The Taipei Zoo

The Taipei Zoo is big, I was there for 3 hours and I didn't see everything. I convinced myself that I shouldn't see everything so that I would have a reason to go back. The cost was 60NT or about $2US. I can't think of any place you can go in the US and pay only 2 dollars.

Just like Taiwan is crazy about LEDs, so the whole zoo-going-world is crazy about pandas.China has really marketed those pandas. Ely and I saw pandas in China on our 1999 trip. At that time, for an extra $10US we got to go into the panda house and hold the pandas. So pandas aren't a big thing for me. Taiwan got some pandas from China(probably the only good thing Taiwan has gotten from China). So I purposely picked a day to go to the zoo when the panda house was closed. (Even the pandas need a day off once a month.) So the zoo was almost empty, no lines, no waiting, and still 3 hours wasn't enough to see everything.

Any zoo is for the children(or young at heart) so the signs at the Taipei zoo use Chinese characters but also include the phonetic pronunciation for the children.
And English for you know who.

 The insectarium had a butterfly enclosure that was super, the butterflies were so busy eating the pineapple and bananas that it was easy to take their picture.

There was a good presentation of animals endemic to Taiwan. After the last ice age the land bridge between Taiwan and the mainland was broken about 10,000 years ago. Since then some of the animals isolated on the island of Taiwan evolved to be something not known anywhere else. Like miniature deer that can live in the dense forest.

Also the Taiwan domesticated animals are there like the black goat

and the cow(although I think in the West we would call it an ox or water buffalo).

The other continents were also represented, like the American Buffalo/Bison.

The Africans were there.

These rhinos are probably safer in the zoo than in the wild because Chinese believe that rhino horn is some aphrodisiac, (stupid, stupid, stupid).

One reason there weren't too many visitors might have been that the temp was up at 35C(95F). But some guys got the special treatment and seemed oblivious to the outside temp.

The Reptile and Amphibian House was super but I couldn't tell if this guy was a visitor like me or an escapee.