Disney's Animal Kingdom Backstage Tales Tour

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https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/events-tours/animal-kingdom/backstage-tales/
My oldest daughter and I took this tour and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  We are both animal lovers and are the people who animals just naturally gravitate toward.  This tour is not for everyone.  Even when we just finished, I had mixed feelings on it.  The turning point for me was when we walked through the park for the rest of the day and the facts that we had learned and then shared with the rest of the family kept coming out!  It was so apparent that we had learned so much that morning!

We could not take pictures of any backstage areas.
We saw:
  • Trained birds in the aviary
    • We fed some of the birds
    • They showed us how some of the birds were trained to perch on a specific branch
    • Some were about the size of a sparrow, but hovered like a hummingbird
    • We have been through this portion of the park on our own, but have never seen so many birds!
  • Lots of food being prepared for all of the animals
    • Plastic glitter
      • They use this to determine what poop belongs to what animal!
      • They harvest trimmings from the plants grown for landscaping to feed the herbivores
    • Teas for the gorillas
  • Part of the elephant barn
    • Yellow line
    • Softball throwing elephant
  • Rhinoceros's barn
    • Nursing Rhino
      • We've seen so many bovine calves nurse
      • We saw a two year-old rhino nurse from momma!
    • Rhinos have a lot more personality than you would think
      • The dominant female stuck her nose through the bars for her keeper to pet her
  • Cheetah
    • She wanted nothing to do with our tour
    • We saw her, she walked briskly away from us
  • Presentation by a field biologist on gopher tortoises
    • Interesting presentation
    • This lady was awesome!
      • She made gopher tortoises seem like the most interesting animals on the planet
    • This lady started her studies to be a vet
  • Insects and arachnids
    • This lady was PASSIONATE about bugs!
    • Bugs get a bad rap
    • Poison vs. venom
      • Venom can be ingested
      • Poison cannot be ingested
      • Scorpions are edible :)
    • Mexican tarantulas do not actually shoot their quills
  • Mandrill Monkeys/Baboons
    • Head-bob
      • Ainsley and/or I were challenged by a Mandrill female!
    • Trained to present parts of their body for inspection
  • Misc facts
    • Animal Kingdom park is a "bowl"
      • Holds in humidity

[caption id="attachment_101" align="alignnone" width="225"] Our swag![/caption][caption id="attachment_102" align="alignnone" width="300"] Elephant rice cereal treat[/caption][caption id="attachment_103" align="alignnone" width="225"] Water bottle close up[/caption]
Here's a video that I took shortly after Ainsley and I finished:

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