Year 6 Yorkshire Wildlife Park Trip

As part of our Science topic – adaptations, we had a school visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park. The sun shone all day and we had a fantastic time observing and learning about all of the animals. The baboons were extremely amusing as the infants chased each other around play fighting and playing hide and seek from each other. We reflected on our work about evolution and could definitely make connections between us and them, in fact we share 96% of our genes with them!

While we were there, we had an educational workshop all about adaptations. We even got to hold and stroke different animals while we studied them first hand and observed their unique adaptations. The three animals we held were a hissing cockroach, which hisses to scare away predators, a giant African snail, that seals itself in its shell whenever water is scarce and finally a blue tongued lizard. These lizards have camouflaging colours on their skin and are able to loose their tails and grow them back. Even stranger, their tails still move for a few minutes after detaching, keeping the predators busy while the lizard escapes – yuk!

Through the day, we got to see animals that we would never normally be able to look at and study, such as the polar bears and tigers. We discussed whether we believe zoos are a good or bad thing and had mature debates about keeping animals in enclosures, conservation and education. We didn’t come to a decision but we were able to see advantages and disadvantages for them.

Here are a few photographs from our day!

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