Ziggy The Skunk of Timbavati Wildlife Park

Ahh yes, a day in the life of Ziggy! Who is ziggy? Well I am glad you asked. The Zigster is our resident skunk at Timbavati Wildlife Park. For me, Ziggy is a glimpse of the impossible becoming a reality. I mean let’s think about this for a minute. We have a skunk named Ziggy that you can get up close and personal with. I don’t think that’s something that most of us experience in life with any degree of entertainment.

Since the beginning of time, encounters between man and skunk have been frequent and I do not believe that most of them have ended pleasantly. See the skunk’s stripes? These are nature’s warning signs to the rest of the animal kingdom to be ware. A skunk’s stripes point to the spray glands like a badger’s stripes point to their teeth.

Another factor driving our encounters are how plentiful skunks are globally. There are 12 different species of skunks to be found all over the world. These omnivores love wooded areas and usually places with good vegetation in general.

The best part about Ziggy is that our professional animal handling staff works with him daily so he is comfortable with human interaction. We also had his scent glands removed so that the smell doesn’t come along with the experience.

Ziggy is a star in our wildlife presentation and if you watch this week’s video you will easily see why. Thanks and talk to you all next week!

Safari Train Station Update

Greetings friends and welcome to this week’s blog about our Train Station Update. Before we get into that, we hope you’re all enjoying the middle of summer and soaking up as much sun as you possibly can. We all know that the summer season can come and go with a gust of wind and a wee bit of precipitation.

The changing of the season is a big deal for us at Timbavati Wildlife Park, probably more so than most attractions in the Wisconsin Dells. If you recall from our blog in December, last year we took on the task of updating the train station.

For us this was a really big undertaking. First we had to remove the go cart track and if you were here last summer you know we said farewell to our unleaded buggies. That meant removing all of the concrete and leveling the hills that our track sat on.

We repaved the parking lot, extended our rock wall to encompass the entire grasslands area, and even added remote controlled gates for our train engineers. That was just the work that took place in the Grasslands Area alone. That was only the beginning.

Once that work was complete, we put a new deck in to feed animals while you wait for the train and while we were added spruced up the fences in the waiting area as well. The project took a year because as we alluded to about the seasons, when the winter hits, it takes our work indoors and we do what we can while the weather has us hunkered down.

In addition to all of those updates, as if those weren’t enough, we added two new train cars to the train. Completing the new cars took almost 2 years because there were molds that needed to be made for casting the train parts as they haven’t been in production since the 1950’s. There weren’t very many of these made to start with, if I am correct there were less than 20, probably closer to 13.

You get where I am going with this, there are always changes being made to the park and that’s what we do to always give our returning guests a new experience every time that they visit us. Check out this week’s video to see the additions. Talk with you next week!

Wildlife Presentation - Anteater

Throughout the day at Timbavati Wildlife Park we have Wildlife Presentations. These presentations take place in our interaction area and are a great educational experience for the entire family. Our Wildlife Presentations have fan favorites like our sloth, anteater and baby kangaroos.

Our professional animal handling staff really dig into details that reflect their level of education and experience with the animals in the park. It also shows the amount of trust that the animals and staff have developed for each other. The care and attention given to all of our animals on a daily basis is really reflected in the relationships you see throughout the entire park.

The cycle of life and health of the animals dictate which animals are in the wildlife presentations. If one of them is under the weather or is getting too old to be handled comfortably by our staff they are moved out of the presentation and we bring another animal in. The animals in the presentation are basically subject to change without notice.

My last Wildlife Presentation had a sloth, a tortoise, fox, kangaroo and the subject of this week’s video, the anteater. Check our website for presentation times. The Wildlife Presentations are included with the cost of admission. Thanks and we will see you in the park!

Quick Facts: Tortoise

Greetings friends and Happy 4th of July weekend to you all. I know it’s Monday but if you saved a vacation day or two, you’re able to parlay this weekend into a 4 day long event. That would allow you to slow down just a little bit to read a few quick facts about the tortoise. However if you have to work, skip to the video at the end for your quick facts and forget that we’re having a boatload of fun without you! I’m just kidding but being off is sure nice!

Timbavati Wildlife Park is home to a creep of tortoises. Yes you read right, I said creep. A bunch of cows is called a herd, a bunch of kangaroos are called a mob, a bunch of tortoises are referred to as a creep.

Tortoises are turtles, but turtles aren’t tortoises. A tortoise isn’t built for aquatic life, you can watch the video for a few quick facts on this differences. They’re all in the same family of course but diet and habitat have a lot to do with how they’re separated.

Now the world has all kinds of turtles and tortoises in it. One great way to identify the temperature that they originated from is by looking at the colors of their shells. A tortoise from a warmer climate will have a brighter colored shell than one from a colder climate.

Here’s a crazy fact for you, you know one of those useless tidbits of information that will stick in your brain forever but never really help you in life? Yeah, one of those. A tortoise smells through its throat. They have what’s called a vomeronasal or Jacobson’s Organ on the roof of their mouth’s. They push air past it through their mouths and nose to smell what the Rock is cookin’.

Well that’s it for this week, check out of quick facts vid and have a safe holiday and summer!

Quick Facts: Kangaroo

Hello all, welcome to the week of the kangaroo and here are some quick facts to help you start off your week!

For starters there are 4 different kinds of kangaroos. There are reds, eastern greys, western greys and antilopine kangaroos. At Timbavati Wildlife Park we have reds and greys. Don’t ask me if they’re east or west, all I know is that they get along!

Kangaroos eat grasses, flowers, leaves, ferns, moss sometimes they have the occasional insect, you know roo food groups. Like a cow does, kangaroos also regurgitate their food to chew more than once before it fully gets digested. They stand 4 - 5 feet tall and can weigh up to 200 pounds so I am going to say that they eat a lot of plants to maintain that kind of size.

Interesting Kangaroo Fact

Kangaroos can’t walk backwards but they can rear back on their tails. When they do that, they can kick claw and box you with all four arms and legs. For the most part roos are pretty chill so if you have one taking that kind of posture with you, you might want to go the other way cause that roo isn’t feeling you.

Well that’s it for this week, check out or roo video and we will talk with you all next week.

Quick Facts: Capybara

Greetings friends and welcome to the week of the Capybara at Timbavati Wildlife Park! We have some quick facts to share!

That’s right ladies and gentlemen this week weighing in at a staggering 150 pounds (on the large end) we have the Capybara which makes this rodent the largest member of the rodent family.

Capybara Quick Facts

These large rodents live in South America and pretty much stay close to water sources. If the mammal world really had an Aqua-Man, the capybara would probably be it. I mean minus the mental telepathy and all.

Check it out, they can hold their breath underwater for up to 5 minutes. They also have webbed feet so it’s swimming skills are first rate too. The forward facing brow of the animal also allows it to just pop its head up out of the water, up to the eyes and navigate waterways without revealing its identity.

The capybara is a cool customer, you can see footage of this huge rodent in this week’s video.

Quick Facts: Red Breasted Geese

Greetings dear friends and welcome to the week of the red breasted goose. In this week’s quick facts we will take a look at some of the more interesting facts about these birds of a feather.

The red breasted goose is a native of North Eastern Europe. Siberian is literally its middle name. It also can be seen as far south as Greece. In an opinion based rant, I consider this goose to be fairly similar to other members of the species.

I mean it does traditional goose things like migrate with weather. The red breasted geese also eat seeds, shoots, and grasses. It’s a lot smaller than a traditional goose that we find natively in America. The red breasted goose is a little bit smaller than an average mallard duck, so it’s a bit diminutive.

Experience Matters

Having worked with them I know they are small and you can see that by this week’s video that whenever the camera showed up they were timid and evasive. All birds don’t function like that. Parrots throw things like mulch and sticks at me when I approach them with a camera and the white emu alpha male attacked my camera when I entered that enclosure.

Perhaps to make up for being small and timid the red breasted goose does something that not a lot of other birds do. They protect themselves by nesting near birds of prey. That’s right, owls, hawks and buzzards and a welcome site to a red breasted goose and if a flock of them can, they will take up homes near an avian predator.

These birds of prey are great at keeping the red breasted gooses real enemies at a distance. Critters like an arctic fox really don’t want anything to do with a predator like a peregrine falcon so staying off the radar is important to the fox. Check out this week’s video for a look at the Red Breasted Geese of Timbavati Wildlife Park.

Quick Facts: Camel Rides

We have camel rides at Timbavati Wildlife Park. Camels are the oldest known form of transportation. They were domesticated around 3,500 years ago. They have flat pads for feet not hooves associated with creates like a horse. This allows their feet to splay out over the sand instead of digging in it. Their fur also reflects sunlight which allows them to stay cool in the heat.

A camel’s hump isn’t water, it is fat that is stored. Fat obviously has water in it. When the fat in their humps is metabolized or used up, the each gallon of fat also yields about a gallon of water which allows the camel to travel great distances without drinking water. This helps people in undeveloped areas who choose camel rides as their primary means of transportation.

Dusty Terrain

If you have never been to the desert, let me be the first to tell you that it’s sandy. I mean like really sandy. I mean like think about when you go to the beach and have sand in your shoes and then when you leave you have to dump the sand out. Well the desert as this much sand times 10 and it gets everywhere.

Camels have evolved to survive in the sandy desert. For instance, they can close their nostrils and they have a double row of eyelashes which allows them to see where they’re going in windy conditions. Unlike a lot of other animals, the camel can actually eat cactus, think about it, this creature is perfectly designed for desert life.

When you're in the Wisconsin Dells this summer, stop into Timbavati Wildlife Park and take some time to ride a ship of the desert for yourself. Talk with you next week, CT

Quick Facts: Pig Races

Our Swine Time Pig races have been entertaining families for generations. I had never personally seen a pig race before I started going to Timbavati and when someone mentioned “Pig Racing”, I began to envision horse tracks and things like that. The races were a side note of what was really taking place here.

The pig races are one of the many places where the personality of the Timbavati Wildlife Park Staff actually directly connects with the park visitors. This is an extended interaction as the show lasts about 25 minutes or so.

There are more one-liners being thrown at you during the pig races than a Rodney Dangerfield show and I can appreciate that because it is a thrown back to a slice of Americana that is all but being lost in the shuffle of today’s digital landscape. The feeling of the Pig Races hearken back to the side show callers of the Ringling and Vaudeville eras reminding us that story telling and the charm of human wit will always be the purest forms of entertainment and expression.

Here's a quick look at our pig races!

Quick Facts: Kookaburra

Straight out of our Waterfalls Area and into the palm of your hand via your mobile device Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the kookaburra. This Australian King Fisher is the king of the species! Here are a few quick facts about our feathered friend.

Weighing in at a hefty 16 ounces this carnivore enjoys a hearty diet of rodents, snakes, fish and insects. When it catches its prey, its beak which can be up to 4 inches long is used to pulverize their dinner against a tree branch or other nearby hard object. Natural predators for the kookaburra include cats, dogs, foxes, eagles and owls. Feels a bit cat and mouse to me, who’s in whose beak kind of situations and what not.

Let’s also not forget the laugh. These birds enjoy forests and the edges of them where they can hunt plains but have a safe tree to get back to. Can you imagine walking along in the forest and hearing cackling all around you but you don’t know where? If you know that it’s a kookaburra you’re probably cool, if you don’t know what it is though, I am sure you’re a bit spooked about it.

If you don’t know what a Kookaburra sounds like, don’t worry about it, it’s the laughing you here in the soundtrack to our 2017 videos. Like this one!

Quick Facts: Lesser Flamingos

Greetings dear friends, this week we are discussing the lesser flamingos of Timbavati Wildlife Park. The smallest of the Flamingo species are the lesser flamingos. This native of India, Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa can live to be over 50 years in the wild. I guess that’s why their population is so large with estimates around 3 million for this sub-species alone.

Lesser flamingos stand at about 2-3ft in height and weigh anywhere from 2-6 pounds. They can fly at speeds up to 60 km/h with a wingspan of 3-4 feet. One telling characteristic are the black-tipped wings which you usually don’t see unless this bird is in flight. Their wings are otherwise tucked when they are standing.

More About The Lesser Flamingos

The name Flamingo has its origins from the word flame which was used to describe the plumage of the bird. The Lesser Flamingo however is the least pink or orange of all the flamingo species. The color of a flamingo is in direct relation to their diet and this one eats less crustaceans than their other flamingo counterparts surviving on more algae than animals.

A female Lesser will lay one white egg at a time which is incubated by both parents. The egg will hatch in around 30 days. Parents create what is called “Crop Milk” and this can be used to feed not only their young but also other young in the colony.

Here is a short video on the Lesser Flamingos of Timbavati Wildlife Park and the next time you’re in the Waterfalls Area stop by and take a look at our Lesser Flamingos.

Quick Facts: White Emu

The rare white emu is a resident of Australia is the second largest bird in the world. It avoids living in dense forests, areas populated by humans and arid terrains. They have been spotted in deserts but they are much more common near water supplies.

Emus are part of the Ratite family which include ostrich, rhea, kiwi, cassowary, and the recently extinct Moa.  Far as I can tell the emu really only has beef with the Dingo. Everything you read about the emu has them seeking to avoid dingos at all costs.

With a top sprint speed of up to 30 miles per hour, the ability to stride 9 feet and a 7 foot vertical, the emu is a tough character to corral if you are a predator. Large reptiles like alligators can also be an issue for our feathery friend.

Breeding Habits

A pair of emu will breed in the summer and a female can lay a clutch of up to 15 eggs at a time. When the female lays her eggs she wanders off and the father tends to the clutch. A female can lay up to 3 clutches in a season and sometime will lay her eggs in another emu's nest and let a surrogate father tend to the clutch.

The male stays with the nest for about 8 weeks, until the clutch hatches. In this period he rarely leaves the nest and as a result of this loses a lot of his fat reserves. The chicks are born "precocial" which means they are pretty well functional at birth taking only a few minutes before they take their first steps. They stay with their father for up to 18 months while he teaches them how to hunt and avoid those pesky dingos.

The emu is a great swimmer and also an omnivore. They eat plants, new grass shoots, insects, lizards and fruit. The average lifespan of an emu is 10 to 20 years in the wild.  At birth this bird is less than a foot tall and grows to be about 6 feet tall. weighing up to 120 pounds, this majestic bird is a great addition to the fauna of Timbavati Wildlife Park.

The Touraco of Timbavati Wildlife Park

Greetings friends! This week we are taking a look at the turaco of Timbavati Wildlife Park.

This majestic bird can be found in the tropical rain forests of West Africa. They are often seen among the treetops and because they are not strong fliers they will run along the branches hopping from tree branch to tree branch. They are not migratory birds but will travel in groups of 10-12.

There are many types of turaco. (Also spelled “touraco”) The violet turaco is home to Timbavati Wildlife Park. This gorgeous bird has a glossy violet plumage hence the name. They’re unmistakable with their chestnut crown, yellow forehead with white ear-coverts.

More About The Turaco

Reproduction season is dependent upon the rain; they will mate in pairs. The female will lay on average 2 eggs and both the female and male will incubate for about 25 days. After the chicks hatch they are fed by regurgitation naturally. At about 4-5 weeks these chicks are ready to fly though they still are dependent upon their parents. Their diets consist of plantains, figs and different kinds of fruits.

The next time you’re at Timbavati Wildlife Park stop by and say, “Hi.” to our turaco! We look forward to seeing you!

The Spider Monkeys of Timbavati Wildlife Park

Greetings friends and welcome to the week of the Spider Monkey!

Spider Monkeys are found in the tropical forests of Central and South America From Southern Mexico to Brazil. They have long arms and legs with prehensile tails which means that they can use them to grab as well as hang by them.

While these furry critters are hanging from a tree by their tails they can look like huge spiders when they’re darting through the shadows.

Spider Monkeys Mostly Like Fruit

The spider monkey weighs anywhere from 14 to 26 pounds and is an omnivore. The Spider Monkey lives on a diet of fruit, nuts and leaves but will also eat insects and small reptiles. It also doesn’t have any thumbs. It has 4 fingers that can hook around branches when swinging. Our spider monkeys really get after green grapes, they're grape-a-holics!

Male spider monkeys typically stay with their troops for life, a troop is usually made up of 15-25 individuals. Females leave the troops from time to time to join new troops. The gestation period of the female is about 230 days and females will give birth to one baby at a time.

Timbavati Wildlife Park has its own troop with a one year old baby playing around the enclosure. You can learn more fun facts about the Spider Monkeys in this Week’s Video.