In March 2014 we spent a few days in Kent, based in Margate – because we really like Margate in the evenings – but spending the days exploring the county in general as we weren’t that familiar with it as a whole. Our trips took us as far south as Dover Castle and the white cliffs but we also spent one day a little closer to the seaside resort where we were staying and that included a trip to Wingham Wildlife Park.
With this publishing of the animals we saw at the zoo taking place almost six years after our visit there’s not going to be a lot of descriptive text accompanying the pictures because my memory isn’t a photographic one. We can’t really remember anything specifically that we got up to at Wingham Wildlife Park but chances are good that we simply walked the main route and snapped away at any of the exhibited creatures that deigned to stay still long enough. What can you say about a zoo that you don’t know already? There are animals there and you either accept that for many it’s an important piece of conservation work or you worry that there’s exploitation taking place. If we were in the latter camp then we wouldn’t visit. We think that zoos generally do a good job these days, in this country at least, and I can’t recall seeing any obviously stressed creatures behind glass or in cages.
So, onto Wingham Wildlife Park’s animals then and I’ll roughly group them according to type rather than by how you might encounter them if you visit.
Snakes
Let’s start with the animals that scare the crap out of my mother-in-law (not that I’d want to). Snakes are creatures where I find that the smaller they are the prettier they tend to be. The brighter colours and more impressive patterning on the scales seem to be found amongst the small snakes while the larger ones forget all that and just rely on their musculature to make you say “Ooh!”
Other Reptiles
One of my wife’s favourite animals is a specific type of reptile. If we ever visit a zoo and see a tortoise and my wife doesn’t remark that she wants to steal one and keep it then I’ll know she’s been taken over by aliens.
As for me, I’ve got a fondness for lizards in the reptile class. They always seem to have the best names: Gila Monster, Bearded Dragon, Geoff the slow-worm, etc. There’s something deliciously prehistoric about a lizard that appeals to the young boy in me who used to know all the names of dinosaurs and who watched plenty of Doug McClure films growing up.
Birds
From dinosaurs to their descendants next, and that means the birds of Wingham Wildlife Park.
Is there anything more terrifying than hornbills?
Many years after seeing pelicans in captivity we would see them flying freely in Mexico (see: Highlights of Puerto Vallarta).
There’s something about birds in general we don’t like anywhere near as much as we do other animals and I can’t say exactly what that is. It’s not as if reptiles are warmer and more affectionate than birds; it’s not as if birds don’t display a great variety of shapes, sizes, and colours; it’s not as if we’re not constantly impressed by just how deliciously smart corvids are; we just don’t generally like them that much. My wife really, really doesn’t like parrots or any close relation of them.
One bird group that slips through into my wife’s affections, though, is that of the penguins. We could have spent ages with the Humboldt’s Penguins at the Kent zoo although after a while the smell does get to you. We’re pleased to say that penguins are other animals we’ve seen both in the zoo and in the wild although our visit to Argentina in 2016 featured Magellanic Penguins instead.
Big Cats
Some people are cat people and some people are dog people. I’m not going to get into all that dogs are stupid and cats are smart debate because the only people disagreeing with that are dog people who are also stupid so what’s the point? We are cat people and we love big cats because they are for the most part simply scaled-up small cats. You know that if you’re in a cave trapped by a tiger (I don’t care if tigers don’t live in caves) you can always distract it with a bit of string or a laser pointer or by placing a pencil or a straw on the edge of a table. Yes, it’s a cave with a table in it. With dogs you never can tell if it’s going to be one that drools over you or one that just won’t stop barking and running around at a thousand miles per hour which puts your very life in peril if you were ever to come face-to-face with a wolf.
Wingham’s big cats included the usual suspects – pumas, jaguars, cheetahs, lions, non-cave-dwelling tigers – but it was nice to spot a caracel too because ears like that need to be seen.
Primates
A brief reminder of evolution history for those of you at the back: sometime between 85 and 55 million years ago the primate order of mammals evolved. The prosimian primates evolved first, these including descendants of the lemur, loris, tarsiers, etc. Anthropoids started evolving from this group around 45 million years ago, anthropoids eventually including the families of animals such as monkeys, apes, and, of course, humans. Prior to anthropoidal development the prosimians were a very prevalent group on the planet but the anthropoids changed that behaviour, effectively dominating the daytime activity while the prosimians became more nocturnal. So if you’ve ever thought of yourself as more of a nighttime person then it’s entirely possible you’re prosimian.
All of this is just a lead-up to saying that Wingham Wildlife Park had examples of both lemurs (prosimian primates)…
…and monkeys (anthropoid primates). The macaques were another animal that we got to see in their natural environment years later when we visited the Rock of Gibraltar.
Other Mammals
And finally, all the other mammals I saw fit to photograph at the zoo. I was very pleased to see bats as we’ve visited places allegedly holding them before and just had to take their word for it.
And this shed houses bats.
Does it? Where?
They’re in there. They like the dark.
Oh. Kay. What about the next shed?
Pterodactyls!
Who apparently also like the dark.
Oh yes, the more impossibly dark the better.
Well, this has been a fun visit.
I’ve saved until last the animal that has forever been known as my nemesis ever since I tried to take a photo of one at Marwell Zoo and it moved a split second before every single shot much to my wife’s intense joy: the red panda. She was devastated that this one in Wingham allowed me to capture some pictures without swearing.
