This feature was originally published in the June edition of Total Film

The hubris of man, the perversion of nature – profound reasons why Jurassic Park always fails. But there’s a simpler one too: Jurassic Park, a badly run zoo by any other name, lacked the professional expertise of zoo keepers such as Ian Jones, who looks after large carnivores – namely big cats – at Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire. Here, he talks Total Film through how it’s really done…

SAFETY FIRST

The raptors of the original Jurassic Park chewed through their fences with ease. Big cat fences, according to Jones, are made from a three inch thick metal mesh and are “around 15 feet high, with a ‘kickover’ on top, which prevents predators from climbing up and over.” The enclosures are catered to each animal’s natural needs – “a lion, for example, needs high features so they can survey like they would on a plain” – while their locations are optimised for stimulation. “I have a tiger enclosure where they can see a zebra paddock in the distance. We encourage natural behaviour in captivity.”

FEEDING FRENZY

As the esteemed Dr. Alan Grant once said: ‘T-Rex doesn’t want to be fed. He wants to hunt’. Jones agrees. “Even in captivity, their instincts are still there,” he says. “We can’t offer natural prey but we can make them climb 12-feet high feed poles for their food. They circle the pole as if they were circling prey, before climbing with a short burst of energy, exactly how they would do during a hunt in wild. It stimulates the same endorphins.”

LIFE FINDS A WAY

Much like Jurassic Park, zoo breeding is controlled, but with a focus on improving the bloodlines of threatened species. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a mother animal,” says Jones. “So you give them closed-off dens where they’re not being disturbed. Ideally you set up cameras so you don’t even need to go near them. Then again, I had a mother jaguar that so comfortable around the keepers that she would bring the cub over to the fence and go ‘look, here’s my baby, isn’t she beautiful?’”

ESCAPE PLAN 

Allowing your animals to escape and eat the tourists is generally frowned upon in the zoo business. Hence why Jones and his team are prepared for every eventuality. “We have a gun team at the park,” he says. “If there’s a red alert, they will tranquillise the animal or, in a worst case scenario, shoot to kill. We do mock animal escape drills every 6-8 weeks. We get keepers to play different escaped animals so that it gives us practice. But the idea is that you just never let an animal escape in the first place.”