Longleat welcomes new African painted dogs to safari area
The Wiltshire attraction's added a new pack to their numbers
A new set of African wild dogs have been added to the animal stocks at Wiltshire's Longleat safari park.
They'll be unveiled to the public today (Friday 29th March), living in a new purpose built enclosure, with a dedicated visitor centre.
The painted dogs, as they're also known, are named Ru, Kuwinda, Kenya, Rafiy, Tassili and Tan.
Floor-to-ceiling windows will give visitors a chance to see the species - listed among Africa's most endangered carnivores.
Their visitor centre will also include information to help teach people how our painted predators measure up compared to Longleat’s other safari favourites.
The new enclosure sits within the African Village, which is also home to Rothchild’s giraffes, Grant’s zebras, ring-tailed lemurs and more.
Animal workers have worked hard to ensure the new home for the pack helps them settle, with similar sounds and smells of animals they'd be around in the wild nearby.
One of Africa's top predators - but they're endangered
Deputy Head of Animal Operations at Longleat, Jon Merrington, told Greatest Hits Radio they're 'incredibly excited' to have the species at the Safari Park.
"I think they'll be a real hit amongst our visitors," he said, adding: "We're just approaching Easter, so hopefully we have a good number of visitors here over the Easter period that can enjoy the dogs as much as the keepers that have already fallen in love with them."
African Painted Dogs are among Africa's top predators in the wild, with a hunting success rate better than the King of the Jungle, the Lion.
"These aren't the sort of fluffy dogs you have in your home," Jon said, "They very much live up to their name. They're one of the most successful predators out there in Africa."
Jon told us Lions are successful in their hunts around 30% of the time, but African Painted Dogs have an astonishing 80% success rate when they hunt.
And yet they're one of the most endangered species in Africa, with around 7,000 left in the wild. Jon explained why.
"Animals like this, they're very dependent on their habitat and also the prey species that they feed on. So one of the biggest threats to these animals is habitat loss out there in the wild."
But Longleat are working alongside Tusk, an organisation running wildlife conservation programmes, to secure the species future.
This pack is all-male, so how does that help conservation work?
"By us taking those six boys, it frees up space for other individuals to breed again and they all manage the bigger population in in terms of genetics, etcetera.
"So although we've just got six boys that supports the much wider breeding programme."