It's as close as you can get to Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom without hopping on a plane.
Zoo gets up close and personal
While you won't be able to wrestle with a deadly anaconda like the show's host Marlin Perkins, Assiniboine Park Zoo tour guide Lindsay Skyner will soon take visitors behind the scenes and cages for VIP tours.
Reporter Meghan Hurley (centre) gets hooked up with baby yak Muddles as zookeeper Sean Ellis (right) and tour guide Lindsay Skyner look on.
"Personally, the coolest thing is to come into the zoo when some of the animals are more active and you get to see behaviour you don't normally get to see," Skyner said. "Getting up close with large animals and watching them eat breakfast... no one gets to get that close to the big animals."
Skyner can guide you into a primate house to see a baby squirrel monkey bottle fed, show you how to hold a snake while it slithers up your arm or watch close up as a grown monkey gets mad at a crying baby.
While tours vary depending on the day, one stop could be at the lion-tailed macaque monkeys. Marky Mark, who is the dominant male of the group, is a father of many monkeys but doesn't seem to like children.
"When a baby is crying and the parent goes to pick it up, he will vocalize in an aggressive way and I suppose he'll growl and bang on the mesh until the baby stops crying or goes away," Skyner said. "He may just not like the sound and is saying shut up, but whatever it is he behaves quite strangely towards crying babies."
At each exhibit the tour guide stops at, she gives a brief explanation about the origin of the species or some interesting facts.
"All of the babies here are Marky Mark's except for Monty," Skyner said. "There are about 2,500 of these monkeys remaining in the world right now."
As part of a sample tour on Wednesday, Skyner made a stop beside the Kinsmen Discovery Centre.
"Where we're going now we have lots of farm animals, but we also have a very friendly yak," Skyner said while driving a golf cart around the zoo. She pulled up beside the centre where zookeeper Sean Ellis brought a yak named Muddles out of the enclosed area on a leash.
"She's very friendly but she's still a little baby so you have to be careful of her horns," Ellis said. "She's always testing her strength and pushing herself."
She certainly tried to test her strength by pulling up a Free Press reporter's jacket with her horns. Apparently, Muddles didn't see the reporter coming, her keeper said.
A reindeer named Jazz was later brought out on a lease but was a little more timid than the yak and tried to hide behind his zookeeper.
Two different three-hour tours will be offered Wednesday to Saturday starting May 21.
The one that runs from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. is the Private Feeding Back Cage Tour where visitors can watch a large animal eat breakfast, Skyner said.
Visitors can watch Debbie, a 42-year-old polar bear, for example, eat fish, meat, or her favourite treat -- chocolate milk laced with either pain killers or vitamins.
"She basically gets spoiled rotten on whatever she wants and people can get to see how she opens her mouth willingly for this chocolate treat," Skyner said. "She's the oldest living polar bear in captivity and she's quite a celebrity."
The afternoon tour offered from 12:30 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. spends some time making animal toys, or "enrichment," that are later given to the zoo animals.
Both outings include a golf-cart tour around the zoo, holding an animal in the zoo classroom and a behind-the-scenes tour of the animal hospital or an animal's habitat, Skyner said.
For more information call 982-0664. All proceeds from the tours goes to the Zoological Society of Manitoba for education, conservation and enhancements to the zoo.
meghan.hurley@freepress.mb.ca
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