Spider monkeys have long, slender limbs and a prehensile tail that acts like an extra hand, helping them swing through the trees with incredible agility. Their fur is typically dark, with lighter patches around their faces, and they have expressive, wide eyes. Their tails are hairless underneath, providing a secure grip as they move through the canopy. These monkeys are built for acrobatics, with their elongated arms and legs allowing them to leap from branch to branch with ease. Watching them swing and flip around the jungle, it’s clear they’re nature’s playful, gravity-defying acrobats!
Spider monkeys are primarily frugivorous, meaning their diet consists mainly of fruits, which make up the majority of their food intake. They are known to consume a wide variety of fruits, including berries, figs, and other tropical fruits, which are abundant in the rainforests where they live. In addition to fruit, their diet is supplemented with leaves, flowers, and nuts. They are also known to eat seeds and occasionally insects, although these make up a smaller portion of their diet.
Endangered primarily due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and poaching. As rainforests in Central America are cleared for agriculture, logging, and urban expansion, these monkeys lose the vast tree canopies they rely on for food and shelter. Habitat fragmentation makes it even harder for them to travel between forest patches, limiting access to resources and mates. Additionally, poaching for bushmeat and the illegal pet trade further threatens their population. With slow reproduction rates and increasing pressures from climate change, the species faces a precarious future. Conservation efforts focused on habitat protection and reducing human impact are critical to saving these acrobatic primates.
Ring Tiled Lemurs ‘sun worship’ which means they face their tummies to the sun and stretch their arms out wide to warm themselves up.
Ring-tailed Lemurs live in groups of 5-25 animals with the females making up a well-ordered hierarchy that dominates over males. Female lemurs remain in the group whilst males join other groups, thus we have a group of males on the islands at Mogo.
Ring-Tailed Lemurs diet consists mainly of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, sap and the occasional invertebrate. Due to the fact that the vegetation in forests inhabited by these lemurs is sparse and non-continuous, they are often found traveling on the ground.
Ring-tailed Lemurs live in groups of 5-25 animals with the females making up a well-ordered hierarchy that dominates over males.
Unfortunately Ring-Tailed Lemur populations are rapidly declining in the wild, with around 50% of their natural habitat having been destroyed in the past 35 years. This steep decline in numbers has left them classified as an “Endangered” species on the IUCN red list.
The forests that Ring-Tailed Lemurs prefer are quickly being converted to farmland, overgrazed by livestock, or harvested for charcoal production. Ring-tailed lemurs are also hunted for food in certain areas of their range and are frequently kept as pets.
Fortunately, they are found in several protected areas in southern Madagascar, but the level of protection varies widely in these areas offering only some populations refuge from hunting and habitat loss.
Our wildlife parks at Hunter and Mogo both home lions. These magnificent creatures are usually tawny or a sand colour, but can also be white due to a receive gene ‘leucism’.
Lions can run at about 55km/h but their prey average around 80km/h. To get around this they must get as close as possible to their dinner without being seen and then explode from hiding, relying on surprise and brute force. Female lions are the original ‘stalkers’.
Lions are strictly carnivorous, relying on a diet of Buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, roan, sable, springbok, gemsbok, kob, impala, Warthog, waterbuck, haribeest and other animals.
Female lions are the stable presence in the pride. They are responsible for cub rearing and most of the hunting, as well as contributing significantly to the defense of the pride.
Females are the active hunters possessing a balance of speed, power, stealth and endurance that the much larger males struggle to match. Males are primarily responsible for patrolling, marking and defending the pride range as well as mating, but it is the female members that keep the pride together and functioning, often surviving several pride takeovers by various coalitions of males.
Common Wombats are a short, robust marsupial native to south-east Australia and Tasmania. They can grow to an average length of 90-120cm, and can weigh anywhere from 20-39kgs. They have course brown fur, small slightly pointed ears and a round black nose. The toes on their front feet all face forwards to aid in digging, and the claws on the back toes are long to aid in digging and grooming. Due to their natural digging behaviours, wombats have developed a backward-facing pouch, to avoid dirt flying into it. Common Wombats have a hard, cartilaginous plate in their lower back and rump, which they use for protection against predators. The Common Wombat has a lifespan of 15-20 years in captivity, and 10-15 years in the wild.
Common Wombats are a herbivorous species, feeding on grass, roots and leaves.
Common Wombats are a solitary animal, coming together only for breeding, which can occur almost any time of year. Usually one joey is born, approximately 30 days after mating occurs. As with all marsupials, Common Wombats are a marsupial, and joeys will develop in the female’s pouch. Common Wombat joeys usually remain in the pouch for the first 8-10 months of development, and then spend the next 10-12 months developing out of the pouch, but remaining with their mother. Joeys will feed on milk from the pouch until the age of 12-15 months, at which time it will feed completely on solid foods.