On a scorching hot day there is nothing better than taking a dip in the pool or enjoying the air conditioning.
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But what do you do if you are a lion, a monkey, koala, or one of the other animals at Hunter Valley Zoo?
Well, it’s blood and meat ice blocks – the size of a bucket – on the menu for carnivores.
It’s massive ice blocks with a fruity twist for the resident monkeys, and the koalas are given their very own misting fan to enjoy while sleeping or munching on leaves.
Primate keeper Daisy Murphy said there was a lot of water misting – and frozen water bottles in water buckets, being used across the zoo.
Executing operation stay cool is a busy job.
It begins after the animals have had their breakfast and their enclosures have been cleaned, and continues well into the afternoon.
Heaps of water is being thrown around the zoo at the moment, we do sprinklers every day over 34 degrees and we save the ice blocks for the really hot days,
“As soon as one ice block gets eaten another gets made straight away so it’s ready for when it’s needed.”
So what do the lions think of the ice blocks?
“They keep them happy, lions will sleep in the shade for 20 hours a day because obviously Africa is ridiculously hot, but when they are awake they do like to lick them,” she said.
“One of our male lions likes to play with them and sit on them, but usually licking them in the shade keeps them content.”
Ms Murphy said the birds and koalas were very susceptible to heat stress.
“They have fan sprinklers on each of them at the moment. Some of them have pouch young as well, so we want to keep them nice and cool as well and stop the mums from becoming stressed.”
We have sprinklers going all day for the birds as they don’t cope very well. Koalas aren’t big fans of the heat either – they are normally not around our area, they are on the coast so it doesn’t get nearly as hot on the coast as it does where we are.
With 38 degrees predicted on Friday – and 40 degrees on Saturday, there is bound to me a lot more ice blocks around the zoo.
The hot weather hasn’t stopped visitors from dropping to see the animals.
Mr Murphy said most stopped by in the morning and were gone by lunch time when the temperatures started to soar.