{"id":152431,"date":"2025-11-21T19:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/152431\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T19:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:19:07","slug":"life-goes-on-at-fota-with-birth-of-two-meerkats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/152431\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Life goes on\u2019 at Fota with birth of two meerkats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"contextmenu internal_Body1st\">Fota Wildlife Park has announced the birth of two meerkat pups amid the venue\u2019s ongoing closure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Fota Wildlife Park director Aileen Tennant said that resident meerkats Biggy and Snaggle, who are the dominant breeding pair of the clan, welcomed two new additions to their family late last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            \u201cWhile the gates of Fota Wildlife Park remain temporarily closed to the public, I\u2019m very happy to report that life goes on here in the park,\u201d said Ms Tennant.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cThe two baby meerkats, born on October 16, are absolutely thriving and are already actively exploring their habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The news of the pups\u2019 arrival comes during a tumultuous time for the facility, which confirmed an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu last month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">As a result of the outbreak, the park had to euthanise 73 birds at the start of November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            \u201cI want to reassure the public that the welfare of the animals in our care is always our team\u2019s top priority,\u201d said Ms Tennant.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cOur expert staff remain fully committed to our conservation breeding programmes for rare and endangered species, with dedicated animal care ongoing behind closed doors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fota Wildlife Park has announced the birth of two meerkat pups amid the venue\u2019s ongoing closure. Fota Wildlife&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[86045,61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-152431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-fota-wildlife","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}