"Into Africa" - formerly "African Plains" is a cool walk-through mini safari at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park. In a unique turn-around for the park, where once many of the hoofed animals lived separately, now, since June, the species are interacting with each other as they would in the wild. The staff are so amazing because they try their best - within the very limited space - to design a landscape that would suit the animals as much as possible and the animals have claimed their own territories within the shared space. It is an experiment that appears to have succeeded. At the beginning, the animals were nervous because they had not mixed together before at the park. But each species had a share of a much larger enclosure now. The eland were nervous of the giraffes and steered well clear at the beginning. The zebras kept to themselves entirely and the emus and ostriches didn't seem to fit in at all. However, after a few weeks, they got used to each other. The lechwe and eland mingle freely amongst the giraffes and the zebras seem to settle down. However, the zebras seem to prefer to have a run of the main section of the enclosure when the giraffes are not there. The giraffes socialise easily with the other animals, too. Obviously, the predators are kept securely locked up, but the Amur Leopards stalk the zebras whenever they seem. and the zebras seem to enjoy teasing the leopards by running up and down the side of the leopard enclosure.
The park is exceeding my expectations - the lemurs have an enlarged enclosure and there is major development of the polar bear enclosures.