Maned Wolf Pups Video

Suffolk News

A zoo has celebrated the birth of a litter of very special pups – the first on the site for 20 years.  Banham Zoo welcomed four maned wolf pups in January, marking a milestone for the popular attraction.  The zoo is only one of a handful of UK sites to have successfully bred this near threatened species as part of a vital conservation programme.  The pups were born to first-time parents Enya and Thiago and are now exploring their surroundings.

Transcript

00:00Hey guys, I'm Charlie, I'm one of the carnival keepers here at Badham, and you guys join

00:11me at our main dwarf enclosure.

00:12We have Enya, who is three years old, and then Tiago.

00:16So Tiago's got a nice floppy ear, it's how you can tell them apart.

00:19I bring you guys some very exciting news.

00:21So on the 12th to the 13th of November, we observed these guys mating, and we managed

00:25to predict exactly their gestation.

00:27And on the 16th of January, we welcomed four pups, and they've been doing really, really

00:32well at the minute.

00:33Enya's been a great first-time mum, so main dwarfs will co-parent their young, so for

00:38the first month or so, Enya will spend a lot of time in her nest box, nursing the pups,

00:44and then after about a month or so, both male and female will regurgitate their food to

00:48start feeding the pups on their solid food, and then after that, there'll be a lot of

00:52co-parenting, a lot of wrestling with the pups, teaching them natural behaviours.

00:56So we're very lucky to have these guys at Bannam, so we do have a breeding group, as

01:00you guys know, and it's the first time we've managed to have pups in about 20 years.

01:05So main dwarfs, as a species, are really, really unique.

01:08So some people think they look like a dog or a fox, they're neither, they're part of

01:13their own unique genus.

01:15So currently, to care for the pups, it's a very hands-off process.

01:18The main reason for this is Enya's a better mum than we're going to be, we'll only really

01:23intervene around the five to six week mark.

01:25The main reason for this is to give them their vaccines, to give them a proper health

01:29check, but at the minute, it's a very hands-off process just to not stress out mum or any

01:33of the pups.

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