Flamingo Land is currently renovating the old mangabey and bat house into our new Indian Rhino exhibit. The building has been extended and improved, and fixtures are now being fitted to accommodate our new residents.

The Rhino should be arriving towards the end of the summer or early autumn. This will be an exciting time for all our zoo staff and the visitors to the park too. Although we already have White Rhino at Flamingo Land, the Indian Rhino will be kept in a completely separate enclosure to them.

For visitors with nerves of steel, Cliff Hanger was created especially for you! Experience the sheer exhilaration of a missile launch combined with BASE-jumping all in a single, spectacular ride.

Become a high-flying sky pilot and take your helicopter on a journey of adventure through the clouds.

A truly monster attraction, Dino-Stone Park creates a journey into a world that’s been lost in the mists of time.

Get behind the wheel of your very own Model T Ford for a trip through the grounds of Mischief Manor!

With so much on offer at Flamingo Land, we appreciate that our guests often have questions to ask. You are always welcome to contact us directly, but here are the answers to some of our most frequent enquiries.

Efforts to conserve forests are not so different across the world…

Last month saw three key events take place that we hope will help the Udzungwa Forests on their way to recovery…

A massive thank you to everyone who attended our annual Christmas fundraiser!

The day began rather poorly as the coach bearing 30 students and staff from the University of York turned up in the pouring rain for their pre-fundraiser tour around the zoo. Most of the animals were sheltering from the rain, except of course for the penguins, who did a great job in entertaining us all with their acrobatics…

At the zoo we are lucky to have several free-roaming Indian blue peafowl, more commonly known as peacocks and peahens.

The males (peacocks), with their striking tails, are not only beautiful, but also illustrate a fascinating result of thousands of years of evolution known to scientists as “Fisherian runaway selection”. This peculiar form of evolution is named after the Victorian biologist Ronald Fisher, and is used to describe a feature of an animal (in this case, the male peacock’s tail) that has evolved to increase the chance of finding a partner, but is actually a huge burden on the animal…

As the weather turns colder, the otters at the zoo are keeping warm this Christmas!

Our Asian short-clawed otters, Aonyx cinerea, tend to stay indoors during the winter, in their heated enclosure. However, like all mammals, their fur reacts to the cold, trapping warm air close to their skin. Otters also have two layers of fur, one for insulation and one to keep the water out. This layer of fur makes them look cuddly, but they have sharp teeth and claws, which equip them for hunting fish, and even snakes and rats…

This December has seen a number of new arrivals at the zoo, including two rhinos, an ostrich, and also three scimitar-horned oryx on their way.

These animals are arriving as part of Flamingo Land’s membership of international conservation breeding programmes. Breeding animals in captivity is required to maintain captive population numbers, and also to keep the genetic diversity as varied as possible…

As you may know, giraffes have their long necks in order to reach leaves that grow on tall trees. In the wild these animals can eat up to 11 kilograms of leaves per day, moving between trees when one runs out of leaves. But what do our giraffes do?

As they are zoo animals we can’t let them out to go and find trees. Our answer to this problem is to bring the trees to them…

Freddie the frog at Flamingo land Zoo is a White’s tree frog from Northeast Australia, Indonesia and the surrounding islands. Unlike many frogs, his species is not threatened but, globally, amphibian decline is widespread for a number of reasons.

Increased global transport has led to the spread of fungal diseases deadly to frogs and other amphibians, most notably chytrid fungus. This is thought to infect 30% of all amphibian species. Other factors that threaten frogs include changing climate, habitat destruction and global pet and food trades. Unless we act quickly many species of frog will go extinct…

As it comes to the end of another busy summer season here at Flamingo Land, the theme park once again shuts it doors to the public, creating an unusual calm around most of the park. However, this most certainly is not the case in the zoo, which is still very much active, and what better way could the animals remind our zoo staff of this than with the arrival of a new baby baboon born on the last day of the season.

This lovely little infant has enjoyed its first few days of life being fussed over by its loving mother and carried around on her back as well as joining in on play fights and other social activities with the other baboons on Flamingo Land’s baboon island. This additional arrival has now increased the baboon baby population to three present at the zoo…

The movement of animals from zoo to zoo happens on a regular basis, and last week we did a monkey swap!

The good zoo community can easily transfer animals if they are part of BIAZA (British and Irish Aquaria and Zoo Association) or EAZA (European Aquaria and Zoo Association). In these communities we are safe in the knowledge that our animals are going to a good new home! So last week our female saki monkey went to a new zoo and in return we got a new female. This week sees her final quarantine health check by our vet Matt Brash. Once all the results of this final check come back we will be able to introduce her to her new partner and her new island…

Here in Flamingo Land we have outlined to readers what it is like to be a zookeeper for a day – hard! But now is the turn of another member of staff without which our animals would not be as they are today. Our zoo vet, Matt Brash, takes care of all 125 different species of animals here on site.

The job of a vet is not an easy one, they have to make tough decisions and the health of the exotic animals housed here at Flamingo Land is on his shoulders…

Here at Flamingo Land Resort we take part in the David Bellamy Conservation Award Scheme, one of the longest running green tourism awards in the UK, and have just been assessed once again.

Flamingo Land Resort is regularly assessed by the scheme’s team of local wildlife experts. The assessors look at the steps holiday parks are taking to manage their land as a haven for wildlife, reduce their use of energy, water and other resources. They investigate our reduce, reuse, recycle waste protocols while also assessing how parks support their local communities. The assessment is not easy – this year I took part in the assessment to really get to grips with the award. Together with the Director of Conservation, Dr. Andy Marshall, our assessor spent a full day here at Flamingo Land Resort, and didn’t even have time to try out any of the rides!

The assessment looked at what we had done in the past year to impact native wildlife and to build on our previous awards. Last year we received gold so we were hoping to add to Britain’s gold medal tally!

We love autumn – the change of colour of the trees from green to a fantastic bright orange, the bright days with a nip in the air, the warm scarves and big jumpers.

Walking around the zoo, the change in seasons is noticeable, especially in our South America section where there are a high number of big trees looming over the animals’ enclosure. This also signals one thing… Halloween is coming! So what are we doing in the zoo?

This month saw the beginning of our surveys on how well villagers have taken to the introduction of alternative sources of fuel. Our first survey of 28 households across four villages found that one quarter of people are now using some kind of alternative fuel to firewood. One innovative lady has even decided to invent a new form of stove for burning the fuel briquettes more efficiently!