Knuthenborg Safaripark Knuthenborg Safaripark

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Kifaru Bwana

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I would love to know more about the Knuthenborg Safaripark. I have looked at their site and deep down I can dig out some info on new species and all, yet my Danish is not that native speaker ...

Some help appreciated with this:

September 2008: Det usynlige arbejde







I løbet af sommeren har det ikke været muligt at se de sjældne persiske onager, men nu er der endelig ankommet en ny ung hoppe og det vigtige avlsarbejde fortsætter.

Siden 2006 har Knuthenborg Park & Safari haft persisk onager - et ekstremt truet vildæsel. Det enste sted i verden, hvor der stadig lever vilde onager, er i Iran - og her findes kun et ganske lille antal. Det internationale avlssamarbejde med disse dyr er utrolig vigtigt og de ca. 50 individer i Europa administreres nøje. Vi fik 2 ældre og meget nervøse hopper fra England, som blev introduceret til en hingst importeret fra Tyskland. Desværre nåede vi kun at få et enkelt hoppeføl ud af denne lille flok. Denne unge hoppe blev i slutningen af august udvekslet med en ny fra Køln Zoo og i løbet af de næste uger skal denne introduceres først til anlægget og derefter til hingsten. Vi håber at få tildelt 3 hopper mere, så vi kan vise en hel lille flok og være med til at opbygge en stabil bestand inden for avlssamarbejdet.

Oktober 2008: Persisk onager hører til de mere besværlige arter at arbejde med - en rigtig udfordring for Dyreafdelingens medarbejdere.

Vi kæmper stadig med introduktionen af den nye hoppe - et smukt men viljestærkt dyr. Efter en opvækst i et lille zooanlæg og som del af en større flok tager det tid for den unge hoppe at vænne sig til livet på de store vidder. Således kan persisk onager endnu ikke opleves af gæsterne i Knuthenborg Park & Safari.

Much appreciated,

Kifaru Bwana
 
Here is a rough translation from Danish to English (neither of which is my native tounge, but I think it will do):

September 2008: The invisible work

During summer it has not been possible to see the Persian Onager, but now at last a new young female has arrived and the important conservation work can continue.

Since 2006 Knuthenborg Park & Safari has held Persian Onager – an extremely endangered wild ass. The only place in the world where they still live in the wild is Iran – and here just a small number of them are to be found. The international conservation co-operation with these animals are unbelievably important and the appr. 50 individuals in Europe are carefully administrated. We received 2 old and very nervous females from England, who were introduced to a stallion imported from Germany. Unfortunately we only got one female (insert English word for “horse baby”) from this little troupe. This young female was in the end of August exchanged for a new one from Cologne and during the next weeks she will be introduced to first the enclosure, then to the stallion. We hope to be allotted another 3 females so we can exhibit a small troupe and thereby participate in building a sustainable mass within the conservation co-operation.


October 2008: Persian Onager is one of the most difficult species to work with – a real challenge to the zoo staff.

We are still struggling with the introduction of the new female – a beautiful but headstrong animal. Having been raised in a small zoo enclosure and as a part of a bigger troupe it now takes time for her to get accustomed to life on the big plains. Therefore, the guests to Knuthenborg Park & Safari can still not experience the Persian Onager on exhibit.
 
Horse baby = Foal ;)
 
Thanks, ashley-h. Actually, I was 90 % sure that was the word but I couldn´t for the life of me figure out how to spell it! :D

By the way - my usage of "troupe", does that make sense? I guess there must be some better word?
 
A group of horses is called a herd, but troupe is fine too.
 
Thanks again! Ah, yes... a "herd" of course! The eternal trouble with the English language for all us not native to it is the very richness of your language - so many different words for basically the same thing. Probably small and very subtle differences that are impossible for the rest of us to learn...

I Swedish, there is basically one word for a group of mammals or birds: "flock". The word seems to exist in English as well - at least I remember a 1980s rock band called "A Flock of Seagulls".

But in English... "troupe", "flock", "herd", "pack" and probably many other... hmmmmm... ;)
 
It is weird, and yet most people who's native language isn't English learn to speak it, whilst most the English are too lazy to learn any other language ;)
 
Haha... well... it is a damn pleasant language with lots of positive cultural attachments.

I have probably mentioned this before:

The Beatles and Winston Churchill; the reputation of the British as being the most animal friendly people in the world; The Royal Navy chasing down slave ships all over the world in the 1830s (after declaring the practise of slavery globally illegal) - not to mention authors like Charles Dickens and movie directors like Stanley Kubrick...

Pretty hard not to be an anglophile...
 
In english we have a different word for a group of nearly everything (If you want the technical term they are called collective nouns.)
A gaggle of geese
A pod of whales
A herd of cows
A flock of sheep
A murder of crows
A parliament of owls
nd the list goes on and on. :)
 
a wisp of snipe
a bellowing of bullfinches

I think its a knob of waterfowl too!
 
Stop it guys... don´t think I can stand any more examples... :p

Actually I had to google a couple of these expressions to make sure you weren´t kidding!

But sure as hell, I found out among other things that there is actually a DEATH METAL ROCK BAND in Finland called "Murder of Crows"... :D

Also... yes I do seem to remember the term "collective nouns" from English lessons in school some 35 years ago or so. :cool:
 
One of m personnal favorites and i swear this will be my last is a string of ponies.
 
Thanx for all these notions as it has been certainly interesting reading. But can we stop polluting the thread with semantics now? I would rather we continue or completely this in the Zoo Cafe threads.

Let us get back on topic here! What are the plans for Knuthenborg Safari Park for 2009? Any new species and/or animal exhibits?

Still further: what about a MASTERPLAN?
 
Knuthenborg Safaripark is the largest safaripark in Northern Europe and also member of EAZA. It is only accessible if you have your own car. I have only visited the park once in 2000, but will hopefully return this year. The park consists of a lot of drive-through enclosures and some walkthrough enclosures.

Some of the main attractions are:

Savannah - Huge drive-through enclosure with white rhinoes, baringo giraffes, grant's zebras, sable antelopes, blue wildebeests, common elands, ankole cattle and ostriches.

Tiger Forest - Huge drive-through forest enclosure with amur tigers.

Baboon exhibit - Drive-through exhibit housing a large group of hamadryas baboons. To enter here you have to buy tickets for a ride on a speciel bus where visitors can buy food to feed the baboons through little holes.

Lemur woods - Large and lush forest walkthrough-exhibit for ring-tailed lemurs, black-and-white ruffed lemurs, red ruffed lemurs and mongoose lemurs.

Australia - Lush walkthrough-exhibit for red-necked wallabies and emus.

Other species in their drive-through enclosures includes yak, water buffalo, persian onager, bactrian camel, sika deer, chital deer, llama, guanaco, greater rhea, North American moose and prairie bison.
They also have some aviaries for tropical birds and exhibits for golden lion tamarins and chinese muntjacs.

The park achieved fame in Denmark when they imported 2.2 white rhinoes from South Africa back in 2000. One of the females had a calf in early 2008, but accidently crushed it.

I have no information about future projects but development seems to be slow in Knuthenborg.

Hope this info helps!
 
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It is not quite true that you only can visit Knuthenborg with a car, - there are areas which you cannot enter, but then you can walk around them on roads and paths. The savannah animals can often be seen through the gates or over the fences, but you definitely need a car to see the tigers. I have visited the place once on a tour with some kind of safarimobile, so that's also a possibility. Motorists have to enter through the Southeastern gate (which is far away from anything), but as far as I know pedestrians can still enter from the Bandholm gate.
 
Thanks for your input Iversen. I didn't know that you could visit Knuthenborg without a car now and I can't really see the point anyway as many of the animals will be hard or impossible to see for pedestrians.
 
I came across this interesting news item: tigers having giraffe for dinner.

Apparently, Knuthenborg Safari euthanized 2 older female giraffe and fed them to the tigers. This after they failed to relocate the females to other zoos (in order to prevent inbreeding). I assume the feature actually meant to say both hybrid females from 2007 Winni and Kenya.

Source: Tigerne i Knuthenborg Safaripark er de seneste dage blevet fodret med giraffer.
To ældre hungiraffer var i overskud i Knuthenborg Safaripark og kunne ikke afsættes til andre zoologiske haver. Derfor er de blevet til tigerføde. Det skriver Folketidende.

- Når dyrene er gamle nok til at flytte hjemmefra, så bestemmer flokdynamikken blandt dyrene. Og så kan vi ikke beholde alle dyr, der er født her, da vi skal undgå indavl, fortæller dyre- og formidlingschef i Knuthenborg Safaripark Lisbeth Høgh til Folketidende.


Giraffer ikke hverdagskost

Normalt er det ikke hverdagskost, at tigerne bliver fodret med giraf, men de er vant til at blive fodret med andre dyr fra parken.

- Det er en smule usædvanligt, at det er giraffer, tigerne bliver fodret med, fordi vi ofte kan afsætte vores giraffer til andre zoologiske haver. Men det er på ingen måde usædvanligt, at de spiser dyr, der lever i parken, siger Lisbeth Høgh.

Lisbeth Høgh understreger desuden, at når det kommer til foder, så bliver der ikke gjort forskel på dyrene i Knuthenborg. Derfor kan giraffer ligesom geder og aber bruges til foder.

Can anyone confirm?
 
Well, it is an older story from last year but none the less true. This is common practice in Danish zoos. If the euthanised animals were healthy why not use them for food? I know that Copenhagen Zoo previously have fed both zebras and antelopes for the lions as well as wallabys for the tasmanian devils. And the lions and tigers in Odense ZOO have had freshly killed zebra, giraffe, alpaca and reindeer on the menu,
 
Hello Toddy, I know very well it is a story from 2012 and personally I have no objections to feeding surplus stock to carnivores at all.

What concerns me / I would like to know which giraffe were fed to the tigers? I know Knuthenborg Safari had for years bred with hybrid giraffe. The last hybrid giraffe there are females Kenia and Winni (both born 2011) and an unplanned - I guess - calf from 2011 in Kojo. I would suspect that not being able to relocate the last of these hybrids, both females having already attained breeding age were euthanized in order to prevent any further production of hybrids and pollute the Rothschild's gene pool again.

Can you in anyway find out if this is correct?
 
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