Our Animals Get Stuck Into the Spooky Season
Halloween is the perfect time to get creative and try out some spooky snacks to enjoy. At Paradise Wildlife Park this is no different! Our keepers took up the carving knife and got stuck into some fabulous pumpkins donated by Burston Garden Centre, St Albans. Thank-you very much to Jill and the team for donating the pumpkins!
Pumpkins are excellent sources of enrichment. Enrichment is vital to high standards of animal welfare as it provides opportunity for our animals to exercise natural behaviours. Placing food inside the pumpkins encourages the animals to forage, scent out food and use problem solving skills to find the hidden treats. This keeps their natural behaviours engaged although they remain in captivity.
Our jaguar couple Kedera and Kumal enjoyed some fresh meat in their pumpkins. Both jaguars raced up to the placed pumpkin and immediately took to playing and investigating this new treat. It was fantastic to see them both play together and enjoy a spooktacular snack.
The gibbons were equally intrigued. Keepers strung up the pumpkins on the highest of posts in the habitat to encourage the gibbons to stretch and climb up to their enrichment. Gibbons have long muscular arms that allow for incredible climbing at high speeds. Shany and Raf (Lar Gibbons), which are pictured below with the pumpkins are part of the European Breeding Programme and we remain hopeful that we should welcome some gibbon babies in the future.
And finally, our beautiful white lion pride enjoyed the biggest pumpkin donated by Burston Garden Centre. Our lionesses especially enjoyed the huge pumpkin, passing it between themselves and playing football with it! Even big old Moto got stuck in with the pumpkin fun! There was meat hidden inside each pumpkin, encouraging the pride to search for their food and also play with the leftovers.
