We love taking mini educational field trips with our kids. Trips like these I try to wait to plan for the weekend so that my husband is able to go with us. My sister in law invited us out to this one a couple of weekends ago. She told me the kids will be able to see the big cats up close and personal even better than at a zoo.
Now I don’t know about you parents but I always get a little nervous when going to places where wild animals are caged in. I always think of the worse that could happen ie. freak accidents involving one of the animals getting loose. 😳🤭 But I just say a prayer asking the Lord to watch over us and keep us safe. I don’t want my paranoia to hold my children back from experiencing and learning amazing things.
I hope you enjoy the following pictures and short descriptions of these beautiful animals. The tour guides explained they don’t have all of these animals caged just for show. They use them as a tool for education. They explained how everything was designed in an order and without cats there would be too many mice and rats in the world with us. Each animal serves a particular purpose for being here.
African Cats
Their name is derived from a Turkish word meaning “black ear”. These nocturnal cats are amazing predators and are capable of climbing trees. They can leap more than 10 feet in the air to catch birds mid-flight.
Servals have exceptional hearing which they use to hunt rodents. They have small heads, oversized ears and long legs. You can spot them during the day.
You can easily spot a lynx by the tufts of black hair at the tip of their ears and their short tails. They spend most of their time on the branches of trees waiting for their prey.
We made it to the conservatory right before feeding time. You’ll get to see most of the animals eating their meals...showing their long tongues and sharp teeth.
This is an older lion and has been here for awhile. It looked rather skinny to me compared to the ones I’ve seen on television. I don’t think it took away from his fierce look though. He was focused on his meal.
Fox
This was the most adorable little white fox I have ever seen. A white fox can survive Artic temperatures as low as 58 degrees Fahrenheit. Their fox coat changes colors with the season to allow them to camouflage to effectively hunt rodents, fish and birds.
A red fox can live in many different habitats and can adapt well to human environments such as farms, suburban areas and even large communities. They are very intelligent and cunning. Their food mainly consists of rodents, birds, rabbits and small game.
White Wolves
Wolves thrive in some of the most harshest places on earth. They are social, intelligent and highly adaptable. In every wolf pack there is a male and female known as the “alpha” couple and they are ranked higher than all of the other wolves. This pair is the brewing couple and the pack is their family.
Tigers
I saved the tigers for last because they were our favorite to watch. Tigers are one of the most beautiful animals in my opinion. They know when it is getting close to feeding time and they all get anxious and start to walk back and forth awaiting their meal. They get irritated with each other and roar because they are hungry and frustrated while waiting. When they roared it was loud and powerful and our one year old did not approve. It’s almost like you can feel the vibrations of their roar through your chest.
As you can see this tiger was serious about her food and kept guard over it as she ate.
Each tiger has their own special meat diets. It was interesting watching the workers bring out large buckets of different types of meat for each one.
The two tigers above are sisters. They were raised in the same kennel when they were young. They had to separate them because they began to fight too much. It was really funny watching them interact with each other. The orange one tried to reach in from underneath the gate to steal her sister’s water bowl. Then a few minutes later the white one tries to trip her sister by striking her paw at her leg when she got up to walk. LOL it was hilarious! They told us that type of humor goes on every day with those two. If you look closely at the orange tiger, you’ll see she has a permanent scratch on the side of her nose that was given to her by her sister.
Here are a few last after meal shots of these beauties...
All photos are my own and were taken with our Cannon EOS Rebel T6!
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