Today we left Las Cuevas Research Center and traveled to the Belize Zoo. After a long morning, we arrived at the Zoo’s Tropical Education Center. The center was really interesting because it consisted of a large property with multiple ecosystems, such as pine forests. The director of TEC warned us to watch out for wild snakes and other wildlife around the cabins, but the only wildlife that I saw were birds.

After dinner at TEC, we went for a night tour of the zoo. We only visited nocturnal animals because the guides didn’t want to disturb the diurnal animals. We got to visit two jaguars out of the 18 that the zoo has. The zoo has so many jaguars because they rescue animals that are in danger of being shot by farmers. One of the jaguars that we saw was a black jaguar named Lucky Boy who was rescued from a Belizean resort that had been abandoned. Black jaguars are extremely rare. They are the equivalent of the opposite of albino animals; they have too much melanin.

We also got to feed a tapir and saw an ocelot. The ocelot was entertaining because it wouldn’t stop growling, even when the zoo keeper fed it. The only difference was the change from a growl to a growling “nom nom nom” sound.

Because of all of the travel time, I didn’t get a chance to observe specific tree species. We passed through multiple ecosystems, and I saw many of the same species that I observed over the past week.