Lions, hyenas and cheetahs among first arrivals at Sydney Zoo
Lions, cheetahs, hyenas, orangutans, chimpanzees and zebras have moved into Sydney’s first new major zoo in more than 100 years. The animals — including four lion brothers — are the first to find their new home at Sydney Zoo, in Sydney’s west. SEE THE VIDEO AND PICTURES
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They’re the big cats and great apes putting the wild into Sydney’s west.
Four lions, three orangutans, two cheetahs, two zebras, 11 chimpanzees and three hyenas are the first arrivals at Sydney Zoo, the city’s first major new zoo in more than 100 years.
Crisscrossing western Sydney on highways and back roads beside blissfully unaware motorists, the new residents have been arriving at the Bungaribbee site in recent months.
The zoo’s curator of carnivores David French recently chaperoned four lion brothers on a road trip from Dubbo.
“The lions travelled in a comfortable crate, fully conscious, not tranquillised,” Mr French, 38, said.
“It’s a self-contained truck with air-conditioning so other drivers would be hard-pressed to know what was next to them.”
Lions are the world’s laziest cats, sleeping up to 20 hours a day.
But Sydney Zoo’s pride of two-year-olds — Virunga, Bakari, Sheru and Karoo — are still learning to hunt by stalking and pouncing on one another.
The lions wild caught deer or kangaroo, typically with fur and bone intact, to replicate the giraffes, zebras and gazelles they devour in the wild.
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At 200kg each, the lions may look fully-grown but their matted manes give away their youth. Mr French said: “When male lions are teenagers, they have grungy manes, like when young men start growing patchy beards they can’t quite pull off.”
The carnivores are also given whole chickens. The much-maligned hyenas, the only hyenas on show in NSW, eat the carcasses bone and all.
“Hyenas eat in a different fashion to other carnivores. They’re bone-crackers that demolish everything, within minutes,” Mr French said.
“That’s why they have the reputation of cowardly scavengers, because they can finish a carcass off, but they’re actually proficient hunters, very intelligent, with very complex social structures.”
The finishing touches are being applied to the zoo, which opens later this year, under the watchful eye of cheetahs perched atop a fallen tree.
“The cheetahs will see you before you see them,” Mr French said.
“They can see for miles.”
Zookeepers use treats to train the big cats to sit on scales, accept rubs so the keepers can check for injuries, have injections and, in the case of the cheetahs, sprint across their enclosure to give visitors an idea of their speed.
“Lions are the kings of the jungle, so it seems fitting they are our first arrivals,” said zoo managing director Jake Burgess.