A Perfect Day | Ep 5: "A Jaguar Romance"

Today I'm visiting Neron and Kira, a jaguar couple who have been living together since January 2020. So Bryony, I hear that Neron and Kira are the loved-up couple of the sanctuary. How did they get here? Kira was born up in Hertfordshire at Paradise Wildlife Park, our sister zoo, and she was paired with Neron who was born in Amsterdam and was brought over here specifically to meet her. So we had them both arrive and we introduced them late last year, early this year. They've been living together ever since. We see Neron and Kira do this grooming all the time and not only is it incredibly sweet but it's also really powerful for them. They love each other very much and all this grooming is just increasing the strength of their bond. It's showing affection to each other and it relaxes them as well. So it's really lovely to be able to see them get on so well and show so much affection for each other. What is it about these two's personalities? Why do they get on so well? So these guys could not be any different from each other. He is very laid-back, very mellow, you know, he'll just basically let her do whatever she wants and she's incredibly high energy, very curious, you know, a little bit naughty and very, very feisty. So they complement each other really well and hopefully you've seen with the display that they've given you that they make a really good pair. It's a really, really exciting day today. Neron and Kira are moving over to the new Jaguar breeding unit which is absolutely brand new. So they're moving over there today, hopefully they'll settle in very quickly and hopefully we will see the first ever Jaguar cubs born at the Big Cat Sanctuary. So it's really exciting, we've been able to get Neron and Kira across into their brand new Jaguar breeding centre and you can see Kira is out here happily enjoying her new environment, quite content at sitting out. Neron's a bit more tentative, he's still indoors most of the time but he's popping his head out and exploring around his new environment and I'm sure sometime soon they'll both be happily out together and then we can look forward to the patter of tiny little Jaguar cub feet which will be really, really exciting. And we're back and we're able now to have a quick look inside Neron and Kira's enclosure. So come on in, it's brand new which is obviously designed for those two Jaguars and with Neron in mind of course it has a tunnel because he loves his tunnel and you can see there that tunnel goes all the way across the side of the other enclosure. Gives him a place to hide away, be safe but also get out of the rain if it is raining and you can see also we've got some wonderful undergrowth, natural indigenous trees here but replicating perhaps the environment in South America where they would be getting in and being able to get stealthily around and again hide away if they want to and of course up top here we've got some amazing enrichment in the form of some natural log platforms. Jaguars are arboreal so it gives them a chance to climb up and to scratch, get a view of the sanctuary around and you can see right in the middle there an amazing brand new huge feed pole which allows the keepers to place some meat on there and those Jaguars can get up, stretch their muscles and work hard to get some food. So this evening with Kira we're going to be doing a pole feed, what this means is we're going to be tying her food right at the top of one of the tallest trees in her enclosure, she's got to climb up and get that down. Jaguars out there in the wild they're what we call semi-arboreal meaning they spend a lot of time up in the trees jumping around and climbing so something like this is great to replicate what she'd naturally do out there in the wild it gets her muscles working and gets her mind thinking as well and in a new enclosure like this it's great to get her exploring as much as possible and getting to know her new surroundings. Join us next time where we'll be learning about why the Big Cat Sanctuary trains their cats. Noira's been on a bit of a diet because she's a little bit on the chunky side so I'm hoping she's going to have lost weight and we'll get to see a training session with the world's smallest wildcat species, the rusty spotted cat. Yes touch it, thank you.