Isla de Tenerife Favorite Tips by easyoar Top 5 Page for this destination

Chimpanzees

Favorite thing: This is another Loro Parque tip. This time it is the Chimpanzees!

The environment that the Chimps live in at Loro Parque was built with quite a bit of care. In fact, the rock wall you might see inside was built by making a plaster cast of a rock wall in the South of the Island. I've heard of attention to detail, but that seems to be slightly over doing it!

Most of the Chimps here have been rescued. They were initially used by street photographers, who would use them when the young and cute, and then dump them when they got too big. However the two youngest chimps were actually born in Loro Parque.

Apparently when the Chimps were first put in this area, the viewing gallery had a mesh front. This is now glass for a very good reason! Chimps like to throw things, and they soon learnt that if they threw stuff at the mesh thy got quite a reaction from the humans they watch on the other side. Especially when what they threw happened to be excrement...

Camel Rides at the Camello Center

Favorite thing: As you are driving South from Icod, you will go past a place on the right called the Camello Center. As the name suggests, it is possible to have camel rides here.

It costs 8 Euros to go on a camel, and 4 Euros to go on a donkey. Both rides are for 20 minutes, and take you off behind the camello center. Having ridden on camels a few times before and knowing how smelly and cantankerous they can be, I did not bother to have another go.

There is a littl restuarant and shop there too, so you can grab a sandwich or some drinks etc.

Lizard basking on a rock

Favorite thing: This was another piece of wildlife that was basking in the sunshine at the Piramides de Guimar (I told you I hadn't been paying too much attention to the Pyramids!).

This lizard seemed a bit more tame than others I had seen, so I could get a bit closer to him as he lounged about in the sun.

His colouring helps him blend in to the rock (helping him hide from predators), and this is especially effective around his feet. You'll probably have to enlarge the picture to see these properly. Perhaps his feet are his tastiest part!

White Butterfly feeding

Favorite thing: This butterfly as feeding on the same flowers as the Red Admiral butterfly at the Piramides de Guimar. It was harder to photograph than the Red Admiral as it prefered to keep its wings closed when feeding, so you had to try and anticipate when it was just about to fly off to the next flower.

I'm not entirely sure on its name, it looks just like a butterfly that we would call a 'Cabbage Patch White' in England, but whether it is the same one I din't know.

Leaf Butterfly

Favorite thing: I had never seen a butterfly that looked like this one before. It was just flapping around, and landed on some flowers to feed.

It was only then that I realised that it was a butterfly that had disguised itself as a leaf so that predators are less likely to spot it whilst it is not moving/feeding.

Not a unique thing in nature, but interesting all the same! You may wish to enlarge thee photo to see this a bit better.

Watch out for that Croc...

Favorite thing: Crocodiles are considered to be the perfect animal. They are unchanged genetically since the time of the dinosaurs. They may be stupid (they have tiny brains and no logic), but what they do they do to perfection, and that is killing other animals in water.

Due to the ridges on their backs, the water just glides throuhg leaving hardly a ripple as they swim towards their prey. When they snap their jaws closed, it is with so much power that they shatter the strongest bone, and then they drag their prey under the water until it stops struggling, and then consume it.

The crocs in Loro Parque are behind a glass fronted wall so you can get right up next to them. One I saw had small fishes swimming into his mouth and eating the food in his teeth. The crocodile ignored them and let them clean him up.

Red Admiral Butterflies

Favorite thing: Although Red Admiral butterflies also live in England, these ones seemed a bit bigger. You als certainly wouldn't see them over Christmas time! If you enlarge the picture, you can see the butterflies tongue going into the flower to drink the nectar.

This one was flying around the gardens in the Piramides de Guimar and I could see quite a few people paying more attention to the gardens here than to the Pyramids.

I'm not sure what the purple flowers were, but they were attracting a ot of attention from all sorts of different butterflies.

Hermit Crab

Favorite thing: I've always liked Hermit crabs ever since I was a small kid and there was one that featured in a story book I had!

Essentially a Hermit crab is a crab that does not hav a strong shell of its own in which to live in and to protect it from attack. It therefore finds an old empty sea shell and lives inside that. As the crab grows, it has to jettison the older shell and find a newer or bigger one. It also works quite well when the shell gets damaged. Instead of the crab being vulnerable for the rest of its life, it just finds another shell.

This Hermit crab was the biggest I had ever seen (usually the ones I have seen have beeen quite small, you only become aware of them when you see a sea shell scampering across the beach!). It was sitting inside an aquarium at Loro Parque and was much less timid than any other Hermit crab I have ever seen too.

Koi Carp in a frenzy

Favorite thing: As you enter Loro Parque, you will go through a large Thai pavilion and find yourself in front of a big lake. This lake is full of lots and lots of Koi Carp which look impressive, but you haven't seen anything until they get fed!

Every so often, a Discovery Tour leaves from this site, and the fist thing they do is throw a little fish fod into the water for the carp. At this point they go nuts and all thrash around together frantically trying to get food. This picture shows exactly this.

Koi Carp are highly prized in japan, and have beeen bred for over 100 years there with just one goal in mind. The objective is to breed a white Koi Carp, that has a single red mark on its breast. The reason for this is? Because it mirrors the Japanese flag! A good example of a Koi Carp will fetch over 100,000 USD at auction. They assure you at Loro Parque that there are no such carp in their pond!

Clown Fish, or is it Nemo?

Favorite thing: Clown Fish are actually quite small fish. They don't grow to be any bigger than 5 inches long (13 cm). They are unusual in that they live amongst highly poisonous sea anemone (an animal that eats fish, but looks like undersea flowers). A sea anemone has hundreds of poisonous tentacles that will kill any other fish that touch them. The Clown Fish however appears to be immune to the anemones poison. It is believed that the Clown fish may have a mucous coating that protects it from the poison of the anemone.

The Clown fish uses the anemone to protect it from most of its predators. The predators know not to go near the anemone's tentacles.

The clown fish also helps the anemone by cleaning it (as it eats any rubbish and left overs that have floated in).

Clown Fish as any Finding Nemo lover will know, live in warm waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.