Zoo Programmes: Part One

Every morning before work I watch Roar on BBC 2. This is a children’s show but it’s still full of fascinating facts. It’s set in Howlett’s Wild Animal Park in Kent, and is fronted by two baby faced and endearingly enthusiastic presenters, who usually end up performing some kind of task including animal faeces.

Of special interest is the honey badger, which is an extremely cool and underrated animal. All other African animals, including elephants and lions, are scared stiff of this rather ordinary looking badger. This is because they are actually the psychotic killers of the animal world, and can suffocate an elephant by grabbing its trunk and just holding on.

I always switch over and watch the news for a bit when Roar Rangers comes on, as I don’t really like children, and I’m jealous of them getting to be keepers for a day anyway. But Ask the Keeper is a pretty good part of the show despite the children’s sometimes odd questions (”how long is a Siberian lynx?”). Another good thing about this show is that because it is aimed at children it avoids most of the oogy vet bits which I don’t like anyway, and mysteriously animals don’t seem to die on it either.

While the presenters are by no means Konnie Huq, I do like to see how their knowledge grows over the season, and they have started asking some pretty intelligent questions by this point. There is also the online game, which is a Zoo Tycoon-style build-your-own-zoo effort. It seems ok, but you have to keep coming back day after day to upgrade it, and I hate those kind of games. Also my zoo doesn’t seem to have saved for some reason, and apparently I’m doing something deeply offensive and illegal by even playing it, because I’m over 15 which makes me a paedophile or something.

Anyway, to sum up, this zoo show is a pretty fair effort, and a sparkling one for a children’s zoo show. It would have made a good companion series to the Really Wild Show in my youth, but times were hard back then, and there were no zoo shows. It certainly beats GMTV for something to eat your toast to. Next time: Animal Park (perhaps).

Walking With Lemurs

It was great to get close to these fascinating creatures, which like many animals from Madagascar, can’t be found anywhere else in the world. The presenter who fed and talked about them was lovely, with enthusiasm about the animals shining out.

There were three types of lemur here, but only the ring-tailed lemurs came out because of the high winds. Apparently the red-ruffed lemurs quite often bully them away from the food if they join them. It was just after this that the announcement about the zoo closing came.

Dangerous Winds at Blackpool Zoo

I’d been excited for weeks – no, months – about going to Blackpool Zoo. Although Blackpool’s not too far from where I live, I’d never really made it there (at least, not in the daytime), but a weekend in a friend’s caravan was to change that. After reading up on the zoo and how much it had improved in the past few years, I couldn’t wait to see what it was like. It used to be owned by Blackpool Council, but they sold it to a company called Grant Leisure Ltd. They also run the Aquarium Of The Lakes, which I’ve been to and enjoyed greatly. Now the zoo is owned by Parques Reunidos, a Spanish company with another 24 zoos under their belt.

Blackpool Zoo is a lot better for allowing visitors and animals to interact than Chester Zoo. Now, I understand why a zoo might not want visitors to be able to touch or come close to the animals – there are health and safety issues for both humans and animals – but from a purely selfish standpoint, it’s an incredible experience being close to these animals with no bars between you and them. I think there’re benefits for the visitors too, getting that up-close gives you more of a connection to the animal, and makes you care more about them. I have a feeling that there’d be steam coming out of my ears in no time on a busy day during the lemur feeding, however – just imagining how some people would start feeding them crisps or trying to grab them… Luckily when I was there it was quite quiet and the other visitors were nice respectful people who enjoyed being close to the lemurs without being evil towards them.

Now, the reason it was quiet was because there was a gale blowing. The zoo is on the site of an old aerodrome, and airports are always situated in very windy places. It is also a quite heavily wooded area, with many more trees than the more stately-home-garden feel of Chester. According to the BBC, nearby Blackpool Airport got gusts up to 63mph. Although it was windy and already one tree had tipped over, necessitating a cordon over one path, we never thought that we’d end up being asked to leave as the zoo was shutting down! We’d seen perhaps two thirds of it over a three hour period when the announcement came at 2.30, and it was a wrench to pull myself away from the walk-in delights of Amazonia (meeting squirrel monkeys face-to-face!) and the children’s petting zoo (just because I’m 24 doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy petting animals when I get the chance – it’s supposed to be very good for stress levels).

All was not lost, however. On the way out, we caught a glimpse of the three elephants, and also went past the tortoise enclosure. We just had to stop here, not just because Ric and I are huge tortoise fans (they clearly know exactly what they’re doing) but also because Blackpool Zoo has the most absolutely huge tortoise I have ever seen. The kind that you can imagine riding around (very slowly) on. We watched the tortoises for a while, then went in to see if we could get a refund on our tickets.

Although I had a free ticket that I had cut off a cereal packet, the two others had both paid full price (£13). We weren’t expecting a full refund, but that’s what we got! On the one hand I was very pleased, as it meant we’d had a free trip to the zoo, and we had seen an awful lot of it by the time we had to leave. On the other, I felt bad that the zoo must be losing a colossal amount of money by refunding in full, money that would go to paying staff and looking after animals. That said, we had eaten in the zoo restaurant and bought a little something in the gift-shop. Since I would definitely visit the zoo again, and pay full price next time, I don’t feel too guilty.

Blackpool Zoo is great. As a thrifty person, I was particularly thrilled to see the zoo making the most of its smaller budget by appropriating items for different functions from the ones for which they were originally intended. Small monkey houses were sheds with a catflap in the side for access, and a normal radiator behind chicken wire for heat. A perfectly good solution, and undoubtedly a lot cheaper than specialised equipment which probably wouldn’t provide that much more for its cost.

Again, the zoo is great and I am thoroughly pleased to have gone to see it, even taking into account the disappointing end to the day. Someday when I am again in the vicinity, this zoo will definitely be getting another visit from me – not least so I can finally meet those spider monkeys face to face!

A First Picture

A rather self-indulgent part of this blog (although what part of it isn’t self-indulgent?) will be the posting of pictures that have been taken at zoos by myself and my friends. I had a hard time choosing the first picture to put up, but I knew I had to because otherwise this blog would be entirely too wordy, and I fancied having something pretty to look at when I visited it. So, here it is:

Meerkats are always incredibly popular with everyone, and it’s not hard to see why. Even with my indie taste in animals (I’ll talk more of this later), I can’t help loving the meerkats. They’re so easy to anthropomorphise. This meerkat is at Chester Zoo, where they have a pretty nice indoor/outdoor enclosure and plenty of stuff to do.

Introduction

So, hello there. I’ve been thinking for a few days about setting up a blog about zoos. I’m a lover of zoos (I almost put ‘zoophile’ there, but that’s a very different thing!). I like the animals, of course, but I also like the other aspects of a zoo – the gardens, the staff, the library (when there is one) and the additional bits and pieces that most zoos seem to have.

The one thing I don’t really like is the other people. My favourite time to visit the zoo is when nearly no-one else is there. Early on a summer’s morning when it’s a school-day, that kind of time. It means less waiting to get to the front when visiting popular animals, less wincing every time someone screams at a bat or taps on the glass in the reptile house, more time with each animal. That said, some zoo visitors are brilliant. I like to see enthusiasm, fears overcome and people learning when I’m at the zoo.

Recently, I’ve mainly been visiting Chester Zoo, so that might be the one mentioned most for now. Chester is the closest zoo to where I live, and it also happens to be one of the biggest zoos in Europe. It’s a fabulous zoo with big plans for expansion, but I also love smaller zoos like Blackpool, and also safari parks such as Knowlsey (yes, I am currently living in the north west, how did you guess?).

The first zoo I ever went to was Guernsey zoo, because that’s where I’m from. I can’t remember how old I was when I first went, but I think I must have gone for the last time in 1990 when it closed (according to Vernon Kisling’s Zoo and Aquarium History). I can barely remember it as I was very young at the time, but it wasn’t the most well-appointed and humane of zoos. It had penguins, I think, and it must have had ostriches since during one visit my brother had a finger nearly amputated by one, but other than that I can’t even remember what animals it had. I’m not sure I can account for my love of zoos that way.

Of course, right next to Guernsey lies Jersey, with its wonderful Durrell Zoo (called Jersey Zoo when I visited as a child). This was a regular stop on our family holidays to Jersey. Here I learnt about the conservation work that is now so important to all zoos, but which Jersey Zoo pioneered. Gerald Durrell’s books about setting up his own zoo (and animal collecting for other zoos) are perhaps the main basis for my interest in animals and conservation, so therefore I think Durrell Zoo will always be closest to my heart.

Anyway, enough about my history in zoos – I may write more about this in the future. All this has really been a preamble – and a ramble – to me welcoming you (whoever ‘you’ are) to my blog. I can’t say how often I’ll update (dissertations don’t write themselves) or what I’m going to write about, but I guess you can see a bit of a theme now…

Hello everyone. I hope you enjoy reading about zoos.