It’s Christmastime at zoos too – and the animals are opening their presents

Festive fun for everyone (Picture: PA)

Zoos all over the UK have been stepping into Christmas and giving the animals their gifts, including snacks, aftershave, and even kayaks.

Staff have been playing Santa for their winged, flippered and four-legged charges, with Natalie Horner, section head of primates, small mammals and birds at Cotswold Wildlife Park, saying: ‘A keeper’s job doesn’t stop for Christmas Day.

‘Our animals are still here, and so are we, making sure they have food and water, and the enclosures are nice and clean.’

As the park is closed to visitors, keepers get a shorter day than usual, which allows them to celebrate with loved ones after the animals are taken care of.

However, Natalie says, the shift is ‘always a fun atmosphere with everyone in high spirits.’

She added: ‘There is usually plenty of cake, biscuits and chocolates to keep us going but the main thing is knowing our animals are well looked after on one of the happiest days of the year.’

Santa doesn’t discriminate on the basis of species (Picture: PA)

The squirrel monkeys, capuchins and otters at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland have been having a very festive few days.

They’ve been enjoying Christmas crackers – handmade by children at the zoo’s Breakfast With The Clauses event this month – which were filled with tasty treats like sunflower seeds.

Deputy leader of the aquatics section at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Josh Luxton, has also said it will be ‘business as usual’ for park rangers on Christmas Day.

‘It’s always a fun atmosphere with everyone in high spirits’ (Picture: PA)

‘We’ll still be here first thing in the morning to see if there’s been any presents dropped off from Santa,’ he said.

‘We’ll be cleaning, making sure all the animals are fed, watered and looked after… But then with the added bonus of all the additional enrichment that they’ll be getting.

‘We make sure the animals are entertained and we have things going on for them.

‘And with all the presents that Santa will have left overnight, we’ll be distributing them across different sections of the park.

‘The animals are always good, so they are always spoilt rotten on Christmas Day.’

‘The animals are always good, so they are always spoilt rotten on Christmas Day’ (Picture: PA)

The wildlife get all kinds of fun toys and tasty treats.

‘They’ll get different types of enrichment boxes, where we will just hide food that they can forage around for,’ Josh explained.

‘Carnivores are quite partial to a bit of perfume or aftershave, so sometimes there are some bottles that have been dropped off by Santa for them, which they get to test out on Christmas Day.

‘There’s extra fishy treats for our sea lions.’

Loving the kayak (Picture: PA)

And the polar bears? They love a good kayak.

Josh said: ‘They will try to sink them, play with them, flip them over… We can hide food in them.

‘We filled a whole kayak with water, put loads of fishy treats, lots of meat and snacks in, froze it in the massive freezer we have here at the park, and then they tucked in. They went crazy for it.’

‘Carnivores are quite partial to a bit of perfume or aftershave’ (Picture: PA)

The park has a programme where people can donate used kayaks for the bears, which stops them going to landfill and gives the animals a brand new toy.

‘They get really good use out of them, play with them and get the benefit of them,’ said Josh.

‘Then we will recycle them so that we can lessen the impact on the environment.’

More: Lifestyle

This is a Christmas of firsts for Cotswold Wildlife Park’s newest members, crowned lemur twins Antony and Cleopatra, who became the first of their kind to be successfully bred at the park when they were born earlier this year.

‘They couldn’t wait to tuck into their Christmas treats,’ Natalie said.

‘Our red-bellied Lemurs, Matiz and his mum Maren, and the Ring-tailed Lemur troop enjoyed their enrichments too.’

‘We also treated our Asiatic Lions, Rana and Kanha, to a catnip-covered Christmas pudding enrichment ball… Like some of us, it appears they aren’t big fans of Christmas pudding either.’

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Santa doesn’t discriminate on the basis of species.