With Christmas just around the corner the excitement is building here at the zoo in Flamingo Land!

As we all prepare to share our festive treats with our family and friends the relationship is no different here between our animals and keepers. Our team are so dedicated that on Christmas Day, whilst the zoo is closed to visitors, the animals will enjoy their usual routine with several receiving a wrapped present too as part of their enrichment programme.

Our meerkats were extremely lucky this week as they were the first animals to receive their very own presents and Christmas crackers made by our Education Team. However, these weren’t just any ordinary Christmas crackers or presents – they were full of meal worms, one of their favourite snacks.

Meerkats come from Southern Africa and in the wild they will spend hours foraging and digging through the sand to find food. We also encourage these natural behaviours here at the zoo, and so enrichment is a key part of looking after animals, ensuring they are stimulated and challenged each day. Providing our animals with gift wrapped presents will allow them to use their natural instincts to obtain the treats inside. Our meerkats were sceptical at first but within a short time started sniffing these new festive additions to their enclosure. Within a few minutes they were using their claws to dig through the paper like an excited child on Christmas morning tearing open their presents. They buried their heads inside the gifts and were kept busy for a good thirty minutes. Once all the meal worms were gone it was time for the keepers to tidy up the mess!

Depending on the animal, some might play with the presents whilst others will climb on them or completely destroy them! Regardless of how the animals respond to them, it provides them with something new to investigate.

We look forward to seeing you over the festive period – remember we’re only closed on 25th and 26th December.