It's a long way for a baby Panda!!!!

Hello again my wonderful people,
Well, it's a cold wet  December evening here in the UK, but grab your passports as we're headed off across the channel to France! Set the time travel machine as we're going back in time to April 2018.

I always enjoy travelling abroad, but I was especially excited as this was to be the first trip I had planned that revolved around a visit to a European Zoo. Now you might be thinking to yourself, why go all the way to France just to go to the zoo? But with each zoo comes different characters with different personalities, the chance to wander around often beautiful and very different environments and not forgetting the chance to see species which the zoos nearer to home don't have! So, having learned of a baby Panda having been born in the Aug of 2017, I just had to go and see it!

Our Cottage in Restigne 

What was originally going to be just a long weekend trip for my mum and I turned into a week-long stay in which we also took along my 17-year-old daughter Sammy and her best friend Amie. It worked out cheaper for us all to rent a beautiful cottage in Restigne in the Loire Valley, so that became our base for the week. The girls enjoyed a bit of independence, but also came out places with us too. Taking my mum's car and her mobility scooter, away we went!

Selfie Time! mum and I 

Zooparc De Beauval is about 100 km from Restigne near a village called Saint Aignan, so mum and I set off early to max out our day at the zoo. Being early April it was quite pleasant weather so I donned my favourite Hollister Trackie and cute little Koala T-shirt, which i felt was quite appropriate for the day. I was also looking forward to seeing them for the first time since seeing them in London Zoo as a young child.

Arriving at the park we gathered our bearings and headed straight for the Giant Pandas. I felt like I was walking through part of China or the Far East as I approached the Panda enclosure. This part of the zoo looked very oriental with Dragons and typical foliage found in the Pandas native homeland. Baby Yuan Meng was born on August 4th, 2017 weighing just 142 grams!!!! His mother Huan Huan had given birth to another cub a few minutes earlier but sadly the firstborn cub didn't survive. I'd been closely following his birth on social media from the time he was born so was elated to finally get a chance to see him!

Yuan Zi

Mum and I had to do the typical selfie thing as baby Yuan Meng has pooled in thousands of visitors from all over the world! We soon began to realize just how popular he was as there was a very long queue inside the Panda enclosure where mum and the baby were.

At the time of our visit, Yuan Meng was 8 months old and weighed in at 19 KG! We could see dad Yuan Zi outside in the enclosure. I can't describe the pure happiness I felt at seeing a Panda in front of me after so many years. As with the Koalas, the last time I had seen a Panda had been at London Zoo and must've been in the late 1970s or early '80s. Dad seemed to be enjoying himself munching on Bamboo. At one point he decided to go for a climb up a tree in his enclosure.

Yuan Zi

Mum and I queued up for some time to get a chance to see Yuan Meng. It really was quite an event! I've never known a Zoo to be "quite" so manic with visitors all eager to see the latest arrival and this was some 8 months on from his birth! When our turn finally arrived, Yuan Meng was positioned right up close against a wall so I wasn't able to get any decent pics as such but it was lovely to be able to see him! He looked so small and it was incredible to think that before long he would grow to be as big as his dad at around 160 KG or just under.

Young Yuan Meng

 Pandas have proved to be quite challenging animals to breed in captivity but with numbers as low as 1600 in the mountainous forests of Central China, and only around 300 in captivity, it's vital for the Panda population to continue to increase their numbers.

A female Panda has a very limited window of opportunity in which to conceive, having only one single oestrus cycle each year in the Spring. During this time, she is only fertile for 24 - 36 hours. Add to that the problems of trying to actually get the male and female to mate in the first place, believe it or not, it doesn't appear to always come naturally to them and some zoos have resorted to using artificial insemination. (AI) Even then, Pandas can undergo something called embryonic diapause. The embryo will be fertilized but may not actually implant in the uterine wall for some time. Until this happens, the embryo can't begin to grow, so it's not always easy to tell if a Panda is pregnant! Gestation can, therefore, last between 50 days and 160 days plus!!!!

But for Huan Huan and Yuan Zi, they managed to parent this beautiful little bundle, (conceived via AI) who will grow up to chomp through around 9 - 14 KG of Bamboo shoots a day. Though 99% of their diet consists of vegetation, they are actually classified as carnivores having the digestive system of a meat eater, so are not well equipped to cope with a diet high in undigestible cellulose.  Meat however only makes up around 1% of their diet. With their low metabolic rates and sedentary lifestyle, it allows them to exist on this very nutrient poor diet. I thought an elephant pooped a lot as they can defaecate up to 22 times a day but apparently, a Panda tops even that by going up to 40 times a day!!!!!

Kruger and Malawi in an intimate embrace!

As I walked around Beavaul, I was taken in by the sheer beauty of the park. I could very easily see why it has been rated as one of the top 5 zoos in the world. With 10,000 animals including 600 species set in 40 hectares, I was absolutely in my element! The lion enclosure is one of the nicest I have seen with rocky outcrops and plenty of space. It's a fairly new exhibit called Land of the Lions. I saw the breeding pair, Kruger, and Malawi hard at work preparing for the future generation of cubs! yep, they were caught on camera in action! Following on from this or another mating around the same time, 3 cubs were born in July, 2 males (Kivu and Issa) and a female (Sabi). They will have joined their older siblings already part of the pride.

Bonding time for pride members

There was one young male cub, in particular, that was rather stunning! I'm not sure how old he was but he had the start of a beautiful mane already! I watched some wonderful moments as another of the cubs interacted with another member of the pride.

There were quite a few big Cats there including Sumatran Tigers, White Tigers, Puma, Jaguar, Cheetah, and Snow Leopard, but the Lions, in particular, was a very impressive part of my day.

Manatee underwater taken with my mobile phone

Whilst I always love to see some of the other African big five such as the Elephant and Rhino, one of the most exciting things about this zoo was the vast array of species I hadn't encountered before now. I'd only ever seen Manatees on TV or in books and magazines until this day, though they proved very challenging to get photos of!!

I was so ecstatic though to see these large animals submerged under water but as beautiful as the environment was, with temperatures needing to be maintained above 20 degrees, my camera just wasn't happy! The lens kept misting up! In the end, I resorted to using my mobile phone! Beauval has Caribean Manatees, though two other species exist: The Amazonian Manatee and the African Manatee. Quite interestingly, it is the Manatee that is at the root of the origin of the legend of the Sirens. Greek mythology tells of these Sirens who would lure sailors to their death with their beautiful singing voices (called lamentations), and the scientific word Sirenia is now used to describe these animals as well as their cousins the Dugongs. Legend tells of these "Mermaids" or "sirens" who would rise and fall out of the water and perform tail stands in shallow water, which is what the Manatee does. With forelimbs containing five sets of finger-like bones and neck vertebrae allowing them to turn their heads, this could explain why the Manatee has been mistaken for a human from afar.

Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo

And a Goodfellow's Dendrolague, errr what was that? Well, I now know it's a kind of Tree Kangaroo. Quite a cute little Marsupial native to Indonesia and the Rainforests of New Guinea. I spent quite some time in this part of the exhibit as this little individual spent some time sleeping and I was hoping to see it awake. My patience was rewarded! This was also where the Koalas were! I could have quite easily spent my day just in this part of the zoo and a day simply wasn't enough to spend the amount of time with each animal I would have liked to do.

Sleepy Koala

 When I think of Koalas, I am taken back to the Quantas Airlines advert being shown in my childhood. I also had a Koala soft toy I was given as a baby. Funny the things we remember as an adult! Beauval has had Koalas in the zoo since 2002 though a new enclosure was built for them in 2017. Like the Panda, they also have very sedentary lifestyles and a diet not particularly high in nutritious sustenance. They are the only animals that feed on Eucalyptus leaves and can do this due to the production of a specialized enzyme capable of breaking down the toxins in the eucalyptus leaves. Koalas are quite solitary animals and will only spend about 15 mins of the day engaging in social activity, but that said,  they spend about 20 hours of the day asleep to compensate for their poor diets. I captured this little cutie having a yawn.

Playtime for the Californian Sealions!

During my day at Beauval, I also took in some of the talks and shows. The Californian Sealion show was especially fab! I enjoyed watching these very agile marine mammals playing with balls and balancing them on their noses and sliding down their ramp from their platform above the rocky outcrop. I was amazed to learn that a Sealion can actually outpace a man in a landrace! They may look quite clumsy but by using their fins they can propel themselves at quite some pace! but of course, we tend to associate them by their aquatic lifestyles. These amazing animals can reach speeds in water of up to 40 km an hour and dive to depths of almost 300 metres deep! That's as deep as the Eifel Tower! Feeding on Herring, Squid, and Sardines, these sea creatures need to consume 15% of their body weight per day to be able to maintain their body heat in the cold waters of North America where they reside.

Undewater Hippo taken with my mobile phone

One of the other animals I had been really looking forward to seeing was the Hippo! Though we have Hippos at both London Zoo and Whipsnade here in the UK, I mostly only see the Pygmy Hippos and they have often tended to be indoors on my visits. When I worked as a volunteer at my local zoo Drusilla's, one of my colleagues had taken a photo of a Hippo with its mouth open and I was awestruck by it! So naturally, I was really hoping for similar scenes. I wasn't disappointed! I had never seen Hippos swimming underwater either.

Capable of snapping a man in half! Hippo with open mouth!

When I had seen them at Whipsnade, their outside pen has muddy water which I know Hippos love, but at Beauval, they had a fantastic reserve for them. The "Reserve des Hippopotames" was specially created and allows viewing on three different levels with large windows. It comprises a terrestrial space and an aquatic space. Viewing can be seen underwater, at ground level and also above the reserve. Three  Hippos live at Beauval: A male called Kvido and two females called Kiwi and Bolinas. They share their habitat with other animals also from Africa such as Nyalas, Bush pigs, Ibises and Spoonbills. It really is a fab place to wander about!

I would love to go back and visit Zooparc De Beauval again and at present, I keep myself up to date with the latest news via their website, FB page, and other social media sites.

A day just really wasn't long enough so watch this space for future visits!!!

If you'd like to read about more of my adventures and find out other places I have visited, you can follow me by clicking on the follow button on the right of my blog page.

Thanks for your interest and catch up again soon!