Egyptian plover.

A southern bald ibis. This was part of a very large two-story display with many, many species.

This green turaco was another inhabitant of that display.

As were this spur-winged plover (left) and blacksmith plover (right).

As the "two-story high" factoid would suggest, there was a second floor to the bird house. From this higher vantage point I also saw a great slaty woodpecker, the largest unequivocally extant woodpecker in the world!

There was also this bearded barbet.

Another two-story exhibit (of which I don't have first-story photos) included this blue-throated piping guan.

More Palawan peacock pheasants, this time including a female. The peacock-like "eyespots" on the male are also more visible here than in my previous photo of one.

A flock of Fischer's lovebirds. Despite the language barrier, general reactions I noticed suggested that visitors were quite taken with these fellows.

A poor photo of a crested partridge.

A male paradise whydah with a female in the background. Interestingly, they were kept with common waxbills, which some whydahs are brood parasites of. I wonder whether this was an attempt to stimulate breeding in the whydahs.

Some blue-breasted quail were also present in that display.

This exhibit had two local kingfisher species living in it, a ruddy kingfisher...

... and a common kingfisher.

They had a pond well stocked with small fish to fish from.

Somewhat strangely, the centerpiece of the bird house was not a bird exhibit at all, but a southern tamandua! I'm not complaining; I've only seen tamanduas before at the Woodland Park Zoo (and I believe they were northern tamanduas). This one also had an outdoor exercise area just outside the bird house, with a large tree for it to climb (up to a certain height at least, at which point they had encircled the tree trunk with metal sheets, presumably to prevent escape).

Not far from the bird house proper were some outdoor aviaries. Here's a laughing kookaburra with only its head visible.

A great blue turaco, both comical looking and magnificently striking.

A secretary bird. This long-legged raptor is always good to see.

As the sign in the above photos hints, one of its neighbors was a black-necked crane.

On my way towards the West Garden, I passed through an arctic-centered exhibit, with displays for polar bears, seals, and sea lions. There was also a series of ptarmigan enclosures showing birds at different stages of their seasonal molt, which I thought was fairly ingenious.