Animal interactions

dave50

Member
Hi

I just signed up as I was looking for somewhere that may be able to answer a question. I'm glad I did as there seems to be a lot of good info on here.

I've travelled to a few different zoo's around the country with my girlfriend and we like going places where we can interact with the animals. We just travelled over 100 miles this week to go to South Lakes Animal Park just so we could hand feed giraffes and penguins. In the summer they have a bit more available including hand feeding lemurs. We've also been to Longleat and fed lorikeets and deer.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of more places that allow this kind of interaction. There was a place on TV that showed people hand feeding Rhinos that looked amazing, but I can't find anywhere that lets people do that.

Any suggestions are appreciated if people know of more things like this in the UK.

Thanks
 
I should have mentioned too, I know most places do a 'keeper for the day' experience but that's not the kind of thing I'm interested in. I like what South Lakes do with the giraffes and penguins so I'm looking for a similar thing with different animals.
 
I fed the elephants and giraffes at Colchester a few years ago. It was a daily event. I expect a regular will be able to tell you if it still happens.
 
Yes Colchester still do the elephant and giraffe feeding, obviously not so frequently at this time of year but in the summer it is very popular! It always seems a very slick well organised event.
 
Thanks for the info, I've sent them an email to find out a bit more about it.

I'd really love to feed a hippo. At first I thought that nowhere would allow this but looking on Youtube, there's lots of videos of people doing it in America.

Anyone else got any suggestions? Any input appreciated.
 
Colchester do keeper shadowing experiences which are not the same as keeper days, eg you get to do operant conditioning-type target/reward thing with the tigers -when they are in the mood!

Chester have just launched some feeding type experiences (you're not a Chester stooge are you :) ) I fed the lemurs as part of a keeper day and it was brilliant, it's now an experience on its own! And they do a rhino one!

Oh and you can rub oil into aardvarks and bottle feed them at Africa Alive!
 
I'm not a Chester Stooge, although I'm curious to know what exactly this is lol. I'm interested in their Rhino experience so I'll look in to that.

I had a reply from colchester so thanks for letting me know about that

We have public feeding of the giraffes and elephants each day at set
times, these vary throughout the year depending on the season. We do
not make a charge for this, you just have to turn up at the times listed
on the Zoo Map which you will receive when you arrive.

I did a bit of digging last night and pretty much checked every zoo website in the country. Sadly I couldn't find anything involving hippos at all, but if anyone knows of anything I'd really appreciate any info about this.

I did find this which looks amazing. Face to face Cheetah experience inside their enclosure - http://www.hamertonzoopark.com/animal-contact/
 
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