October 2009
Autumn Treats for Longleat Tigers
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Soundari investigates the pile of leaves |
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As keepers constantly look for new and exciting ways for feeding the animals at Longleat, what better resource than those that are currently falling in their hundreds… leaves!
With hundreds of thousands of trees on the Estate, leaves are never in short supply and safari staff have commissioned their colleagues in the grounds team to gather as many as they can from the formal gardens.
As Brian Kent, Head of Big Cats explained “We have come up with several unique feeding methods for the tigers over the last few years from feed wagons to hiding the meat in trees. This latest idea however was to bring up a whole load of leaves from the formal gardens and hide bits of meat in it. Not only will the leaves smell fascinating to these scent sensitive cats as they will retain a whole variety of smells but, with the meat hidden within, they should provide an exciting challenge to feed time.
“As always, it was Soundari, the more courageous of the three young tigers, who was most interested
in the pile of leaves. I have to admit I’m not sure how food motivated she was but the leaf smells were of definite interest!”
Brian concluded: “Our Grounds Team certainly welcomed our offer of taking the leaves off their hands. It is a never ending job at this time of year picking up leaves from the formal gardens and they seemed more than happy for us to take a truckload. As long as they don’t expect us to pick them up from the tiger enclosure, I’m happy!
Longleat has three Amur Tigers within Tiger Territory. The Amur tiger is the largest of all the big cats and is native to far eastern Asia. It is listed as critically endangered with only 200/300 or so still living in the wild. The female can weigh up to 160kg (350lb), roughly equivalent to two 12-stone men!
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