Meet the Safari Animals
This summer Tennessee Aquarium animal experts will be teaming up with renowned specialists from Natural Encounters Incorporated (NEI) and some of their dazzling feathered friends. A Eurasian eagle owl, brightly colored macaws, a trumpeter hornbill and a talking parrot will join a cast of more than two dozen cool creatures.
Aquarium guests will have fun at Ranger Rick’s Backyard Safari while discovering more about each animal’s habitat and the critters that might be living in their own backyards. “We train the animals to do species-appropriate behavior in an insightful and personal close-up encounter,” said Steve Martin, NEI’s founder and president. “This gives everyone a better understanding about the individual animal and its wild counterparts. People have a great time and begin to really care about these creatures. Once we get them to care, they want to know how they can help.”
Meet some of the NEW animals for summer 2011:
Yellow-headed Amazon Parrot
Trumpeter Hornbill
African grey parrot
Blue-headed Macaws
Red-fronted Macaws
Eurasian Eagle Owls
Get acquainted with more of the animals you may meet at Ranger Rick’s Backyard Safari:
Sable rabbit
Woodchuck
African pygmy hedgehog
Southern flying squirrel
Eastern screech owl
African gray parrot
Green aracari
Eastern box turtle
Ornate box turtle
Alligator snapping turtle
Common snapping turtle
Diamondback terrapin
Leopard gecko
Barking gecko
Eastern slender glass lizard
Scheltopusik
Cornsnake
Black ratsnake
Sinaloan milksnake
Eastern kingsnake
Ball python
Rainbow boa constrictor
Columbian red-tail boa constrictor
White’s treefrog
Tomato frog
Fire-bellied toad
African clawed frog
Mossy frog
Caecilian
Chinese paddle-tailed newt
Chilean common tarantula
Curly-hair tarantula
Mexican red-knee tarantula
Madagascar hissing cockroach
Giant African millipede
Flathead catfish