I am really interested in snakes at the moment, so mummy & I went to Plantasia to see some real snakes and other animals.

Inside there is a giant Sarcosuchus Imperator skeleton, it is huge crocodile stretching up to 40 feet long and weighing 10 tons. They are now extinct but lived approximately 145-100 million years ago.

We saw terrapins swimming in the water with lots of enormous koi carp. We also saw several different tortoises, and noticed how their shells camouflage with the rocks.

I enjoyed crawling under the meerkat enclosure and popping my head up inside the enclosure. There was a meerkat sat on the viewing dome, so I got a good look at it’s bum.

We went into the Plant house and I successfully made my way through the Venus Fly Trap maze. We saw lots of different frogs, some are very colourful and poisionous.

We also saw the Castor Bean plant which is the most poisionous plant in the world according to the Guiness Book of World Records. The seeds contain ricin which was using in the 20th centure in biological warfare.

As we approached the Checkered Garter Snakes, one of them decided to slither off it’s branch and have a swim. It swam so well, just gliding along the top of the water. I was very impressed seeing as it has no arms, legs or fins. It could also climb up the side of the aquarium, I think it was trying to say hello to me.

Next to the crocodile enclosure was a machine that measured your strength. You had to squeeze two levers together and the lights showed how many pounds per square inch (psi) you reached. I only got to 25, mummy got to 60. The fact board explained that a lions bite is 150 but a crocodiles bite is 5,000 psi! That is mind bogling.

Next we saw Rainbow the Green Wing Macaw that lives at Plantasia. We sang to her but she just carried on eating her peanut. She was my favourite animal, because my favourite toy is a cuddly Scarlet Macaw that looked quite like her. At the end of our visit there was a note station where you could write messages and leave them on a tree. I wrote a note to Rainbow telling her that she was my favourite.

On the way out, they had two ipads comparing the current weather forecast in Swansea and in the Amazon. Both had plenty of rain but the Amazon was much warmer at 27 degrees, compared to 8 degrees here in Swansea. Tropical rainforests are hot, damp places.

The last few animals were very ununusal, we saw an Axolott. We learnt they are a type of salamander that does not go through metamorphosis, i.e. it doesn’t turn into it’s adult form and just stays forever young.