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You smell like a Giraffe but look like a Lion
Hi everyone
In addition to the food that we feed our animals on the Big Cat round, we like to stimulate them with enrichment - these may be food, sense or physical based. The animals all react differently to enrichment, they can have positive, negative or neutral reactions.
Out of all the cats the two female African Lions, Amani and Yizi, have the best interactions with enrichment.
Recently, the girls have been given giraffe faeces (from our two lovely female giraffes, Dharba and Kimya) for enrichment. Now poo may sound disgusting to you and me but to the girls it is a sensory delight. African Lions in the wild, when roaming the savannah, come across other animals faeces all the time and they may even use it to their advantage. Just like our two girls, they roll in it (face and all!) to mask their own scent, so when they are hunting their prey would smell a Giraffe coming, not a Lion.
So not only do our girls get to be enriched but our visitors get to watch some “wild” instinct and sibling rivalry.
Amani and Yizi are sisters and do most things together but they never share enrichment. Even though there will be two piles of giraffe faeces in their enclosure they will always compete over the first one they find. They butt heads, growl and try and push each other out of the way but in the end one of them smells the other pile and all is quiet again, until they are given blood icles the next day.
Bye for now,
Arliah
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