Plenty of farm animals, NO SNAKES

Like Scotland, there are a lot of jokes about kiwis and their sheep. The current ratio of sheep to humans is 6:1. On the lush meadows of NZ you can see sheep and cows grazing around freely.

The Aussies make fun about the Kiwis and their sheep. Surprisingly though, Australia has more sheep than NZ (though NZ has more sheep per person). Australia is also the largest wool producer in the world. NZ is fourth.

In milk production, NZ is at number 8. Any guesses on who tops this list? It’s the US, followed by India and China. [But if you add buffalo milk production to it, then India is the number 1 milk producer (and consumer)!]

In contrast to the large number of farm animals, NZ is devoid of wild animals; at least those of the dangerous kind! There are NO snakes in NZ! I read an article while I was in NZ about how a snake lodged itself on a flight from Australia to NZ and fell on the runway just before the flight landed. It was alive and sent the biosecurity team in a frenzy. Thankfully it was caught. (Full story here: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/travel/2019/12/snake-on-a-plane-in-brisbane-to-queenstown-flight.html)

Wonder why there are no wild animals here when there is such an abundance in neighboring Australia? One theory goes that when the super continent Gondwana split , New Zealand broke from Australia carrying over it’s life forms too. Then around 26000 years ago, the super-volcano of Taupo erupted, killing all things living. Over the next thousands of years birds flew over the Tasman sea to New Zealand propagating seeds. The volcanic land was extremely fertile and vegetation thrived. When the first tribes arrived in their boats, they carried with them their farm animals, so they started inhabiting the country too. But the Tasman sea was too ferocious for any wild animal to swim and migrate to New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore to date, remains wildlife free. So if you have a wild side, you may be interrogated at border control. 😉 😉

The only annoying creature you will encounter in New Zealand is the tiny sand fly. They seem to appear in thousands, sting and suck blood just like a mosquito. Though not dangerous, they can cause irritation for days. These are the bites on my poor husbands’ hands, still scratchy even after a week. Bushwalking without a full-sleeves T-shirt did not go well!