Monkey Town Outing

On Friday we kicked off Z's birthday weekend celebrations with an outing to Monkey Town .

 I have always wanted to take the kids there and just never got around to it, so was really pleased when one of the moms organised the school tour. 

At Monkey Town there are more than 230 animals and 28 different exotic species. There are Koi ponds, Meerkats, birds and many small antelope. Sadly many animals are dumped at Monkey Town when their owners can't take care of them any more.

Our guide, Allan, was amazing, engaging us all with his wealth of information about the apes and monkeys. He knew each one by name too! A monkey named Luke,  followed us throughout the tour, scampering along on top of the cage, and stopping when we stopped, only to move along when we did too!

The Black and White Ruffed Lemurs were enjoying their lunch when we arrived at their area.

The Ring-tailed Lemur is just beautiful. 

(Many thanks to Lulu for the use of her photo.)

The Marmoset monkeys, ever so cute!

See the tiny 5 day old twins on their mom's back?

(Thanks again to Lulu for the brilliant photo.)

We saw many beautiful birds too. A cheeky monkey tried to pull some feathers from the Blue Crane and the Crane spread it's wings wide and scared the monkey off!

We enjoyed watching the monkeys arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, for feeding time.

 There was much screeching and chattering as they selected their preferred food and gobbled it down.

Another highlight....the Chimp sisters.

The children sang for the Chimps and only when they sang Jingle Bells, did the Chimps approve and give them the nod! Allan gave us so much interesting information regarding the Chimps and how similar their lives are to our own. We enjoyed watching them catch their lunch as it was thrown over the moat to them. It was amazing to see how they refused to catch the items they didn't feel like eating, and made a perfect catch when it was something they liked!

All in all a wonderful educational morning!