Javan Pond Heron

[guppiecat]

One interesting thing about visiting zoos is that you get a really skewed view of what species are and are not rare.

Take the amur tiger, for example. I see *lots* of them. I also see a great many amur leopards, bali mynahs, rhinocerosauruses, elephants, lemurs, and macaws. This is because they’re in breeding programs to help their respective species survive.

Little critters like this Javan pond heron are quite common in their native range … but I don’t live there and most zoos don’t care for them because they’re not rare enough. At the Baton Rouge Zoo, though, this was the only species I’d never seen before. So it was rare for me.

Originally posted at stories.starmind.org.