Jurong Bird Park

Jurong Bird Park is a tourist attraction in Boon Lay, Singapore. The bird park, managed by Wildlife Reserves Singapore, covers an area of 0.2 square kilometres (49 acres) at the western foot of Jurong Hill, the highest point in the Jurong region.

History

The idea of a permanent bird exhibit was first conceived by the late Dr Goh Keng Swee, then Minister for Finance, in 1968. During a World Bank Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Dr Goh visited its zoological garden and was impressed with its free-flight aviary. He set out to ensure that Singaporeans would have a place where they could escape from urban life and relax with nature.

On 3 January 1971, Jurong Bird Park, built at a cost of S$3.5 million, was opened to the public.

Jurong Bird Park is now a world-famous bird zoo where there are specimens of magnificent bird life from around the world, including a large flock of flamingos. It is currently the world's largest bird park in terms of the number of birds, and second largest both in the number of bird species and land area (after Germany's Weltvogelpark Walsrode). There are 5,000 birds of 400 species in Jurong Bird Park, of which 29 are of threatened species.

Park

A park is an area of natural, semi-natural, or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of grassy areas, rocks, soil, and trees, but may also contain buildings and other artifacts such as monuments, fountains or playground structures. In North America, many parks have fields for playing sports such as soccer, baseball and football, and paved areas for games such as basketball. Many parks have trails for walking, biking and other activities. Some parks are built adjacent to bodies of water or watercourses, and these parks may comprise a beach or boat dock area. Often, the smallest parks are in urban areas, where a park may take up only a city block or less. Urban parks often have benches for sitting and they may contain picnic tables and barbecue grills. Parks have differing rules regarding whether dogs can be brought into the park: some parks prohibit dogs; some parks allow them with restrictions (e.g., use of a leash); and some parks, which may be called "dog parks," permit dogs to run off-leash.

Jurong

Jurong /dʒuːrɒŋ/ (Chinese: 裕 廊, Tamil: ஜூரோங்) is a planned region located at the south-westernmost point of the West Region of Singapore. It has also been described as an "area" to disambiguate it from the five main regions of Singapore. Jurong's main composition consists of the urban planning areas of Jurong East, Jurong West, Boon Lay, Pioneer and Tuas. Along with these planning areas, Jurong's territory also extends southwards to cover some nearby offshore islands such as Pulau Damar Laut and Pulau Samulun, along with Jurong Island, which is located within the Western Islands district. The region is bordered by Tengah to the north, the Western Water Catchment to the north-west, Bukit Batok to the north-east, Clementi to the east along with a maritime boundary with the Western Islands to the south. Jurong also shares an international maritime border with the Malaysian state of Johor to the west. The coastline of the region on mainland Singapore, faces the strait of Selat Jurong, while the southernmost island of the region, Jurong Island, faces the strait of Selat Pandan.

Bird

Birds (class Aves) are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, a beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at approximately ten thousand, with more than half of these being passerines, sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds.

The fossil record indicates that birds are the last surviving dinosaurs, having evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, and the last common ancestor is estimated to have lived about 95 million years ago. DNA-based evidence finds that birds radiated extensively around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs. Birds in South America survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world via multiple land bridges while diversifying during periods of global cooling. Primitive bird-like "stem-birds" that lie outside class Aves proper, in the group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period. Many of these early stem-birds, such as Archaeopteryx, were not yet capable of fully powered flight, and many retained primitive characteristics like toothy jaws in place of beaks and long bony tails.