Animals in Singapore
by prudence on 09-May-2010
Some people think Singapore is an antiseptic zone purged of all wildlife.
Not true, not true.
We'll start with the local scene. First, there are your "pests". Singapore is very anti-mozzie, so you don't see many of those (although someone in our block was recently fined for letting mosquitoes breed in their toilet brush holder...) Fairly regularly, a noisy machine belching smoke fumigates the base of our apartment block, usually just when you've fetched your lunch or hung your washing out. I'm not sure which pest it's designed to eradicate, and we feel the need for regular supplementary efforts with the Baygon.
We've spotted a reasonable number of long-tailed fellas in the area round our abode. (For the non-Manx, these are the little creatures that rhyme with "cat", but whose name it is unlucky to pronounce, especially aboard a boat...) We also get geckos, of course. They're very cute, but you don't terribly want them permanently inside your apartment because they're not toilet-trained. It is also noteworthy that if they hide inside your toilet-roll holder, they are liable to give you a heart attack when you tweak the roll and they shoot out.
Then there are your "domestic" animals. There is a cat resident on our complex. I don't know which human belongs to him, but Puss has a daily tale of woe, so the relationship obviously leaves much to be desired.
And there are the local birds. These are a daily joy. I have no idea what any of them are, but their whoopings and twitterings are a delight. A newcomer took up residence recently along the back fence. We call him the twittery-twittery-twittery bird, because that's what he sounds like he's saying, and he's a welcome visitor.
For rather larger-scale animal experiences, Singapore has some ace zoos and kindred places. There's the zoo, the night safari, and the bird park -- all excellently run, beautifully landscaped, and featuring many opportunities to actually be in there with the animals. We have pictures here and here. Lovely and memorable experiences, all. I know that in a perfect world we wouldn't have zoos, but we're a bit low on perfect worlds, and I'd rather a good zoo than extinction.
But Singapore is also great for real, wild, doing-their-own-thing animals. There are all kinds of mangrove dwellers in Pasir Ris Park, and birds and monitor lizards and mudskippers at Sungei Buloh. We've also seen monitor lizards in the Chinese Garden and on the shoreline at Changi. And there are delightful (and well behaved) troupes of wild monkeys at Bukit Timah and the MacRitchie Reservoir. There are tough penalties if people feed the monkeys, so they have remained unaggressive and nice to be around. I'm continually amazed by these pockets of wildlife. It's a city. There are about five million inhabitants. Yet still there's room for wild monkeys and monitor lizards. May it ever be so.
Not true, not true.
We'll start with the local scene. First, there are your "pests". Singapore is very anti-mozzie, so you don't see many of those (although someone in our block was recently fined for letting mosquitoes breed in their toilet brush holder...) Fairly regularly, a noisy machine belching smoke fumigates the base of our apartment block, usually just when you've fetched your lunch or hung your washing out. I'm not sure which pest it's designed to eradicate, and we feel the need for regular supplementary efforts with the Baygon.
We've spotted a reasonable number of long-tailed fellas in the area round our abode. (For the non-Manx, these are the little creatures that rhyme with "cat", but whose name it is unlucky to pronounce, especially aboard a boat...) We also get geckos, of course. They're very cute, but you don't terribly want them permanently inside your apartment because they're not toilet-trained. It is also noteworthy that if they hide inside your toilet-roll holder, they are liable to give you a heart attack when you tweak the roll and they shoot out.
Then there are your "domestic" animals. There is a cat resident on our complex. I don't know which human belongs to him, but Puss has a daily tale of woe, so the relationship obviously leaves much to be desired.
And there are the local birds. These are a daily joy. I have no idea what any of them are, but their whoopings and twitterings are a delight. A newcomer took up residence recently along the back fence. We call him the twittery-twittery-twittery bird, because that's what he sounds like he's saying, and he's a welcome visitor.
For rather larger-scale animal experiences, Singapore has some ace zoos and kindred places. There's the zoo, the night safari, and the bird park -- all excellently run, beautifully landscaped, and featuring many opportunities to actually be in there with the animals. We have pictures here and here. Lovely and memorable experiences, all. I know that in a perfect world we wouldn't have zoos, but we're a bit low on perfect worlds, and I'd rather a good zoo than extinction.
But Singapore is also great for real, wild, doing-their-own-thing animals. There are all kinds of mangrove dwellers in Pasir Ris Park, and birds and monitor lizards and mudskippers at Sungei Buloh. We've also seen monitor lizards in the Chinese Garden and on the shoreline at Changi. And there are delightful (and well behaved) troupes of wild monkeys at Bukit Timah and the MacRitchie Reservoir. There are tough penalties if people feed the monkeys, so they have remained unaggressive and nice to be around. I'm continually amazed by these pockets of wildlife. It's a city. There are about five million inhabitants. Yet still there's room for wild monkeys and monitor lizards. May it ever be so.