Download habitat talks - Cotswold Wildlife Park

HABITAT TALKS
General points about these talks:
They take place out in the Park in all weathers; please ensure
that your pupils are suitably dressed for the conditions.
We keep group sizes to a maximum of 24 children. If your group
is larger than this, we will split them into two or more smaller
sets and give the talk more than once.
The meeting point for these talks vary, your booking
confirmation will detail where your talk will start.
The talks are suitable for all children from KS1 upwards
The talks we offer are:
World Habitats
Animals of the African Savannah
South American Animals
Rainforests
Animals of Extreme Environments
– Artic and Desert
Cotswold Wildlife Park
Bradwell Grove, Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4JP | T: +44 (0) 1993 823 006
w: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk E: [email protected]
TALK: World Habitats
Meeting point for the talk:
The meeting point for this talk is at our giant tortoise enclosure.
What we will cover in the talk:
Islands: using our giant tortoises, we look at the idea that island
colonization often started with a smaller range of animal and plant
species than mainland habitats and that this often leads to the
emergence of some unusual animals and plants.
Savannah: we use rhino and/or zebra to illustrate that, in these large
areas of tropical grasslands, where many of the large mammalian
herbivores are adapted to grazing, with specialised teeth and guts.
Australia: Australia is a continent with its own unique fauna. Wallabies
are marsupials that move by hopping using both feet with their tail aiding in balance. The means of
locomotion is a very efficient way of moving over any terrain. Emu are flightless birds with no
primary flight feathers. We will use the emu to illustrate leg bone organisation in birds.
Rainforests: Using our Colobus monkeys, we look at adaptations for moving in trees. They need
good sight, hearing and touch and move by climbing and walking on the tops of branches, using
their tails to help with balance, (whilst apes brachiate and have no need for a tail).
Arctic: Using our snowy owls or wolverines, we look at the adaptations needed to survive both in
winter months, of very low temperatures and permanent darkness, and in summer months of
permanent sunshine.
Animals we may use in this talk include:
Giant tortoise, white rhinoceros, zebra, Parma wallaby, emu, colobus monkey, snowy owl, wolverine.
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Cotswold Wildlife Park
Bradwell Grove, Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4JP | T: +44 (0) 1993 823 006
w: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk E: [email protected]
TALK: Animals of the African Savannah
Meeting point for the talk:
The meeting point for this talk is our rhino house, occasionally the
talk will start at our giant tortoise enclosure.
What we will cover in the talk:
Herbivores on the African savannah tend to be large, to avoid
predation by lions. This gives them problems of heat control and
they tend to have bodies covered in short hairs or have no hair at all.
Many of them are grazers and the cutting and chewing of grass
requires them to have tooth modifications – either teeth that continue
to grow throughout their lives and/ or tooth loss in some parts of their
jaws when compared with carnivores.
Mammals are unable to use much of the material in grass (roughage
or cellulose) and many herbivores have a gut that can ferment this for
them. Even so, much of what they eat passes straight through their
system so they produce a large quantity of faeces.
Zebra and giraffe have skin markings that are used for many things including intra specific
recognition, heat control and camouflage. Giraffe are browsers and their mouths are adapted to eat
leaves on trees. Giraffes long necks are now thought to be adaptations for fighting between males
rather than eating leaves high in trees (though they use them for this as well.) Male lions have manes
to attract females.
Whilst animals living on the ground need good senses of smell and hearing, their senses of touch and
sight may be less good than those of animals that live in trees.
Carnivores need to spend less time eating than herbivores as they can use almost everything in the
meat they eat. Carnivores need to learn to hunt. Lions live in groups, called prides, and hunt as a
team. This hunting strategy involves stalking their prey to get close to it before they make their
attack. Leopards are solitary and are good ambush hunters, waiting patiently until prey get close
before attacking. Leopards are good climbers, unlike lions.
(N.B. No talk will cover all the above. What we cover will depend on which animals are where, what questions the children
ask – and their age, and who gives the talk.)
Cotswold Wildlife Park
Bradwell Grove, Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4JP | T: +44 (0) 1993 823 006
w: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk E: [email protected]
TALK: Animals of South America
Meeting point for the talk:
The meeting point for this talk is our children’s farm barn.
What we will cover in the talk:
South America is a very large continent with a huge number
of habitats.
These range from the high mountains of the Andes to one
of the world’s driest deserts, via tropical rainforest and savannah.
We will use a range of South American animals to illustrate the
adaptations animals have to some of these habitats.
These include:
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the good and bad points of ant eating,
how to escape from a jaguar,
what use is a proboscis,
why some animals stott,
which animals are eaten by humans,
why some mammals have no teeth
which animal eats its own poo!
Cotswold Wildlife Park
Bradwell Grove, Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4JP | T: +44 (0) 1993 823 006
w: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk E: [email protected]
TALK: Rainforests
General points about this talk:
We keep group sizes to a maximum of 20 children as the talk spends
some time in our tropical house.
We are unable to offer this talk in late June or early July due to
pressure of numbers in the walled garden.
Meeting point for the talk:
The meeting point for this talk will be at our penguin enclosure.
What we will cover in the talk:
We will start with the idea that rainforests exist in many parts of the
world, not just the tropics.
However, tropical rainforests will form the greatest part of the talk
and we will use animals in our walled garden as examples of
adaptations to this habitat. The adaptations may include: diet,
camouflage, size, layers of the forest and which animals live in them,
symbiosis, seed dispersal, lianas, pitcher plants, buttress roots.
With older groups, we will talk about anatomical adaptations, such as rumens and mimicry, as well as
symbiotic relationships between our animals and rainforest plants, as well the more general facts
about the forests flora and fauna. Of course, we can adapt the talk to concentrate on whatever
aspect of your curriculum you want us to.
Animals we may include:
It is not possible to see all of these in a 40-minute talk, to some extent the species used will depend
on factors such as weather, the animals that are obviously visible on the day.
Hornbills, Squirrel monkeys, Agouti, Sloths, Fruit bats, Turacos, Macaws, Tamarins, Marmosets, Titi
monkeys, Lemur species (we have eight different species).
Plants we may include:
Banana palms, Bamboo, Dutchman’s pipe, Lianas.
Cotswold Wildlife Park
Bradwell Grove, Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4JP | T: +44 (0) 1993 823 006
w: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk E: [email protected]
TALK: Animals of Extreme Environments
– Artic and Desert
Meeting point for the talk:
The meeting point for this talk is our penguin enclosure.
What we will cover in the talk:
What are deserts, how do they change over a twenty-four hour
period? Where are the Arctic and Antarctic, how do they change
over a twelve month period?
Keeping cool in deserts:
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very little fat stored,
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conserving water,
staying underground in the day,
the ability to let your temperature rise without having
to sweat,
moving over sandy ground using big feet,
predator/prey relationships,
hunting at night,
estivation,
keeping warm at night.
Keeping warm in the snow and ice:
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hibernation,
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growing thick coats for winter and moulting in summer,
how large animals survive without hibernation by using all day sunshine in the summer to
feed and build up fat reserves then starving in the winter,
hunting in the dark.
Animals we may include:
Adaptations to deserts – wallabies, meerkats and scimitar horned Oryx
Adaptations to the cold – penguins, wolverines, snowy owls.
Cotswold Wildlife Park
Bradwell Grove, Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4JP | T: +44 (0) 1993 823 006
w: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk E: [email protected]