Tuatara - New Zealand's Living Dinosaur

Before leaving Hokitika this morning, we made a visit to The National Kiwi Centre. We arrived in time to feed the long finned fresh water Eels - some of these were up to 120 years old, and were massive! Not my most favourite type of fish, but it was very interesting listening all about them while they were being fed.

We also visited the Kiwi house, where there were two North Island Brown Kiwi's. As Kiwi's are nocturnal, the light in the Kiwi house was rather dimmed; they don't like noise and we weren't allowed to take photo's. We saw one of the two Kiwi's - I was amazed at how long its beak was.

As well as frogs, turtles, whitebait, Axolotl, and other fish, there were a couple of Tuatara. Tuatara are reptiles - but they're not lizards, and they are only found in New Zealand. The tuatara is famous because it is the only survivor of an ancient group of reptiles that roamed the earth at the same time as dinosaurs. The relatives of tuatara died out about 60 million years ago which is why the tuatara is called a 'living fossil'. Adults are between 30 and 75 centimetres long, and weigh between 250 and 1,200 grams. Males are larger than the females. What amazed me was how the Tuatara can pose for so long without moving. They can live till they are well over 100 years old!

After we left the Kiwi Centre, we headed back up the West Coast home. It was 27 degrees C when we arrived home this afternoon - at 6.30pm it had gone up to 29.5. We are back to summer temperatures again after all our rain a few days ago.