It’s been a couple of years in the making, but GIRAFFES have finally returned to RZSS Edinburgh Zoo! When I was growing up, the giraffes were a firm favourite of ours at the zoo (living in the current Rhino enclosure) but back in the late 2000’s giraffes left – now they’re here again! At the moment it’s a bachelor herd, made up of 5 young males until they’re old enough/needed to head off to be a part of a breeding herd. It’s hoped in the future that Edinburgh can hold a breeding herd, but bachelor herds do play a key role in the breeding programmes too.
The giraffes came from 3 different zoos in England and Ireland last month and after a settling-in period members were invited to attend various preview tours and events that were on offer – this is a great opportunity to get up close before anyone else, and has also served as a bit of a ‘soft-opening’ for the giraffes to get used to seeing people around before building up to the large numbers who I’m sure will be desperate to come and visit them!
Last weekend I headed out to the zoo to attend a preview tour, and it was great, completely surpassed my expectations and was very informative about these new residents and their brand new home. Hopefully when animals talks are able to be held in the future that giraffes will be on the list because James, our tour guide from the education team (who was formerly an animal keeper at the zoo) was great, he knew everything about giraffes, gave our tour group a very informative guide of the giraffes and their enclosure, and did a great job at answering all of the questions that we had. He can even identify each of the giraffes apart, which is impressive!
The enclosure is located just about at the highest point of the zoo, right up by the lions and tigers, so you will get good workout to get there. It also has both indoor and outdoor viewing areas – we started by heading onto a walkway that goes right into the outdoor paddock and you are at giraffe head-height. There are also two ground-level covered viewing areas at opposite sides of the outdoor enclosure. James began to explain about the enclosure and three of the giraffes almost immediately headed outside to see what was going on. They had a quick bite to eat from one of the feeders but were very interested in the people who had come to see them and they did come over pretty closely to us, which is a similar set up to what I’ve seen with the giraffe enclosures at both Ouwehands and Pairi Daiza, where the giraffe’s head can be right next to you should it want to come close. It was a glorious start to June with the weather, I think the colourings of the giraffes looked even more magnificent in the sunshine!
After watching the giraffes outside, we were then allowed to head to the upstairs indoor viewing area going in one family-group at a time to follow social distances guidelines – there are both stairs and a ramp to get up to this viewing area and a double door entry-way so it is fully accessible. Again at this level you are at giraffe head-height – there were a couple of hanging baskets in the middle of the enclosure and also some wall-fixed baskets with food in them which were keeping the giraffes entertained for the time I spent inside with them. I’m sure that’s something that will never happen again – as I was on my own, I went into the indoor viewing on my own, so it was just me and the giraffes! Four seemed to be quite happy eating away and the fifth (the smallest one) seemed more interested in walking around and trying to disturb the others to get at the food. The smallest one was also still small enough to be able to completely fit under the viewing platform on the first floor, but I’m sure that won’t last long! The upstairs viewing area was quite large, I didn’t see downstairs but I assume it’s about the same size.
After having some time with the giraffes inside there was a bit of a ’round up’ of the tour, and I could ask more questions (as a reproductive scientist, of course this was my area of questioning and James had a great knowledge of all of this too; if you ever get a chance to attend a talk/tour by James then I’d highly recommend!). Then the giraffes headed back outside again – it was great to see them in all areas of their enclosure, they seem to be getting on well with each other and are exploring their new home well. The enclosure (both indoor and outdoor viewing) opens to the public tomorrow (June 14th) so they must have settled in well enough to meet ‘everyone’ which is so great, I think they will be a very popular animal to visit for a long time to come!
