Med 2015 Part 1 - Loro Parque Zoo in the Canary Islands

Humor on the Med 2015 trip – (back to the Mediterranean on Holland America's MS Maasdam - for the second time)

Canary Island zoo – Loro Parquet

Took the local bus system on the Canary Island of Tenerife from the port across the island over to Loro Parquet (zoo and aquarium).  Loro Parquet is a very well-known European destination. What made the trip interesting from the beginning is that HAL (always trying to make a buck on sponsored shore excursions) makes no mention whatsoever of its existence. When questioned, the ship’s tour manager said that because of the movie “Black Fish” they feel that HAL shouldn’t acknowledge the zoo due to the movie’s claim that the orcas are so badly mistreated (according to the movie, which I admit, I’ve not yet seen, though I do have it).

So what about the zoo?  The following is my professional opinion (alright, semi-professional – I work in a zoo, but I don’t get paid, I’m after all, just a geezer volunteer). Loro Parquet is as good a zoo as I’ve ever visited. It’s not as big as the San Diego Zoo, but it’s every bit as well done. I was extremely impressed with every aspect:

·       Lay out of zoo grounds

·       Animal collection

·       Enclosure design

·       Enclosure flora (varied and full with healthy plants)

·       Cleanliness of enclosures (spotless, they must be cleaned 5 times a day)

·       Apparent animal health 

·       Pairings of animals (no lonely inhabitants – like Tank at my zoo) 

Tank - our tame African armadillo – notorious shoe humper

·       Number of keepers (Spain has high unemployment – finding qualified people is not a problem)

·       Overall cleanliness of zoo and quality of walkways 

·       Signage on exhibits

In short, it’s a high class act and HAL has missed the boat (pun intended) in ignoring it.

The first exhibit I came to had people in front of me.  I could see into the enclosure, but had no idea what was in there.  Then I noticed a strong odor of BO.  STRONG BO. Homeless BO.  I thought “damn, the bus ride was hotter than I thought and I musta forgot deodorant this morning”.  Did the old, surreptitious, sniff maneuver on my shirt.  Nope, not me (for once). Then I blamed the guy in front of me (French ?). He moved on, but the smell remained. Then I found the source.

Hey, you and your cologne stink to me

Ready, aim, fire!

Holy cow!  Who knew gorillas smell like Bedouins? OK, I have no idea what Bedouins smell like, but riding around on camels in the desert for months on end doesn’t sound like it would be fragrant-free.

Moving down the path I encountered another powerful smell. This smell I’m extremely familiar with. Sure enough, I found relatives of my cute little buddies back home.

I've told this story before. Black footed penguins (also known as Jackass Penguins because of the braying sound they make) are hilarious creatures, but you won’t notice it right away.  Mostly they stand around, bored, looking like they’re waiting for a bus to show up. When you get to know them (by cleaning their enclosure with a hose and brush) you find that each one has a distinct personality. Like Big Red – who always goes out of his way to wait until I take my eyes off him, then bites my leg (penguins bite hard). When it’s nesting season, he changes completely. He turns into a street beggar and pesters the hell out of me (meaning he follows me closely but doesn’t bite). It took me a while, but I finally figured out that he wants me to give him a pebble. When I do, he makes a huge deal out of the present – honking, flapping his flippers vigorously and dancing in a circle. 

Then he takes the rock back to Little Red (his mate for life) and presents it to her.  This is important because if he just drops it in the nest she takes huge offense.  Then a big, noisy fight ensues until he retreats (looking embarrassed).  Little Red then takes the rock and carefully finds the correct (read random, as far as I can tell) spot for the rock. Never mind that at the end of the cleaning session I shoo her off the nest and collect back all the rocks I gave them.  A few hours later we repeat the whole process again. The reason I don’t let them keep the rocks is that we’ve found that we get better nesting results if we give them dry nesting material (basically its paper that’s been pelletized) rather than rocks which never fully dry out.

Black footed penguins are one of the easiest penguins to exhibit. They’re quite hardy and live in temperate climates.  Not so with the arctic penguins:

They require massive amounts of cooling.

One of the birds I’ve always found interesting is the puffin:

The huge beak makes them look just so ungainly. You’d think the beak would make their center of gravity so far forward that they’d never be able to fly.  The beak is, of course, mostly hollow and they fly quite well. During mating season it becomes quite brightly colored. 

Stole this from the web, stupid Puffins are hard to get close to

Post season, they shed the outer part of the beak (no point in carrying around advertising if you don't need it).

Loro Parquet has a terrific aquarium:

Not me this time

Some highlights:

Made my retired spearfisherman's heart go all aflutter

One thing that differentiates Loro Parque is their invertebrate collection. They devote a whole wing of the aquarium to jellyfish. I have no idea what kind of effort it takes to keep jellyfish alive and well, but they seem to have figured it out.

Jellyfish food supply doohickey

Walking along I came across these two cranes. There weren’t any other visitors on the path so I slowly approached them thinking they might be skittish. Got some good shots. Note the bench.

An hour later I happened to pass by the cranes again. Since I already had “close-ups” of them I decided to sit on the bench and watch what they did. I immediately felt like an idiot. As soon as I sat down, these two supposedly shy and skittish cranes came over and wanted a good head scratching.  How they knew I’m an expert at this art I’m not sure.

These are marmosets.

(shot from behind glass)  OMG, is that a man or a woman over there?

They have very dexterous hands, complete with gloves.

Ahh, a reminder of my old homes in Florida:

 

This is a hyacinth macaw.

Despite having an enormously powerful beak (Brazil nuts are a favorite food – opened with a single crunch) they’re usually quite friendly. We have several at our zoo, however, Cloe (our tame one) does display typical macaw behavior.  When you walk by her cage/perch, she’ll try every behavior in her repertoire to induce you to let her sit on your shoulder.  The problem is that once you fall for it, she will quite adamantly refuse to get off. Since I value my ears, I've learned not let her sit on my shoulder.

One of the controversial exhibits at Loro Parquet is their orca collection (the whales are actually owned by Sea World).  

There have been a couple movies in recent years (Black Fin being the latest) decrying the display of these intelligent and graceful creatures. Even South Park got into the act (Stan and Kyle visit the aquarium is incredibly funny).  Personally, I’ve never been a fan of trained whale acts.  I will say, however, as best I can tell, the Loro Parquet exhibit is the biggest I’ve ever seen.  I believe that they have a whole pod of them and they seem to be happy. I reach this conclusion by how well they responded to the trainers, and by how varied the behaviors elicited were.

 

I noticed that the trainers, while encased in wetsuits, were not stupid enough to get in the water with them.  Those of you who remember the old Sea World acts (trainer balanced on the orca’s nose shoved way up in the air) will appreciate this change.  It’s not a good idea to hang out with an orca in its environment. If they get bored or angry (for whatever reason) they have no problem with killing you. In 2007 and 2009 a couple of the trainers were attacked by the whales (one of the attackers was Tekoa). Tragically, Loro Parque refused to recognize the danger and in late 2009, one of the trainers was killed by Tekoa. Loro Parque, taking a page from Watergate, tried to characterize the death as an accident. It wasn’t.

Aaaand the controversy continues…… It’s one of those debates that will never be resolved.  The killer whales in captivity can never be released back into the wild – they have no hunting/survival skills.  Should we have taken them in the first place 50 years ago?  Hard to say. Having them on display (while maybe not in the best interests of the particular whale individual) did remove them from the stigma that great white sharks are stuck with (thank you “Jaws”).

Notice how the front incisors are ground down.  Still, man vs. 6,600 pound whale isn’t much of a contest without a harpoon.

That being said, since I work in the education part of our zoo, I recognize the training methods Loro Parquet uses.  It’s all carrots (alright, big handfuls of fish) but no stick.  The orcas can participate in the program at will.  If they fail to perform on cue, the trainers don’t throw a toaster in the water.

Update March, 2016 - SeaWorld is throwing in the towel! SeaWorld announced they have ended their orca breeding program. In addition, they are phasing out the theatrical shows. "No more tricks. No more acrobatics. We will replace the shows with a natural set where people can come to see the orcas playing, exercising, jumping and simple being their majestic selves."  
No, they're not going to release the pods.  That would be fatal. Kekoa , the whale "star" of "Free Willy", only survived 18 months after release into the wild (and that was with a tremendous amount of help).

Ahh, life is good

Helps that this guy (below) can’t get out of his cage.

Random shots:

All in all, Loro Parquet is a very high class act. I highly recommend it.