Saturday 2 plus Sunday 3 August 2008

Join your favourite cartoon stars SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and her older cousin, Diego, at Longleat this August!

During this special Nickelodeon roadshow, kids will be invited to take part in exciting Nickelodeon challenges, have pictures taken with the characters, win prizes, be virtually slimed and more!    

Gates open from 10am. Live stage shows throughout the day with special appearances from your favourite Nickelodeon characters.
Free with Longleat Passport Ticket.

Click here to download the flyer or visit www.nick.co.uk/bigtrip

Longleat Safari keepers are celebrating after the successful birth of five wolf pups.

Although the pups were born in late April, it is only recently that they have begun to venture outside to explore their new surroundings. The summer sunshine and warm temperatures are just about perfect for some good wolf pup frolicking about and all five can be seen cavorting around Wolf Wood generally bugging mum and dad with their playful behaviour.

Longleat’s Deputy Head Warden, Ian Turner, explained: “This is the third litter of pups for alpha male Two Tips and his mate Freda and we’re delighted that once again, everything is going well.

“Although wolves typically give birth underground, we built a cubbing den for them about three years ago so that we could provide somewhere warm and dry for them to give birth. We also installed some cameras so that we could capture the moment of birth on film.

“Despite some cunning camera camouflage, Freda was obviously more than aware of its presence and has ignored the den for the last two litters. This year, we removed the cameras, and sure enough, she gave birth in the purpose built den”.

At birth wolf pups measure around 15cm in length and weigh around 500 grams. They are completely dependent on mum’s milk for the first two weeks before starting on regurgitated foods. They are fully weaned by ten weeks.

Longleat Safari keepers were delighted when not one but two of their sea lions gave birth earlier last month.

The two youngsters, both female, join the six-strong colony of Californian sea lions who reside in the freshwater Half Mile Lake alongside Longleat House.

The older of the two pups was born to first time mum Zook whilst for Sealia, it was pup number eight.

Keeper Mark Tye said “We had hoped that Sealia would be first to give birth as she would set an example to new mum Zook. Zook led the way though and is already proving to be the perfect mum.

“Not only is she relaxed with the company of the other sea lions but she also seems more than happy with the attention that the visitors are paying her youngster. She is spending much of her time sunbathing on the wooden jetty and we are ensuring that both she and Sealia are getting plenty of fish as they nurse their two babies”.

Sea lions carry their pups for 12-months and can give birth on land or in water. Although pups generally nurse for up to six months, they will learn to swim and hunt with their mothers from about two months.

Sea lions were first introduced into Half Mile Lake at Longleat in the late 1960s and are believed to be one of the few colonies of Californian sea lions living successfully in freshwater.
Keepers supplement their fish diet – each sea lion eats around three and a half kilos of mackerel a day – with salt tablets to mimic a seawater habitat.

The sea lions share their home with two Ugandan hippopotamus, Spot and Sonia, and Nico, a Lowland Mountain Gorilla, who oversees proceedings from his waterside home on Gorilla Island.

The latest Longleat video podcast has just been released on the Longleat website.

Check out some seriously gorgeous footage of the new wolf and sea lion pups before sitting back to enjoy the antics of the monkeys taking advantage of some unseasonably large puddles in the Monkey Jungle!!

Click here to view the Podcast

BBC Animal Park might have recently finished filming series 9 at Longleat… but, even more reason for you to check out the TV listings on the Longleat website…

Click here for details.