#aap primadomus

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Enrichment is extremely important for wild animals. Here’s Suzu enjoying some time with some of his favourite enrichment: The pool, and his jiggly ball.

(Click the pictures for full size)

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Happy birthday Moro!!! 😊 (in AAP Primadomus)

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Happy World Lion Day!

Here’s Nala celebrating with some fun and tasty enrichment.

Lions are not as endangered as tigers but they’re still classified as vulnerable by the IUCN. In less than a century we went from over 200.000 wild lions in Africa to about 20.000. They’re already extinct in 26 African countries due to illegal trading, trophy hunting, habitat loss and fragmentation. Thankfully each day there are more lion conservation projects so there’s still some hope to undo a little bit of what humanity has done to this animal.

(Click the pictures for full size)

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Happy International Tiger Day 🐯💚

Friendly reminder of how important conservation is, in 1900 there were approximately 100.000 tigers in the wild, in 2016 it’s estimated that there were only between 3.000 and 4.000 tigers in the wild. Although the numbers have been growing since 2006 (for the first time in 100 years!), there’s still a long way until this amazing animal stops being endangered.

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A difficult rescue: Mojito’s story

This gorgeous lion here is Mojito. He’s two years old and he was rescued by AAP Primadomus from a Spanish circus just a few months after being born where he and Tintín, his best friend, were used as photo props for the audience.

Mojito was born with an esophagus problem that makes him unable to eat any piece of meat bigger than a coin. He obviously wouldn’t have survived in the wild but thanks to an amazing caregiver team he’s been given an opportunity to have a decent life in a rescue center with his enclosure partners Tintín and Anthares.

Nowadays Mojito has to get 3.1 kilos of meat almost every day, that’s a lot of food to prepare considering it has to be in very small pieces. 

Preparing Mojito’s meat takes almost as long as the rest of the big cat’s food because it’s very tricky to find good pieces that are easy to cut, remove most of the fat, and stay concentrated so the bits are not too big or too small.

Feeding has similar complications, where feeding most of the big cats is just leaving the meat in their outside enclosure or give it to them through their feeding boxes in their inside enclosures, giving the food to Mojito is a slow process. You have to be aware of him all the time, wait until he finishes swallowing, keep a good speed rate so he doesn’t get too nervous, and most importantly make sure he doesn’t choke or have any kind of problem.

Another delicate situation is that he’s obviously not allowed to have any kind of enrichment he can break and eat, or that he can’t be fed in the same place as Tintín and Anthares so he doesn’t swallow any of their food or bones. That means that when his friends are finished eating we also have to make sure that there are no bones or food rests in the enclosure before giving all of them access outside.

He’s definitely a tricky and time consuming animal to look after but this is actually one of the things I loved the most about starting to work in this rescue center, how devoted they are to help animals even if some of them are a difficult and challenging rescue.

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Rescuing two lions from a circus

After what apparently takes lots of arrangements and paperwork, yesterday we could finally retrieve two lions from a Spanish circus.

The usage of exotic animals in circuses is still legal in most regions of Spain, although it’s slowly getting banned throughout the country. I don’t know the reasons that made this circus decide to donate the animals to a rescue center instead of selling them, but I’m glad they did it.

Two days ago we started preparing the (super heavy) box and the van for the rescue. Then yesterday a volunteer and a caretaker drove to the circus to pick up the first lion while we stayed and started setting up for the arrival.

The rescued animals are two male lions, brothers, that were castrated very early and that’s why even though they’re adult male lions, they don’t have manes.

The smallest one arrived first, still very dizzy from the sedation, and after setting up the box with all the security protocols needed he got in the enclosure quite easily.  The second one was a bit harder, he actually was quite resistant to the sedatives so it took a little bit more time to get him out of the box, but now they’re both together getting used to their new home. 

These next days are gonna be hard because they’re in a new and completely different place with new people and a new life. But once they pass the quarantine period to make sure they’re completely healthy they’re gonna be able to finally go outside and we’ll try to do everything we can to make sure they get a better life being what they actually are, lions.

(The dizziness from the sedatives did not prevent Simba from enjoying his new scratching log ♥)

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Weighing a big cat

Today we tried to weigh Zazu, Ryta, Sarabi and Aissa, four beautiful lions from AAP Primadomus for their first time.

The procedure was to prepare little pieces of raw meat, bring a huge scale made to weigh big animals to their inside enclosures, and try to made them stay on the scale while feeding them the meat.

It was quite harder than it sounds, big cats are still cats and they were kinda freaked out about the new big metal thingy inside their enclosure. Zazu and Aissa were impossible to weigh, they never stepped their four paws on the scale at the same time, Ryta was a little bit hard, and Sarabi was very easy, like it’s shown in the pictures ♥.

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Rescatado un serval en un domicilio particular de Alicante

La Guardia Civil ha colaborado en el rescate de un serval en la provincia de Alicante, que ha sido depositado en el centro de rescate y rehabilitación AAP Primadomus en Villena. Se trata de Tila, un serval hembra de cinco años cuya familia cuidadora ha reconocido no poder asumir su tenencia con seguridad y responsabilidad El serval o gato serval (Leptailurus serval) es un felino que habita…

Rescatado un serval en un domicilio particular de Alicante