The whole day we stayed at the Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute. We had a collection of two lectures, one on the Preparation of Avian Species and another on the diversity of bats in Taiwan. The professor who gave the lecture on bats even brought in a little bat that was really cute and had huge ears. I couldn't really get a good picture of it so I hope this one will do. But I had asked him if any of these species of bats in Taiwan have had or do have a disease like the White-Nose Syndrome in North America. As I can recall from Dr. Shaw's class back at A&M, this is actually a fungus that gets on the nose of bats and eventually leads to their death because of their unusual behavior. The professor said that he had not come across this disease or anything at all, well at least not yet. Since most people stereotype bats as evil in Western culture, I thought I'd tell you that only 3 species in the whole entire world are vampire bats and the rest are fruit bats. Interesting fact too, there has been no reported cases of rabies either. Huh..
I think the most exciting part about this day though was being able to visit the Wildlife Rescue Center. We were able to get a first hand look at their work area and what they do exactly. The facility as a whole was very small but it seemed very suitable for their work. I learned that alot of people will bring in birds thinking that they cannot fly due to an injury but in fact that isn't true. In truth the birds just haven't had enough time to develop that skill, just like it takes time and practice for babies to walk. Also our tour guide told us a story of a man who raised a little owl thinking he was saving this birds life. Well as he raised the owl, he only fed the bird store bought food not any normal food it should eat like worms, lizards, etc, and so as a result the owl gained alot of weight. So one day the man noticed the bird was standing on only one leg and brought it to the rescue center to find out that both it legs were broken because of its obesity. Such a sad story. The rescue center uses birds like these as ambassadors to teach and educate the public about these problems. For example they had an African Grey who had to wear a collar because when this species gets depressed it will begin to pluck all its feathers out.
Female turtle with cracked shell and eggs
Only survivor when a tree was cut down
African Grey
Sometime during the day we also watched a video on the Oriental Honey Buzzard. There are roughly 300 species of raptors in the world but only 3 species feed on bee pupae, including the Oriental Honey Buzzard. They live particularly in the Forest of Ninety-Nine Peaks and have evolved thick scales to prevent from the sting of a bee. The male is typically smaller than the female and no two Oriental Honey Buzzards looks alike. This is very rare and I can only imagine how skilled one must be to be able to identify this bird species. I also learned that there are 7 different species of hornets in Taiwan all of which have stingers and even prey on one another. This is both a blessing and curse to the Taiwanese because their toxin can be used for its medical effect and their deadly sting can kill you.
Lastly we headed to Mingsin Academy, an old school just to look around and as we made our way off to the Phoenix Tea Garden, we stopped by a temple's remains that had been damaged by an earthquake a few years back. I thought to myself why haven't they restored it, but maybe it served as a sort of tourist attraction or remembrance. So they moved the temple to worship across the street next to some little market. I bought a BUNCH of bananas for only 30 NTU, a bargain. The lady gave me a discount, it was so nice of her :)
Lots of mosquitoes here today. This institute even had a meter indicating the level of mosquitoes in the area. How do you measure mosquito density?
Tomorrow we tour the tea farm!
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