The pathway of the Australian exhibit emptied out into an area near an aviary.
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| A little moochy bird. Woodfinch? | A pair of black faced parrots. | |
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| The butt end of an ocampa on the floor of an aviary cage. | Above the ocampa is a blue macaw. | |
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| Next cage over is a scarlet macaw - he was having a screeching competition with the blue macaw next door. | An Australian razorbill - shouldn't this have been on the Australian exhibits page? |
Beside the aviaries were the reptile exhibits. All kinds of reptiles, starting with the largest in the world, the komodo dragon...
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| A single komodo dragon hanging out in the deep pit pen. | After a couple of big tongue slurps, the komodo started looking for zoo patrons to eat... |
Across the path from the komodo dragon were a particular kind of alligator, although not called alligator. There are apparently four species along these lines, alligators, crocodiles, caymans and this one, who's name escapes us all.
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| This particular reptile which is not an alligator is a fish hunter. | You can see the very narrow snout and interlocking teeth that make it effective for catching slimy things. | |
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| In the indoor pavilion were a couple of oddball non-reptiles, like this lungfish. | There was also a Japanese Giant Salamander - about five feet long! | |
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| There were a couple of kinds of turtles, tortoises really, like these extended tortoises. | And down the hall a bit, these are star shell tortoises, named for fairly obvious reasons. |
But these were the exceptions to the exhibit, that vast majority of the creatures inside were reptiles, like lizards:
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| A sailback lizard keeps a close watch on the visitors from behind glass. | In the same pen, you can see why these lizards are called "sailbacks." | |
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| A gila monster, one of only two poisonous lizards in the world. | And this is a green lizard... wonder where it gets that name from. | |
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| There were a couple of species of iguana, including these Fijian iguanas. | And nearby a common green iguana soaked up the noon day sun. | |
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| This is a hooded lizard, so called because the skin around its neck can be expanded to create a kind of hood. | The name of these lizards escaped, but aren't they cute? |
And... SNAKES!
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| A reticulated python, which can grow to be more than 20 feet long... | A taipan, in the top five most poisonous snakes in the world. | |
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| An Egyptian cobra, who is unfortunately relaxed, so we don't get to see its cool hood. | Something from home - a western rattlesnake, curled up under a warm rock. | |
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| The rhinoceros python, so called because of the horn-like extensions coming from its nose. | An amethyst python - unfortunately the camera didn't capture the scintillation of the scales that gives this snake its name. | |
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| The fierce snake - appropriately named, unlike the other snakes we saw, this one was racing around its cage, rather... fiercely. | The brown snake, another super-lethal snake, one bite transmits enough venom to kill 200,000 mice. |
The reptile exhibit was very large, there are a number of pictures that didn't make it into this page. Apparently Australia has 11 of the 15 most poisonous snakes in the world. What's up with that?