I Have a Safari Park

Shooting the mv is just a small episode in the calm daily life of the zoo.

Fang Ye has been pondering the detailed design of the elephant hall recently. Elephants are the largest mammals on land and have very developed intelligence. They have various requirements for exhibition area, temperature and humidity, and various conditions on the ground, as well as the advantages brought by developed intelligence. There are many needs for complex life that have not yet been known to human beings.

Elephants in captivity in zoos are much crueler than other animals in captivity, but the ornamental value and popular science value of elephants cannot be replaced by other animals.

There are very few zoos that can raise elephants well. Generally speaking, the lifespan of elephants in captivity rarely reaches the lifespan in the wild.

What is even more cruel is the cetaceans. Elephants are still terrestrial animals. It is easier to do enrichment. The cost of providing venues is relatively low, and tens of thousands of square meters are still available. In fact, it is already very small, but it can be lived together.

Cetaceans in captivity do not have such conditions at all, and they need at least 100,000 cubic meters of internal space to start with. The construction and maintenance cost of the aquarium is so high, who can provide this. Just wiggling its tail in a little place will end the swim, which is equivalent to being held in a bathtub, so captive animals are much shorter-lived than wild ones, without exception.

Male killer whales in the wild live to an average of 30 years and females 50 years old, with the longest life span reaching 60 years for males and 105 years for females. Captive orcas only live for an average of 9-10 years, and the mortality rate is 2.5 times higher than that of wild orcas.

Therefore, there must be complete conditions for raising elephants. It is not enough to have a huge field area. Various aspects must be done well, such as indoor animal houses, outdoor activity venues, training walls, training cages, enrichment... all have complex and detailed requirements.

Most of the elephants in the zoo have more or less stereotyped behaviors. Some elephants have very serious stereotypes, and their heads are shaking all day, which is no different from the walking dead. A few hundred square meters of space can only make the elephant "alive".

If the elephants are raised with such low requirements, the most basic site area is not enough, and the back house is only a few dozen square meters.

How big is big enough for an elephant to feel comfortable?

Four simple words: the bigger the better.

Raising elephants is no easy task.

Fang Ye also decided to raise elephants because Linhai has a tropical and subtropical climate, and there is no such thing as winter.

Otherwise, in the long and cold winter, the elephants will stay indoors to keep warm, and the indoor area is much smaller than the outdoor area, and the elephants will be more suffocated when they stay there.

The first is the indoor animal house. The indoor animal house is generally made of concrete floor, which is conducive to the maintenance of daily environmental sanitation, but for elephants, a single hard floor is not conducive to the health of elephants.

An adult elephant urinates 50 liters a day. Special attention should be paid to the drainage of the cement floor. Otherwise, the accumulated water cannot be drained quickly, and the elephant will have to stand on the wet ground, which is not only uncomfortable, but also easily causes foot damage. Infect.

Elephants eat a lot and pull a lot. In some zoos, indoor animal houses have not been designed with this in mind. In the narrow enclosure, the floor is full of yellow-green dung that has been trampled and mixed with urine. Can elephants be happy in such an environment?

Therefore, Fang Ye used sandy ground with a thickness of more than 50cm in the back house.

In addition to making the elephants stand comfortably, the sand can also allow the elephants to bury food, dig holes, pile up soil, bathe in sand with elephant trunks, and play with sand, which is a good enrichment.

Sandy ground is also very helpful for female elephants to give birth. On the sandy ground, the amniotic fluid produced by childbirth will seep quickly, so that the ground will not be very slippery, and the female elephant can help the newborn baby elephant to stand up quickly.

If the baby elephant always slips when trying to stand, the female elephant will of course feel very nervous and anxious, and the consequences of the elephant's anxiety are very serious, such as kicking the breeder, or being dragged by the nose. Stampede.

Even though elephants look simple and honest, I think they have good temperament. Elephants are very intelligent, and their emotions are very rich and sensitive. When they are in a good mood, they are gentle giants, and when they are angry, they become violent war monsters.

In fact, elephants kill more keepers than any other beast in zoos.

With great strength, clever minds, and flexible manipulation abilities, elephants, like great apes, belong to the zoo's recognized "number one dangerous animal."

In the "Zoo Dry Goods Group" where Fang Ye belongs, there is an elephant breeder who was almost trampled to death by an elephant recently.

Sending red envelopes to everyone to celebrate my escape.

I don't know why I'm not in a good mood!

Staring at the breeder was a little annoyed, but for the sake of taking good care of himself, he softened his heart and let him go after a stalemate with him by the wall for a while.

Although nothing happened, it was still very scary.

There are also animal performances and elephant rides in some institutions in the circus. They use painful punishment to make the elephants fear. It seems to be obedient, but when the fear continues to accumulate and breaks through the threshold, the elephant will attack fatally. .

Therefore, as a tourist seeing an elephant, for the sake of personal safety, it is best to keep a distance, not to feed, and it is not recommended to try any elephant riding activities.

Pull away.

The benefits of sand are not only that, but also make elephants more comfortable when sleeping.

People used to think that elephants sleep standing up, and lying down for a long time will put pressure on their hearts. Now it is found that they actually sleep lying down at night.

If there is a mound of dirt or sand, the elephant can lie on its side to relieve the pressure on the head and shoulders, as well as the pressure on the knee joints from the legs.

Especially for elderly elephants, or those with arthritis, sleeping comfortably on their side on the sand slope is good for both physical and mental health.

Of course, the replacement and cleaning of sand pads is a lot more troublesome than cement floors, but in order to make the elephants live better, what is a little trouble.

If it is a temperate zone, the natural light cycle cannot meet the needs of the elephants, and artificial auxiliary lighting must be used in the cage to simulate the lighting pattern of the habitat.

Although the Linhai Zoo is located in the tropical and subtropical regions, there is no need to simulate the natural photoperiod, but it is still necessary to have lights at night, because elephants also have certain activities at night, and more than 50% of the food intake throughout the day is carried out at night.

Simulating the lighting intensity of starlight and moonlight allows elephants to socialize and feed at night. The light level is ramped so that the elephants are not frightened by sudden changes in brightness.

The railings of the animal house are also exquisite!

If the railing is horizontal, like a ladder, elephants can climb over the barrier.

The non-operating surface is a closely arranged slanting railing, which makes it inconvenient for the elephant's trunk to stick out, preventing the elephant from hurting the breeder.

There are also several railings with a vertical distance of 40cm, which is convenient for breeders to quickly escape from the animal house in an emergency and avoid the attack of elephants.