Among the attractions at The Boma is the Reptile World, where grandpa and grandson went went today for a visit. They have an interesting variety of local and exotic reptiles. It is an ideal opportunity to get up close and personal with the reptiles and get to learn about them, from the knowledgable guide.
Grandson is seen here with our guide Luke, plucking up the courage to touch Annie, the 12 year old albino Burmese python. She weighs in at 20 kgs and will eventually top out at around 200 kgs. Visitors are given the opportunity to handle the friendly snakes, like Annie who loves the attention. Afterwards he told his mom that his favourite was, "The beautiful 'lellow' snake," and that when he is a man he will save his money and buy her one. Imagine her delight.
Wow - that's a whole lot of snake! Great to see the Boma's still going strong.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought I'd not have to worry about finding pictures of things that scare me on your blog! Thanks to the caption I could peep, carefully scrolling down - and found it nogal interesting!
ReplyDeleteWe have never been to the Boma before and I have been thinking about it for a while. Maybe we should go and have a look.
ReplyDeleteReptile World is a great place to get more exposed to the fascinating world of reptiles!! I just wanted to clarify though that most Burmese Pythons do not get to 200 kg. They are normally 5.5 m and 80 kg fully grown, however there is one who holds the record for being the biggest snake in captivity (bigger than any anaconda in captivity!) and in 2005 it weighed 183 kg!! However, even a 20 kg or bigger snake seems huge when you are up close to them! I work with animals like this on a daily basis and am still in awe of their size regularly.
ReplyDeleteI remember the old Snake Park in Central PE in the 60's. Most snakes were caught by kids from New Brighton and the snake park paid them for it. It didnt take them long to enter the park at night, retrieve the snakes from their cages and come back the next morning to sell them to the Park again. Good old times !!!
ReplyDeleteGaston
Thanks for the info, Boing. We have wanted to take our grandson to reptile world, but the crazy policy of charging at the gate for all parts of the complex in one ticket, so you are forced to pay even if you don't want to go to the dolphin show etc has kept us away, there is no way we want to end up paying over R100 to take a little guy with a short attention span to see a few reptiles. I think this short sighted policy is killing the complex!
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