I’m always up for talking about giraffe training, it is my favourite part of the day. Our beautiful brothers have been loving their training sessions and making huge progress. There are a few behaviours that we have been fine-tuning and I’d like to show off their skills. We train the giraffes nearly every day, and…
As a zookeeper, it is an unwritten rule that you can’t have favourite animals and to be honest most days, if you asked me, I would have a different answer for you each time anyway. I absolutely love the chimps and their different personalities and group dynamics. I’m in love with the mischievous mini monkeys…
Pumpkins post Halloween What to do with your leftover pumpkins after enjoying them over Halloween? It’s a question I’m sure a lot of you are currently asking yourself and there is a variety of ways to dispose of your pumpkins. Each year about 39.9 million pumpkins are bought for decorating. Yet many will be carved…
For this blog I wanted to celebrate International Zookeeper Day on the 4th October. We are a dedicated and maybe crazy bunch for going down this career path. However, it’s one of the most rewarding and exciting workplaces you can get. I’ve chased down a few of the WWP team to find out why they…
Next week, the happiest day of the year will be upon us, World Smile Day! I am often asked which my favourite species are to work with at the park. It must be said, the little guys never fail to put a smile on my face every day. With the famous saying “good things come in…
For this edition of Matts travels we are jetting off around the world and taking 12-hour flight to South Africa. With travel restrictions a thing of the past hopefully, I found myself in a position where I had the opportunity to go back to South Africa. I’ve been very fortunate to have travelled there twice…
Let’s jump straight in with my blog this week about who is who in our Ringtail Lemur walkthrough. A lot of people ask about how we tell our ringtail lemurs apart. Well for the keepers that work with them on a daily basis, this is very easy. However, for those of you that don’t know,…
Whilst everyone was experiencing the start of the heatwave here in Kent this summer, I was travelling to the Orkney Islands in Scotland. When you look through my photos in this blog, you’ll notice that I was in full waterproofs and down jacket. It pretty much just rained and blew a hooley the whole time…
1st October is National Hair Day so, with this on the horizon and to celebrate I thought I would base my blog on some of the uses animals have for theirs (or rather their fur). Camouflage The most obvious reason for an animal’s fur is camouflage. This is extremely important for predators as they need…
We have been very busy training new behaviours including crate training with many species recently and I wanted to update you on what the animals have been learning. Macaws So, I’ve been making friends with the macaws and teaching them to follow the target. They’ve picked it up nicely and allowed me to move onto…
