https://particle.scitech.org.au/people/cute-and-on-the-loose-a-history-of-perth-zoos-squirrels/
Visiting the Perth Zoo as a kid, there was one attraction that lived on the streets of South Perth. Now, palm squirrels are a fuzzy memory.
Does anybody remember these little guys? I don't know if I do.
I never encountered them outside about a 500m radius of the zoo, but yes - they were very common in the zoo itself. In fact, I was surprised to find they were gone when I first visited the zoo after moving back to Perth about 7 years ago. I'm fairly certain they were still around in 2007.
The squirrels and the butterfly house being missing were the main things I remember from my first visit with the kids in 2017.
People always used to say that Perth never changes, but it really changed a great deal in those 10 years.
I's told the butterfly house got removed because the zookeepers found the butterflys were actually demonstrating really stressed behaviours when people walked through, but i don't know how true that is.
FAQ Perth Zoo Perth Zoo’s Butterfly House was built as a temporary exhibit with limited funds and operated from 1995 to 2001. It stood where African Painted Dog exhibit now spreads.
Butterfly houses require a significant amount of energy to maintain the kind of temperatures, humidity and bio-security necessary to keep and breed butterflies from around the world in Western Australia. Suitable pupae (young caterpillars) also need to be imported into the State to display a good collection of butterfly species. This makes keeping and responsibly maintaining a butterfly collection quite a carbon unfriendly activity compared to other zoo activities.
What?? I thought it was there longer than that.
This makes more sense (expensive to run) than butterflies being stressed. Melbourne Zoo has a butterfly house as well, and it shows no sign of going away.
The butterflies themselves land on people and get photographed all the time. They don't seem to be shy at all.
Hehehe, they'll need smaller eyes for all the light though. Or a fashionable range of sunglasses.
Also, followed this link from the article,
https://archive.org/details/acclimatisation00unkngoog/page/n24/mode/2up
The writer mentions Dasuri as filling the role of native cats. Had a look on wikipedia to work out what they meant, and i think they mean Quolls. I suppose they'd fill a cat-like roll. Interesting comparison though.