Visited the
Lion Park here in Johannesburg today, with a couple of my colleagues. It is about 40 km from the place I stay, Bruma.
Had no idea about the place before visiting. Just thought it would be only lions in the zoo which we would be seeing. On going there realized that it was a safari. As any tourist place would have it, this too had a few souvenir shop - most of which are over-priced. Bought the tickets for the 11:30 safari trip and roamed around the souvenir shops in the meantime. The ticket of 270 Rand each included the Guided safari and a mini-zoo and lion cub interaction session for 2 minutes where you can go and touch the cubs and take some photos.
Started with the safari at first. The safari van seated around 20 people. Masana, our guide and driver stopped at the first point to show us ostriches, zebras and giraffe. With stoppage near each animals, he gave lot of information: The pattern of lines on zebra's back is unique, just like fingerprints. The female zebra has a bigger back even during the non-gestation period, in which it stores some gas which it releases to fight predators, when chased. Zebra at a time can give birth to 2 off-springs.
The female ostrich have grey feathers and the male ostrich have black feathers. Ostriches cannot fly; but can run upto 2 km non-stop. The eggs of ostrich are the largest of birds, very strong that it can withstand a weight of upto 20kgs.
In the same area of zebras and ostriches, stopped to see the antelopes: impala, springbucks and blazebucks. The impalas have horns only for the males whereas the other two varieties have horns for both genders. The blaze buch has a white patch on its face, which gets developed when the buck becomes adult.
Okay, then enter the lions - into the lions camp - there are four camps (enclosed areas) for lions and one for wild dogs and one for the cheetah.
The time that we went to see the lions was actually their weekly feeding time. The lions are fed only once a week - on Sundays 12 noon. All lions were eagerly looking for the arrival of the feeding van. The van came with cut pieces of cow / bull meat and distributed. These meat are supposedly gifted by the nearby farmers in the area.
We also happened to see Letsatsi, a white lion which was the main cast in the 2010 movie "White Lion". Because of the best performance it did in the movie, Masana told Letsatsi could not be gifted a bungalow or car, but was gifted with 6 lionesses.
A lion can have many lionesses - that is considered a family group. In some group, there could be more than one adult male lion - but most of these adult male lions are brothers and together with their lionesses live together. We saw such a group of white lions. And Letsatsi had all its lionesses brown - the offspings could be pale brown or completely white - we could see both kinds savouring their meal with their mothers. In one other group, a single brown adult male lion had 3 lionesses in the first camp and all were roaming eagerly awaiting their weekly meal.
And another surprising fact regarding lions: The lioness discards the weak cubs - it does not take care of them. In the park, the management takes care of the rejected cubs in a nursery. Survival of the fittest! These cubs which are rejected by mother will never learn the art of hunting and may not survive longer if left in the wild.
Saw both cheetah and leopards. Cheetah during safari and leopard inside the cage in zoo. Cheetah is a muscular animal and can run at speeds of 80 to 120 km per hour - but not sustainable beyond some 200 metres or so. The body gets heated up and it needs to slow down to cool. So, it starts attacking the prey with full speed only if it is within the limit, otherwise it just lets go.
Cheetah has a black mark on its face which is needed for the absorpion of Vitamin D from sun light. Cheetah hunts during the day unlike the leopards which are nocturnal and hunts during nights. Leopards are smaller in size compared to Cheetah and can climb the trees. (Remember Bagheera in Jungle book, which is a black leopard)
The wild dogs and cheetah are fed thrice a week, unlike lions which are fed only once. Each has its own metabolism. And wild dogs are supposed to eat their food very fast and the lions the slowest, savouring each bite. The lions could end up eating their portion of sunday noon meal late into the evening as well.
On returning, just before the end, a giraffe came and got its neck down into each of the vehicles and did some inspection!
After the safari, visited the mini zoo which housed leopard, cubs etc. The zoo also featured something called cub world, where visitors can touch the small cubs of lions.
