Melaka Crocodile Park

The Melaka Crocodile Park is located at Ayer Keroh on the outskirts of the city of Malacca. The Park covers an area of approximately 3.2 hectares and houses some 200 crocodiles in a variety of enclosures. The Park first opened its gates to the public in 1987 and is very popular with toursists to the area. They claim to be involved with conservation but I failed on my visit to see where this could possibly apply.

It is similar to the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo in Thailand in that it displays a number of freak and deformed crocodiles which it would be far kinder to euthanase.

This is one of a series of zoo reports that was actually included within my travel journal ‘The Itinerant ZooKeeper’. Initially I started to extract the zoo data but found the reading was diminished by it. So look on it as a zoo travelogue. The only major edits I have done is a little censoring and to remove the Casanova exploits.

Over the road from the Malaka Zoo was the Melaka Crocodile Park. At just RM 5 to get in it was only fractionally cheaper than the zoo. The entrance area of the park appeared sort of okay and the staff efficient. There were even a few educational posters. That was just about as far as it went though. Just inside was a hall of mirrors, a ghost train and a dinosaur ride. Lording it over all was a Karaoke stage where a procession of tone deaf (I should talk) hopefuls droned out over the microphone.

It had rained very heavily the previous night but this place was messy. I would have thought the very least they could have done was sweep water off the paths and perhaps run a rake over the important bits.

The collection was made up of 25 enclosures (none of which was overcrowded) of varying size housing around seven species. The needs of the crocodilians are small, I appreciate that. That is all this place did. They met the minimum. It was messy, dirty, filthy and unkempt. With only a few exceptions I thought that the crocodiles were underweight.... and if you can actually think that about a crocodilian then you are not wrong. I felt very sorry for the animals here.

Down in the bottom corner of the park was the show area. I didn't go and see the show. Perhaps it is unfair for me to comment but it looked like it was set up for the usual teasing session with the prodding poles and the like.

 
There was a small 5 cage reptile exhibit. Some were empty, all were filthy. I felt most sorry for the half dozen bedraggled and hungry chickens.

There were some educational labels but these were few and far between. More common were bright facts presented by a cartoon croc. These were virtually the only good thing here. I didn't like it. It served no purpose at all. The place should be closed down.

You can read more about Zoos by reading my Zoo Hubs where you will find other information and zoo reports listed. Please also check out my blog Zoo News Digest.

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