Tuesday, October 16, 2012

South Lakes Wild Animal Park

Spent a few rewarding hours today at the South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Dalton in the Lakes District. I was too lazy to go around and see all the animals, so I concentrated on a few. The first animals I went to see were the lions, chiefly because they were just about to start feeding them.

I could hear their roars from several hundred meters away, and as before I felt a chill down my spine. If not for our superior brains, we would be just another item on the menu. First, we stood and took some pics of them in their cages, then we followed outside to watch them climb straight up a ten feet pole to get at some meat.

Only the two females were eating today, as the male had his starvation day. I've mentioned this before; wild animals will not necessarily eat every day in their "natural" state, so a lot of places will have one day a week where they won't feed the animals. This is to keep a natural cycle going, not for the cruel pleasure of the gameskeepers.

All pics here.

The animals were getting hungry, and were snarling at everything and everybody.
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Literally tearing into her dinner.
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Ptooooey! Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!
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I saw this with the grizzly in the bear park up in Alaska too... they would lick and caress their food in between eating it.
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Kill!
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This girl is a Sumatran tiger named Kadi, just two years old.
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Not much to look at when she was little, but she's grown up to be a beauty.
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