Summer is always an amazing time to visit Highland Wildlife Park with the long, sunny days, native plant species in full bloom and the pitter patter of tiny paws and claws as many of our animals reach the end of their breeding season. This year we are extremely happy to announce another particularly successful breeding season across the park with visitors able to see everything from our young elk twins to four new Japanese macaques! Our Japanese macaques have welcomed four babies to the troop: Pete, Pikachu and two yet-to-be-named little ones. Japanese macaques are carried on their mother’s stomach for the first four weeks and are then carried on her back, sometimes for over a year.
Infants will eat their first solid food at five-to-six weeks old and by seven weeks old can forage for food independently from their mothers. The park isn’t just home to large species though, we also saw successful breeding seasons this year for our tiny invertebrates! In 2023, we raised over 3,500 dark bordered moth eggs in our off-show breeding facility at Highland Wildlife Park, which is fantastic news for the species and has allowed RZSS to continue with our programme of conservation releases for this species. Earlier this year we participated in the first ever release of threatened dark bordered beauty moth eggs.
750 eggs were released in February into a specially selected site in the Cairngorms National Park as part of the Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms (RIC) partnership work. This.
