Animals

There are some unusual animal pictures in Taiwan, what is this?

It is the dorsal fin of a shark, it's an advertisement for this restaurant's shark fin soup. I don't think shark fin soup is anything good, it is just the confusion that because something is rare and therefore expensive makes it good. Like rhino horns, bear gall bladders, snake blood, tortoises's meat ...

This is the year of the dragon, last year was the year of the rabbit, so you could buy cute little bunnies.

This year I haven't see any dragons for sale.

Aquariums are big and popular in Taiwan, just going into an aquarium store, I think I would like to have pet fish.

But the problem with having any pet is that you have to find someone to take care of them when you are gone. Having a pet is like signing up for a slave position. I finished being a parent, that was enough.

I was surprised to see black squirrels in Taiwan. I have seen them in Canada and not in the US, so I thought the black variety was for the colder places. I was wrong about that heat relationship because very few places in the US are as hot as Taiwan, but Taiwan has the black variety.

There was a time when Taiwan was poor and heavily used insecticides to improve crop production. I heard that at that time there were no butterflies. Things have changed the butterflies are back and there is a bigger collector community.

 I haven't seen any geckos in Taipei, but sure enough, visiting Tainan, I saw my old alien friends.