Following on the heels of the news that Almuñécar would be ceding large, hungry beasts to Córdoba zoo, new, smaller creatures have taken their place.

We interviewed the Councillor for the Environment, who has responsibility for the mountain park and bird park , and he explained that it was difficult enough finding enough vegetables and fruit for the larger herbivores, let alone the kilos of meet needed for the big cats, etc.

On top of that, Councillor Luis Aragón pointed out that the mountain park had neither the permits or conditions to run as a zoo for these kinds of animals.

Solution: find a zoo that would take them off our hands; hence, the deal with Córdoba zoo.

On the other hand, Peña Escrita wouldn’t be complete without the attraction of animals, so the idea is to fill it with smaller, cheaper-to-maintain, but nevertheless exotic, animals.

Bring on the ring-tailed lemurs! Kids love them because they are the same animals as the characters in the film Madagascar.

And they are bringing forth young, so there will be whole families of them.

Meanwhile, other new inhabitants are the meerkats, which have arrived from the Zoológico de Jerez. “We had two males and they sent us two females in September – now we have four pups,” explained the municipal veterinary surgeon in charge.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)