Woo Hoo! We're Off To The Zoo!

Just over a week ago, an intrepid group of students from Rm 22, led by their fearless teacher and a gaggle of bold parent helpers, embarked upon an excursion to the Perth Zoo.

Over the past 13 weeks, our class has been learning about evolution, natural selection and how organisms adapt to survive in their particular environment. It is a fascinating subject and quite astonishing to think that all life on Earth, from the most unassuming insect, to the tallest Sequoia Tree and to the mighty Blue Whale, all evolved from a single celled organism some 3.8 BILLION years ago!

On our stroll around the zoo we saw tigers, lion, sun bears, bats, tamarinds, gibbons, rhinoceros', giraffes....and of course, we got to see Tricia the Asian elephant, along with her friends (a trip to the zoo without seeing the elephants is just plain unthinkable!).

We also took part in the Asian Trek educational activity. We discussed the deleterious impact that mankind is having on the lives of several different Asian species. One of the worst is the clearing of jungle habitats to make way for Palm Oil plantations. We discovered (to our alarm) that palm oil is present in 50% of ALL packaged products! Because the demand for this oil is so high, more and more plantations are springing up, and the animals who live in the area and being squeezed into ever smaller regions.

The day was a complete success and we all had a fantastic time. HUGE thanks to Mrs Williams, Mrs Kelly and brave Mr Queiros, who gave up their valuable time to help supervise 30 highly excited students, and make sure none accidentally wandered into the tiger enclosure!