In this week's ASK Carrie, we are answering this question,
What is the coolest animal at the Louisville Zoo?
Well, the answer to that question could be one of
opinion,
but we asked a zookeeper this question,
and he told us the answer in his professional opinion.
In your opinion, is Romney the coolest animal at the
zoo?
Yeah. Yeah, he really is.
He's super smart. I've just had a wonderful time working
with him.
Meet Rami and his keeper,
William Byrd. Rami is short for Romulus.
He is the Louisville Zoo's only Komodo dragon.
Romulus was hatched at a place called Mola.
It's the Museum of Living Art.
It's in Texas. And believe it or not,
when his he was still in an egg,
they went through and inserted needles into those eggs,
extracted material out, put it on a Petri dish and
determined the genders.
They can say this was going to be a boy,
this was going to be a girl,
and we were in line.
Hey, we want a dragon.
We want a dragon. But here's the thing.
Romney isn't really a dragon.
That's mostly because Dragons are mythical creatures.
But the name Komodo Dragon has interesting roots.
In fact, they were at 1st called the King Kong
lizards and the sub.
The idea of King Kong was initially given to them.
However, when they decided to make a move,
they want to make a movie about this.
The loser didn't work out as well as this giant
ape and the damsel in distress and all this,
so they went with gorilla instead.
So King Kong originated with kimono Dragons.
Komodo Dragons are the world's largest lizard.
They can move 12 miles an hour.
Byrd says Komodo Dragons were discovered in 1910 in southeast
Indonesia.
The Louisville Zoo got Rami in 2018.
Since then, Bird has been Romney's caretaker.
They do get keyed in on the person who takes
care of them.
They get, they learn their voice,
all these things.
It's just been wonderful. It's,
it's been, it's been a dream come true,
something I never thought would even be possible.
I tend to be more of like a snake guy.
I love taking care of snakes,
especially venomous snakes. But I just,
I never thought this would be on the table,
but you know, lo and behold,
it is. So it's been great.
Well, of course, all of the animals at the zoo
are pretty cool,
but if you have a question,
you can submit it on my Facebook page or the
WLKY Facebook page.
You can find thatlink@wlky.com as well.
Back to you.