Exotic animals at Flamingo Land in rural Ryedale (From York Press)

Exotic animals at Flamingo Land in rural Ryedale

10:29am Thursday 2nd September 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

FOR most youngsters, Flamingo Land represents thrills and spills – the perfect place to spend a day. But amid the hurly-burly of the Cliffhanger, Corkscrew and Flip Flop is a more tranquil world, an exotic taste of the east nestling in rural Ryedale, as our pictures show.

Flamingo Land was the first site in Europe to house a theme park and zoo at one site, and Robert Nemeti took his camera along to the attraction near Pickering, heading first to the lake where he spotted these striking pink Flamingos majestically enjoying the fine weather.

The legendary birds have been a feature here for 40 years and make this the country’s most immediately recognisable theme park.

Further along he snapped a Hamadryas Baboon from the Middle East, screeching at the tourists, as he attempts to entice someone to throw him an ice cream as the midday sun seared overhead.

But the heat didn’t seem to bother this giraffe, who seems perfectly happy just to chew the cud as he towers over the visitors.

Then there are the Siberian tigers, the largest cats on earth. These magnificent creatures grow to around three metres in length and weigh up to 300kg. In the wild, tigers can eat up to a third of their body weight in a day – the equivalent of a grown man.

Fortunately, only three out of 1,000 tigers eat humans.