On the western fringe of the Sologne, almost on the same meridian as Blois, 36 km as the crow flies to the south, here is on the Cher, modern seduction, the zoo-park of Beauval in June 2021.
Let's give in to the easy slopes of anthropomorphism.
Near the village of St-Aignan dominated by its powerful castle, strange cohorts of large primates with funny snouts and their offspring, curiously covered body, noisy and agitated are parading, whimsical bipedals, in the alleys of a vast closed perimeter.
As for them, the permanent residents are barely amused by these turbulent passers-by, to whom most often they remain indifferent, whom they sulk, sometimes sinking into neurasthenia, or even a total depression like this slouching tapir.
Some of them are amused by these strange beings that circulate ; with a scramble, they try to attract their attention with some choreographed pantomine of their own, which collects a great success.
Claustrophobic, regularly fed and therefore without the need to fight to satisfy hunger, uprooted and resigned, everyone tries to adapt.
A koala is sulking, and meticulously grazes its eucalyptus leaves, but is pleased that it did not perish like other of its congeners in the fires of southeastern Australia in 2019 and 2020.
Yet, the delicate fumet of a roasted koala...
Rhinos, zebras and antelopes replay for passers-by with a great sense of aesthetics the drinking session around a pseudo-swamp.
With its zebra legs, a female donkey with farter eyes and its donkey baby take shelter in the shadow of a hut. Because, secret family history a long time hidden, one of his beautiful ancestors once made a fault with a seductive and impetuous zebra.
It's said that the elephant has a prodigious memory,... an elephant memory.
For this one, surely very old, it was before.
There, he has to tie a knot to his trunk to remember who knows what. But wow! Unable to undo the knot... nor to remember the "we don't know what".
A white tiger (from Siberia?) slowly turns in circles, majestic, quite rightly proud of its coat and the clarity of its eyes.
But when he turns around, have you seen me, for a portrait that passers-by demand, only one eye is clear, the other seems one-eyed, or shady in the manner of his old cousin the lion Clarence of the 60s.
Well fed of bamboo, the male of the couple of giant pandas obligingly loaned by China in 2012, digests.
After valiantly procreating once in 2017, he stretches there, and lets breathe his nature, or what remains of it, in his air-conditioned and tailor-made den that simulates a little the freshness of his original mountains, but does not stimulate anything else.
It's not nice to laugh like that : two babies were born on August 1, 2021...
Their first already mature child (4 years old), born here and already better adapted, walks outside on the mowed lawns, keeping hydrated from time to time in the beneficent mist of a custom waterfall, and gnaws his brake, and his bamboos.
When it delivers a well-formed poop, it is lemon yellow colored, those of bamboo marrow ; then tired and full of his 20 to 30 kg daily of bamboo ingested, it slumps.
Heavy and huge manatees play sirens, and hover gracefully in the bluish water of a basin, as agile as sea lions, in a hurry to deny the prejudice of their corpulence. Hey hey, proof that you can be fat and beautiful.
In a vast outdoor pool, very skillful penguins, incredibly agile, play incessantly in the green water, lively like swifts chasing insects in the sky, almost the only ones who do not seem to suffer from their confinement. Stupid unconscious people who are called elsewhere "happy fools".
Finally the mystery question: what are these strange, masked and ghostly beings who mysteriously wander in the water? While others, intubated, hoist the white flag?
Enclosed space, restricted, but lodging and covered insured; how, however, can we name these prisons otherwise than "golden prison"?
Anyhow, here is a very beautiful empire, modern, commercial, spectacular.
Its assets are the beauty of the zoo-park, the picturesque of its layout, the relevance of the real staging of extremely diverse animals in a tiny reconstituted plot of their natural environment.
The most recent "attractions" today are a vast dome that maintains a tropical atmosphere, and a cable car ride designed to fly over the entire park...
The park that also takes advantage of the rugged relief of short hills and hollow valleys (is not "beau val" for nothing).
Around the wooden pontoons, there are vast aquariums, ponds, Chinese temple decorations in the giant panda area, ample aviaries, vivariums, grounds surrounded by high embankments, impassable moats or palisades.
Its ambition: a great diversity of species and the rarity of some of the residents. Enough to captivate and delight small primates and amuse large ones.
Beauval claims 800 species and 35,000 animals, on an area of 40 ha.
Not to be compared for example to the boreal zoo of St-Félicien in Quebec, 485 ha for 80 species and a thousand animals.
In terms of animal welfare, no need to look for the mistake.
In any case, the originality of some species present is certain.
Some examples: in addition to the star trio of giant pandas, you must have seen the live stuffed animals that are the fluffy koalas, or two sloths too discreet and very well hidden,..
very swift dwarf armadillos, prehistoric mini-armors, toothless that spin, busy, without rest or respite like damned souls,...
the black and reluctant tasmanian devil, false cousin of the gluttonous wolverine of the Borean countries...
the coatis, low tail and pointed muzzle, of those that we discovered free and surprising in nature in Costa Rica ...
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... a bit more about the coatis
On a tour in Costa Rica in February 2016, on the way to Lake Arenal, curious animals by the side of the road.
Long elegant plush toys with pointed noses ended by a movable proboscis, ringed tail often erect like that of lemurs, they walk peacefully, free, little frightened by tourists whom they know have nothing to fear.
The coati, this strange animal lets man approach at hand almost like a dog seeking caress, and of which he has moreover the submissive eye but browser and perhaps docility.
It belongs to a family close to that of raccoons. In Costa Rica, it is the so-called "white-nosed" variant.
80-140 cm long, half of which is for the tail, its average weight is 4-5 kg. Paws, terminated by strong claws are able to dig the ground. He moves to the ground by completely setting foot in the manner of a plantigrade.
Both diurnal and nocturnal, omnivorous, it feeds on insects by scratching the ground with its long non-retractile claws and nose. A scavender, he also loves fruits, berries, bread, seeds and sometimes small mice.
Good climber, he moves easily in the trees and can reverse the position of his feet by rotating the ankles in the manner of the ballet dancers of the Opera ... much better, which makes it easier to descend the tree upside down.
Very social, it lives in flocks of 5-10 individuals, almost always consisting only of females and young males.
Specialists indicate that in Central America, they owe their survival and durability to their large size that keeps away iguanas, small stray dogs, cats and especially raccoons, which fade at their sight and leave them access to water. They are often on the defensive.
Some words about the "coati coffee maker".
One of the most expensive coffees in the world, Peruvian coffee "Misha" comes from the digestion by coatis of coffee beans in its natural state. It is the red variety of coati (maybe that of Beauval? ), not that of Costa Rica.
Gastric juices of the animal erase bitterness by dissolving the envelope but do not attack the grain itself, indigestible for the animal.
After being defecated, the supreme dung is VERY WELL cleaned and then roasted to deliver the ineffable, succulent nectar, all roundness, length in the mouth and powerful aroma, yes, yes!
A famous coffee known to the world's best-in-the-world, it was born from the prohibition made by the settlers to small local farmers to consume their own harvest ; they discover by chance the quality of the "cherries" discarded in the feces of some animals after they have ingested them, towards the beginning of the 17th century.
With the neighbor's cat, an iguana, or a ferret, do not expect anything other than a filthy sock juice.
In Indonesia in any case, another "grape variety" is the civette (luwak in the local idiom), which gives the coffee "Kopi luwak", even more famous than the "Misha". Opossum also does the trick.
Still easier at home to place the capsule in its cell, than to lift the tail of the coati.
And then, at the price of 200 to 400 € / kg, or 70 € per cup, what else???
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We also see in Beauval the largest rodent in the world, the cabial (or capybara), the head a bit like that of a (very small) horse ...
and another smaller, rather ugly rodent, the agouti (no, no, they are not wallabies or mini kangaroos),
both met in the past in the wild in the semi-urban environment of Playa del Carmen in Mexico,...
our brothers and entertaining lemurs, the stingy tapirs and the nervous okapis, quivering ears...
a snow leopard overwhelmed with heat, but which remains majestic...
and some remarkable birds, flamingos, white pelicans, toucans, and many others whose names escape our memory and delight our eye. Without them all being in risk of extinction.
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Beauval is the 4th or 5th in the top 5 zoos in the world.
Competition is tough. It dresses up with noble and just causes (safeguarding and perpetuation of endangered species, beautiful educational levers illustrated here, but not in real dimension of course ...) to attract visitors alerted to the living conditions of residents in other zoos.
Of course, we know what happened to Blois in history; who knows what Beauval will become in our modern era?
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