Daily Archives: June 8, 2009
Tour Trains & Komodo Dragons…
Today Jan and I did ‘touristy’ stuff
We started off at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. This is probably the nicest small zoo we’ve been to. And believe me, we’ve been to a bunch of them.
They had some very unique displays including komodo dragons, the bird rookery, and the albino alligators.
Founded in 1893, the St. Augustine Alligator Farm is one of Florida’s oldest zoological attractions. In the early 1880s, two men began collecting alligators they found on Anastasia Island. These individuals, George Reddington and Felix Fire, were the founders of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm at South Beach.
In 1937, Reddington and Fire sold it to a pair of young business men in the community: W.I. Drysdale and F. Charles Usina. And the Drysdale family still owns the park today.
In 1989, The American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums extended accreditation to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, thereby elevating the institution to a select list of facilities throughout the nation recognized for the quality of their collections and the care afforded them.
The Alligator Farm is the only zoo to have all 23 species of the worlds’ crocodilians exhibited in individual habitats.
Here are some pics:
Toucan
These alligators are true albinos with pink eyes. They have no skin pigment.
White Alligator
There are other white alligators, called leuistic alligators. Unlike albinos, leuistic alligators have pigment. It’s just a white pigment.
And they don’t have pink eyes. They have bright blues eyes. There are only about 12 known in the world, and they are all males.
Leuistic White Alligator
Pile of Gators
