Sandy's Sabbatical in Singapore: Biodiversity Festival

It was a rainy day, but we braved the wet weather to attend the festival of biodiversity at the Botanic Gardens in Singapore. We took the bus which let us off at the OPPOSITE side of the park from the festival so we got our steps in with the help of our umbrellas!

This was the LOGO for the Festival of Biodiversity that was sponsored by National Parks of Singapore and Community in Nature Organization which connects and engages different groups with environmental activities. There were tables set up with information on herbs and spices, butterflies, mammals, marine creatures, and many more.

The most interesting information was about things not found / used in the U.S. such as the cincau plant which is used to make a "grass jelly" or betel pepper that has an antiseptic property (BYW, there will be a quiz at the end of this blog entry --HA!).

We haven't seen a banded langur yet (one of 3 non-human primates native to Singapore), but we did see plenty monkeys on our hike around MacRitchie Reservoir doing what monkeys should NOT be doing -- getting into the rubbish!!

In addition to the interesting information about organisms that we knew little about, the festival was really geared toward younger folks with many coloring and arts and crafts tables.

BUT, there were still things for us "old folks" to learn. Here I am being schooled on using a dichotomous key to identify butterflies found in Singapore.

They are even starting to design Pokeman characters after actual animals to be used in playing Pokeman GO -- which is a HUGE game here!! We got to feel the skin (scales?) of a Pangolin and learned what a civet is -- yes, you might have to look that one up, as initially we thought it was a cat.