Visiting the Lion Park

Sunday we got to visit a lion park in Kroonstad which is about an hour away from Welkom.  I was very excited to visit and it was a lot of fun!  The first part of the tour is the lion and tiger cubs.  I have always wanted to see a tiger cub!  The best part though was that we got to play with them!  I took a lot of pictures; they were so cute and fun!  

Tigers greet each other by chuffing (sp?), which is a little like the f-f-f sound.  So when we greeted the tigers it was best to chuff and also to make a fist and let them smell it.  One of the orange tiger cubs was especially friendly and fearless! The lion cubs were a little more shy, but just as adorable.  They also bottle fed them while we were there, but they didn't offer to let us help with that.  :( After playing with the cubs for about half an hour we took a tour of the rest of the place.  

Once the lions are a certain age they move them out of the cub’s pen to a bigger pen.  Inside each of the pens is a watering pool and a smaller pen they can close off to feed the cats in.  The park gets dead cows or chickens and cuts them into four or five pieces.  On Sunday they put a piece for each lion/tiger in the feeding pens.  Then while we walked around they opened the gate to let the cats in to eat. Sunday is feeding day, so we got to watch them eat, which was pretty neat.  The big cats usually gorge themselves about once a week, after eating so much they sleep the next couple days.  Lions only have about a thirty percent success rate when they are hunting, which is why when they eat they gorge themselves till their next meal, because they will only get to eat about once a week.  They also have lighter colored rings around their eyes which helps them to hunt.  Humans have almost an equal amount of light and color receptors in their eyes, but lions have mostly light receptors.  So when they are hunting at night, the ring helps them to see even better and miniscule amounts of light.   Tigers are better hunters, but at the park they stay in the same pens as the lions.  While lions tend to stay together in prides, tigers prefer to be off by themselves. 

We also got to see some leopards, jaguars, and another cat that I don't know the name of.  There was also a little calf in its own pen, its mother had died and they were taking care of it.  There is a side of the park that raises cows and chickens, but we didn't see it.  Everyone was teasing me because at that pen I was petting the calf while they were looking at some more of the lions!  

 

A lion cub

Playing with the tiger cubs

A leopard

These tiger cubs are actually white because
of the recessive gene, their parents were orange tigers.

I cannot remember the name of this cat