Owairaka 20/20

Kashin, the elephant at Auckland zoo was put down by vets yesterday. She has been suffering from foot abscesses and chronic arthiritis. She was 40 years old and had been at the zoo for 36 years. She had become depressed and withdrawn. We have some questions we are wondering about.

1. Is it cruel to keep animals like elephants in a zoo?
2. Was it right to put Kashin down?
3. How long do elephants live for in the wild and in captivity.

What do you think?

Have you got any questions about elephants you want to ask?

Here is a video of Mr Waller’s adventures with elephants when he was in Malaysia. People got to ride on elephants and to swim with them.

Wow. I saw orangutans in the wild. Not in a cage or in some zoo. Not a tame pet. A wild animal free to roam wherever it wants to. Semenggoh is a 650 hectare tract of jungle. 24 orangutans live there.

One family of orangutans needs 500 hectares of space to get enough food to survive. Therefore, the wardens have to offer food twice a day so that these animals will not starve. They come to the feeding station if they want. Sometimes they all come, sometimes none do.

I went on Sunday afternoon. Two teenage orangutans turned up. I wish I was there earlier that day. Some of the tourists were too noisy and some had cameras on a tripod, two things that can annoy an orangutan. They hate tripods because they look like a blowpipe that the native tribes use to hunt orangutans with. Ritchie, the largest orangutan, got angry and rushed at the crowd shaking the handrails and urinating at the people. Everyone had to rush to safety. It might have been scary but I think it would have been exciting to see.

[slideshare id=1746228&doc=orangutansinthewild-090720205442-phpapp02]

I asked Room 20 earlier what animal is in bigger danger of extinction, the kiwi or the orangutan. We haven’t yet made any conclusions. Here are some facts to consider.

1. Orangutans need a huge space to live in.
2. They never have more than one baby at a time.
3. Mothers only have a baby every five years.
4. They are being poached and sold on the black market because some people believe they have medicinal benefits.
5. Mother orangutans get shot by poachers so that the baby can be caught and sold as a pet.
   

Thank you to Nicki, Joanna and Phelicia for sending me a message from New Zealand. It is nice to hear from people back home.

I would love to hear what other people have done in their holidays too.

I have had a great time. I arrived in K. L. last Saturday. Although I had just had an 11 hour flight and spent an hour getting from the plane to my home-stay, I still managed to go out to town and look around the parks and have some food. I got to bed at 2am KL time, which was 6am NZ time. Next day we were up and touring around. We went to Batu caves, a Hindu temple site. There are lots of steps to climb and lots of monkeys running around. I also saw a python draped over some one’s neck. There is a large gold statue guarding the entrance way. Then we went to the Royal Selangor Pewter factory. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide. Then we went to the Kuala Lumpur Memorial. It is similar to our cenotaphs and war memorials although it did have a much more striking and interesting statue of soldiers than ours have. People were very surprised when I informed them that NZ also sent soldiers to World War 1 & 2.

The next day I visited my first school. They were very welcoming. I saw children doing environmental “green day” type activities. I joined their assembly and spoke a bit about New Zealand.

Tuesday I went bright and early to the Twin Towers to get a ticket to walk the sky bridge. When I arrived at the ticket opening time of 8.30am there was already a que a mile long. I had a plane to Kuching to catch in the afternoonm so had to give it a miss. I hope to do the sky walk when I get back to KL. The flight to Kuching is about an hour and a half. Air Asia is the budget airline but it was a clean, comfortable flight. My new host family comprises of Mum, Dad, and three girls.

Wednesday I had an amazing day. I visited an arts school. 605 of the day is devoted to the arts and 405 to academic subjects. Their assembly performance was outstanding. They sang, danced, and played instruments like professionals. They were so confident and proud of their work. Robyn Mc Queen from my school would have been blown away. I then went on the the Kuching Arts Village to watch the real professionals. They were good but I still enjoyed the childrens performance better. I got to walk through some native Sarawak long huts and have a go with a blow dart. I hit the target in the bulls eye. Lucky there weren’t any wild animals around or they might have been history.

Thursday and Friday I relaxed a bit after my hectic week. I have been to the museum and the market. I have also seen one of the world’s biggest deer antler collection. It is valued at 30 million ringgits or 15 million NZ dollars. It is owned by the father of Hasfa, the mum of the family I am staying with. He is an amazing man and told me stories about his life for three hours.

Today I played cricket with the boys at the local school and then watched them play rugby. They were very impressed with my All Black jersey. It was a stupid thing to wear in this heat. Tonight I am going to be Simon Cowell at the school’s talent show. I don’t know how mean I should be. My instructions are to give comments about the style, beat, and tempo of the performances. I can hear Robyn in NZ choking with laughter now!!

Tomorrow I am going to the World Rain forest Concert. I know i will die in the heat but this is pretty special. Performers from all over the world are coming. I can’t wait…

Hello everyone. I am having a wonderful time in Malaysia. The flight over here wasn’t very exciting because there weren’t any good movies to watch. So I had to play games  and read my book for 11 hours.

I am being treated like royalty by everyone here in Malaysia. I have tasted the delightful food and cuisine of the Malay people. When I went to India earlier this year I was so careful what food I ate in case I got sick. I still got sick, so this time I have decided to eat everything I am offered. I have tried some very unusual food that I wouldn’t normally try.

Before I left New Zealand Samantha suggested I should try the king of fruit, the Durian. I have. I can’t describe it. It smells foul, like something rotten. It feels like gooey slime. It tastes strange and unusual. I can’t say I loved eating them, but then again, I didn’t hate them either. I have some photos I’ll put on some time showing the Durian fruit. I have also eaten other fruit that I have never seen before.

I have also been to Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur. You have to climb up 272 steep steps to enter the cave. There are monkeys running around everywhere. The cave is huge. There are Hindu temples inside where people pray. At the foot of the steps there is a large gold statue.

I am now in Kuching, surrounded by the rainforests. It is very hot here and I am drinking lots of water, having lots of cold showers, and enjoying any air-conditioning I can find. I have visited two schools so far and will see some more over the next two weeks.

I hope everyone in NZ is enjoying their holidays. Let me know what you are doing….

I know the narrator is speaking in Swedish but the visuals in this short clip are very interesting.

Borneo Orangutan Sweden from Borneo Orangutan Survival Sweden on Vimeo.

Which animal is more endangered, New Zealand’s kiwis or Malaysia’s Orangutangs?

What are the biggest threats to their survival? How is man trying to help them survive?

Find out…

• fascinating facts about each of these amazing animals.
• reasons why their survival is being threatened.
• what steps are being taken to ensure their species does survive.

Paddy has researched this information about Kiwis and orangutangs.

• Kiwi are flightless birds endemic to New Zealand.
• At around the size of a domestic chicken, kiwi are by far the smallest living ratites and lay the largest egg in relation to their body size.
• There are five recognised species – all of which are endangered.
• The kiwi is a national symbol of New Zealand.

• The orangutans are a species of great apes.
• Known for their intelligence, they live in trees and they are the largest living arboreal animal.
• They have longer arms than other great apes, and their hair is typically reddish-brown.
• Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, they are currently found only in rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, though fossils have been found in Java, the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Vietnam and China.
• There are only two surviving species.

 Paddy needs to find meanings for new words like ratites, arboreal, Borneo, Sumatra, endemic, species.

Let’s add to this list of fascinating facts.