Belize Zoo tour!

We started the morning at the film makers’ house. They have 5 margays kept in captivity at their place, and they needed deworming. Margays are small cats that have spots like a jaguar, but a distinct head shape with bulbous eyes. They are about the size of a large domestic house cat. We estimated weight, differentiated between the cats, and put de-wormer in their meat snack. The best part of that experience was seeing the mother and her one month old baby, which was hissing at us with all the gusto of a big tiger, despite his kitten size. It was precious and an excellent example of a cat probably able to be released back into the wild as he matures.

Momma and baby (hard to see baby on the left there)

Next, we had our day tour at the zoo and got to experience some incredible things. First of all, I ran into one of my very best friends from my hometown there! She is also studying in Belize, and we didn’t think we’d see one another, but we happened to run into each other in front of the Macaw exhibit, and it was quite exciting! The next amazing thing we experienced was what the zoo refers to as the “Junior Buddy Encounter.” Junior Buddy is a jaguar who was born in the zoo and is acclimated to humans. For a special fee, we got to go inside his enclosure (while he was locked inside) and were housed in a tiny cage. People began to stare into the enclosure, completely struck by the humans on exhibit. A few seconds later, the intent would reveal itself. Junior Buddy came bounding out and rubbed himself languorously against the cage side, allowing us to pet him and receive treats of chicken legs through the bars. He is trained to do summersaults for treats and will jump on top of the cage to let us feel his paws. It was a surreal experience. His fur was soft and you could feel the power each paw held for destruction.

 Next, we got to go around visiting the other trained jaguars.  We climbed up on a platform about five feet above the ground, and another jag, Fieldmaster, was released to come out in his runway. He met us against the cage and allowed us to ask him to roll over, which he performed, and then ‘high five’ in which he brought up his paw to the cage and we could put our hand up near the cage. Incredibly, Fieldmaster was brought in from the wild and was still able to learn these tricks as a captive wild adult.

We also got to ‘high five’ and stand beside the Black Jaguar, Lucky Boy. He was incredibly beautiful.

Some of my favorite animals at the zoo were the tapirs—Belize’s national animal. They are related to rhinos and have a prehensile lip that they can use to pull out leaves and fruit.

The keel-billed toucan—Belize’s national bird, was also a favorite. We’ve been hoping to see one in the wild, but haven’t yet. They’re pretty elusive. The harpy eagle was also a huge and impressive bird. Her eyes and stance and size were so commanding. Raptors are pretty great, actually.

The spider monkeys were beautiful. I had never seen them in person before. They walk upright with long, thin limbs, and almost look to be Avatars. They have a swagger about their walk, with tail held high and long arms swinging.

The Jabiru stork is an incredible animal. It’s a huge bird with a massive wingspan. Apparently, one kept coming back to the Belizean airport runway and standing there, causing issues with planes landing. It needed to be relocated.

 

The peccaries were super smelly, but interesting. A peccary is a small, wild pig that lives here in Belize. They can be highly aggressive, but do not appear so. I was looking at them and commenting on how they looked so ‘un-sassy,’ when two started to fight over some food. The actions were highly aggressive, and when the one peccary was threatening the other, his jaw snapped open and shut so fast that it sounded almost mechanical, rather than natural. I took back my previous comment.

A great thing about the zoo in Belize was the naturalistic enclosures. I feel that zoos will often try so hard to make animals easily viewable to the public that they will remove most every natural stimulus or habitat that the enclosure could provide. It is often argued that naturalistic enclosures are harder to clean, but if the plants there are native to the area, the waste can be decomposed in a natural manner (for the smaller animals, at least). It was just really impressive to see monkeys and rodents and birds with trees and layers and high cages that they could climb and play and hide in. Sometimes it was harder to spot an animal if it was down in the plants, but I am sure the animals overall mental well-being is greatly increased in the most natural setting possible, and I appreciated seeing that valued over entertainment.