Helping Our Animal Friends Beat the Heat

One of my favorite "ism's" is the one that says: be careful what you wish for. Somewhere around January 18th when the thermometer was coming perilously close to twenty below, I'll bet I wasn't the only Wisconsinite who was wishing for the heat of summer. Extreme temperatures such as the heat wave we are currently experiencing offer the challenge of keeping our animal residents safe during oppressive heat wave. Like zoos around the world, Wildwood is using a variety of methods to help beat the heat.

The Zookeepers at Wildwood Wildlife Park have been preparing cold treats to help the animals cool down in the hot weather. They offer the perfect cool treat that also provides an enrichment activity.

To help prevent heat illness the animals are given daily treats: the otters are given frozen fish lollies while the lemurs and coatimundi are given ice lollies made from frozen fruit and juice.  Other animals such as the capybara, otters, beavers, and tigers keep cool by swimming in their pools, streams offer other animals a chance to splash in the water. The water helps cool them off and the animals can be seen going in and out of the water quite a few times throughout the day.

All the animals have shady spots around their enclosures including shade cloth tops. The zoo incorporates fans, spray misters and sprinklers to help the animals keep cool in extreme weather conditions as well as providing a shady place to rest.

Many of the zoo animals are enjoying the heat wave including the lemurs who can be seen sitting up on their hind legs, with their arms splayed out. Our giant tortoise has been hanging out in the paddock, soaking up the sun and munching on the grass but the Zoo Keepers still have taken measures to keep them comfortable and keep a close watch on all the animals.

Wildwood Welcomes Baby Capybaras

These two adorable Capybara babies are the newest editions to our Wildwood family who arrived on March 4, 2011. 


Some of our visitors think Capybaras look like large, hairy pigs! Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world whose diet consists mainly of grass and aquatic plants.


Capybaras can run very fast and are excellent swimmers; you can see their webbed feet in the photograph. Did you know Capybaras can dive in the water and have been known to remain underwater for as long as five minutes?


Adult Capybaras can be as long as 4 feet and weigh more than 100 pounds. These little ones have a lot of growing to do before they are that big! They weighed about 2 pounds when they were born and will be full grown by the time they are 18-months old.


Capybaras live in South America which is where they got their name which means "master of the grass." They don't dig burrows like some rodents but they like to make beds in the shallow dirt.


Bibliography:
Internet: http://nationalzoo.si.edu; www.switcherroozoo.com

Capybara

True Wild Life | Capybara | The capybara is the largest rodent in the world, and is found inhabiting the water-logged regions of South America. Despite its large size, the capybara is in fact very closely related to other South American rodents including chinchillas and guinea pigs. The capybara is a heavy, stocky-looking animal, which grows to more than a meter in length. The capybara also has a short head in comparison to its body, and has no tail at all.

The capybara is a semi-aquatic animal that is found inhabiting marshes and wetlands throughout the South American jungle. The capybara spends much of the hot daytime hours submerged in the cooler water and the capybara has a number of useful adaptations which help it to survive more effectively in its watery world. The capybara has slightly webbed feet which help to give the capybara more stability when it is moving around on the slippery river banks, and prevents the capybara from sinking too deeply into the mud when the capybara is in the water. The eyes, ears and nose of the capybara are also situated on the top of the capybara's head, enabling the body of the capybara to be fully submerged whilst the capybara can still hear, see and smell.

The capybara looks a bit like the enormous African hippo, and behaves in a very similar way to one, as the capybara spends the hot days in the water, venturing out onto dry land in search of food under the cover of night. The capybara is a herbivorous animal and therefore only eats plants in order to acquire all of the nutrients it needs. The diet of the capybara is mainly made up of grasses and aquatic plants, along with fruits and berries and the occasional munch on tree bark.

The relatively large size and slow nature of the capybara, mean that the capybara is often a rewarding meal for hungry predators. Wildcats including jaguars, pumas and ocelots are the primary predators of the capybara along with caimans and eagles that hunt the younger ones. The capybara is also one of the best sources of food for the world's heaviest snake, the anaconda. The capybara breeds at different times of the year, depending on the region which it inhabits. Most capybara breed once a year, when a litter of four baby capybaras are born after a gestation period of around 5 months. The baby capybara are able to walk within hours of birth and remain with the mother capybara until they are a few months old.

The capybara lives in a group with between 10 and 30 other capybara individuals. The capybara remain in their large groups for safety and capybara groups have been known to contain up to 100 capybara individuals.