News
Keep Up To Date With Happenings at Tropical Wings
April 2008
At the start of April, our Geoffroy's Marmosets became proud parents of triplets. The babies are very cute and we are really thrilled, especially as Geoffroy's are vulnerable in the their natural habitat of Brazil. Check out their video in the animals section of this website.
Little Haven's Hospice is celebrating 10 years of hospice care on Friday
13th June. As part of their fundraising efforts for their invaluable
services, our Shetland ponies, Vicky and Ruby, had their photo taken as it's
their 10th birthday too! For more information and to see how you can
help, you can visit
www.havenshospices.org.uk/birthdayinvite
or
call 01702 220 350.
March 2008
On the radio again! The BBC Essex crew came to visit on Tuesday morning to do a LIVE broadcast from Tropical Wings for Ray Clark's Breakfast Show. Mammals Keeper Fiona Martin was up at the crack of dawn to take roving reporter Tom around to see the sights. Tom absolutely LOVED our parrot Eric the long billed-corella. Eric was his usual chatty self and made lots of noisy comments for Ray at the studio. Hope you were listening in!
Soon to be on BBC1’s DIY SOS! Tropical Wings was visited by Nick Knowles to film our wonderful wildlife park as part of the new series. The family featuring in the programme came back to Tropical Wings as it’s one of their favourite places to visit and brings back lots of good memories for them. We were all really pleased to welcome them and share in the filming fun.
February 2008
Baby Egyptian Fruit Bats Born! - Yes, we are now the proud owners of 6 tiny tots. We thought that our rescue bats were an all female colony until we spotted the new additions. Visit the bat cave in the Tropical House, and see if you can spot them (still clinging to mum).
January 2008
Breeding of Marbled Polecats at Essex Zoo
Marbled polecat update - Layla is doing really well and she's thriving.
The staff at Tropical Wings had something to be proud about in June 2007. Their pair of Marbled Polecats produced a litter of five babies, which was a first breeding in a UK zoo for many years and generated much excitement in the zoo-keeping world.
Proud parents, Yuri and Petra, produced 5 young, known as kits. Unfortunately first time mum, Petra unknown to anyone had stopped producing milk and three kits died. The surviving kits were extremely malnourished, weak and suffering from septicaemia. It was touch and go for these tiny babies weighing only 44 and 53 grammes so keeper Katie Bean, in an effort to save their lives set about the task of hand rearing them. They were immediately given antibiotics and put on a diet of kitten milk and at first Katie had to feed the kits every two hours which was quite exhausting and takes a lot of dedication. As they started to thrive the feeds were cut down gradually to two feeds a day and they started taking solid food such a turkey mince. “We are amazed that these little creatures are still alive as they were very poorly. But they’re going from strength to strength now.” said Katie in September.
Marbled Polecats are quite rare in captivity so not too much is known about their behaviour. The Marbled Polecat is a Mustelid (a family which includes skunks, weasels and ferrets) and looks very much like a small ferret but with more colourful fur. The Marbled Polecats (Vormela peregusna) at Tropical Wings are Egyptian sub-species from the Sinai desert area. Katie decided to call the female kit “Layla” which is Egyptian for “born at night” and the male kit “Omari” which is Egyptian for “highborn”. They are omnivores meaning they eat meat and vegetation, Layla and Omari’s favourite foods are mice, chicks and liver with a little fresh fruit.
Omari has now left the zoo to be become part of another breeding programme but Layla has remained at the zoo patiently awaiting the arrival of a young male that hopefully will be secured from Europe. In the wild these polecats are normally nocturnal, solitary animals. “Layla loves to play and cuddle which is probably because she has been hand-reared and she is also more active during the day than usual,” says Katie.
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