Nightzone
Your eyes must be used to the dark to see what comes out in the forest at night.
Life in the rainforest never sleeps. At all times of day or night there are animals foraging for food, nurturing their young and making their way through the forest. Visit our Night Zone, and learn all about the nocturnal animals who live in this darkened area.
From the Malasay giant jumping rats, whose powerful legs and large hind feet enable to jump one metre at a time, to the long-nosed potoroo, who uses his long skinny tail to grip and carry twigs and leaves, there are many weird and wonderful species to be found in this moonlit world.
See if you can spot our black emperor scorpions whose glossy coat reflects ultra-violet light to glow greenish blue. It is believed these clever arachnids mimic the many plants that glow in the dark to attract pollination. The insects that mistake a scorpion for a plant will not be pollinating anything though – they’ll be the scorpions next meal!
Another fascinating inhabitant of the Night Zone is the Rodrigues Fruit Bat, which are sometimes called flying foxes on account of their long canine-like nose, eyes and pointed ears. They are severely threatened as a result of habitat destruction. In 1974 there were only 70 of these bats left in the wild, but thanks to an international breeding programme their numbers have increased.
