It was an eventful week here at the centre, fun all around! Many of the animals experienced something new this week due to the generosity of our great volunteers! They bought a whole lot of exciting things including watermelons and pumpkins for the lions and ostrich eggs for the honey badgers!

First up… honey badger vs ostrich egg

It took our younger honey badgers Stompie and Badji quite a while to figure out how they could break into such a thick shell, after 30 minutes of rolling the eggs around Stompie finally realised that if he hit the egg against something or dropped it into a hole it would crack and after the first taste of some yolk escaping he made it his mission to destroy egg number one! Badji on the other hand was more interested in the human company who delivered the egg, although once Stompie had done the hard work his interest changed and then it was his turn to take on the challenge of the ostrich egg! Admittedly it did take a few hours and some help from his friend.

Our older and admittedly more skilled honey badgers Julius and Rika along with the famous Stoffel and his wife Hammie were up next for the challenge. All four of them first enjoyed licking off the honey we placed around the shell as encouragement, then they got down to business… all four of them quickly figured out that if the rolled the egg against something they would be able to crack it and get to the delicious insides.

Fun fact: There is the equivalent of 24 fowl eggs in one ostrich egg!

Lion vs watermelon

From Thabo our youngest of 1.5 years to Matimba our oldest of 24 years all of our lions got to try something different. We hollowed out watermelons and pumpkins and replaced the inside with meat, placed them into all the lion’s enclosures and waited with anticipation how they would react. A few of the lions were a bit more reserved but they all thoroughly enjoyed the task of breaking into and rolling them around to get to the delicious meat inside!

Wild dog vs watermelon

Our two wild dogs had a turn next. Colgate our senior wild dog took himself to the far side of his enclosure, watermelon in tow and enjoyed his treat in peace and quiet. However, Akila our youngest wild dog who is one year old now took quite a while to realise that she had to break the melon open, she tirelessly tried to fit her large muzzle inside to get to the meat even though it was much too big to fit inside, the volunteers loved watching her figure this out and all the strange and wonderful noises she made along the way, after a while she managed to use her incredibly strong jaw to push the watermelon open from the inside!