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Ventured to San Antonio with the kids and snapped a few photos of the dart display. It was pretty cramped in the amphibian house so the pics are not lit very well and the angles were awkward, but here are shots of the display:
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About 6 auratus (let me know if my ID is wrong, I'm still new at this!) were on display. I was hoping for a few displays, but there was only one dart enclosure - the zoo lists 5 dart species on their website. Lighting was not great but it looks like the auratus plate on the display is a different locale than what was actually on display, no?
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And a few other nice shots. The reptile house was much larger, roomier, and better lit.
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Great shots!!! Thanks for sharing those!! San Antonio Zoo does have excellent Reptile & Amphibian houses. The last time I was there was about 4 years ago, but as I recall they had multiple dart enclosures at the time. I believe 3 or 4 and they were all mixed species tanks, two spieces per tank. Did you go to the Japanese Tea Garden after the Zoo? That place is something to see.
Texas has quite a few good Herp Zoos. Ft. Worth is also excellent. That sounds like a good idea for a sticky. A list of Dart friendly Zoos.
Jon
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We thought about the Japanese Tea Garden but the kids were tired so we skipped it. I expected to see a mixed tank so it was interesting to see a large number of animals milling about in a single species tank. I was really impressed by the reptile house - they had quite a wide variety of venomous snakes on display. Overall, our kids actually preferred the Amphibian house - it was setup better for them to see in the displays. It was cool to see my 3 year old tell the difference between frogs, quickly realizing that the darts were "like ours". She kept going back over to that display. Most of the other animals were pretty difficult to spot (see if you can find TWO in this pic - we only noticed the first one because of its eye):
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There's also a small dart display at Sea World in the Aquarium - single tank, mixed species. I was surprised to see it as we were rolling out of the shark display so I didn't manage to get a picture (pushin' the double wide stroller and lugging the camera kit on my back).
Thanks for the tip on the Ft. Worth zoo. We're also thinking about going to the Houston zoo; we went to the San Antonio zoo a year or so ago for the first time to see a giraffe, but it had died a few months earlier. :oops: boy was that a tough one to explain to a 2 year old. I figure my odds are better since the Houston zoo has a herd of em.
Yes, I would agree that a dart friendly zoo list would be interesting!
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Thanks for posting ! Great pics as always.
There is a thread on "Zoo displays" here somewhere on Dart Den, so no need to discuss the mixed species and 'ethics' here on the cool pic thread.
I think there are a number of Texas froggers that interact and communicate with that Zoo's staff / personnel.
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OK last set of reptile pics - I know I drifted off topic slightly, but the reptile displays were really impressive and I was setup with my 80 mm 1.8 so I could work without a flash - that didn't work so well in the smaller quarters of the amphibian house, so I ended up with more reptile pics...I was truly impressed with the scale of the operation and sheer number of species on display.
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No worries guys....nobody said or implied anything improper....was just heading off the 'Zoo's do it (mixing) " posts. There usually a few of them whenever any zoo dart frog pics hit the forum.
