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.