The ECHO spent the morning with team members at Knowsley Safari Park
The ECHO spent the morning with team members at Knowsley Safari Park
Have you ever heard the sound of an eight-week old rhino’s feet clip-clopping along the floor? I hadn’t until Thursday morning when I was given the chance to get up close with Knowsley Safari Park’s adorable new addition. Despite feeling incredibly lucky to watch the rhino calf, Kamari, run around her enclosure after getting what her keepers call “the zoomies,” this is the everyday reality for the ungulate team at Knowsley Safari Park.
Head of the ungulates team, Lindsay Banks, and senior ungulate keeper, Louise McKinnon, have worked at Knowsley Safari Park for five and four years respectively. They took the ECHO to meet southern white rhino calf, Kamari, and mum Bayami, at their private enclosure.
As Louise and Lindsay told us more about life at the safari park, Kamari was running up and down her enclosure. Louise shared that Kamari loves running into her fresh hay, the more the better.
About the new arrival, Lindsay told the ECHO: “So Kamari, full of energy, full of beans. [She’s got a] strong personality, and is a really confident individual rhino. She’s great to work with.
“White rhino in general are quite a tactile species, they like the contact with the keepers which is nice for us, so we can build relationships with them, and certainly Kamari is going to be a calf that likes to talk to the keepers. She’s really bold and confident.
“A day for Kamari is, she’s suckling off her mum, she’s looking after her really well. It’s cold and wet here at the minute so she’ll stay indoors where it’s warm.
“She’s investigating all of her environment because she has the whole house. When she’s a bit bigger and the weather is warm she will be meeting other members of the rhino crash.
“Any mild day with nice weather, she’ll go out on the yard and she’ll play around. As soon as we get some really good weather in springtime, she’ll be out on the main reserve where visitors will get a much better chance of seeing her.”
A typical day involves getting together each morning to decide which keepers will be assigned to each animal. The ungulate team looks after all of Knowsley’s hooved animals such as rhinos, giraffes, and African antelope.
Lindsay told the ECHO: “First port of call is health checking the animals and checking they’re alright after overnight, while we’ve been away, feeding them and then it’s letting them all out on reserves and cleaning.
“We look after all of the hooved animals on the ungulate team. It’s quite a varied section, and quite a lot of work as well.
At the moment, there are 10 rhinos at Knowsley, which is quite a large crash and one of the largest in the UK. Lindsay added: “Mum, Bayami, came to us from a zoo in France as part of a breeding programme. The rhino tend to move around European zoos to improve their genetics and make sure there’s a healthy population of rhino.
“An adult rhino can be over two ton in weight, so they’re a big animal. That’s as big as a car. Being close to them, you kind of know that rhinos are large but when you’re there in their space you see how big they really are.”
More information on Knowsley Safari Park can be found on its website.
