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The animals

Many thousands of animals live in the Bush in total freedom. Most of them play an important role for cleaning up waste, for pollinating flowers or for spreading seeds, but also as hunter. For instance, anhingas, ibises and water rails make sure there won't too many slugs or small fish. Small songbirds like White-eyes, sugarbirds and spiderhunters clean up plant parasites and lizards, toads and frogs eat ants, roaches and other insects. In order to save vegetation there are only a few herbivores. Green iguanas barely damage the plants and can therefore easily live there, but capybaras, large rodents, can do quite some damage and are therefore not allowed in all of the Bush. The largest plant eaters are the Manatees (Sirenians). They live off floating water plants and, in summer, they eat large quantities of water hyacinths. In general the colourful and loud birds are easy to find, but the smaller birds and those with good camouflage can only be noticed when they move. Therefore take your time looking around and you will discover more animals. Besides this the weather and the time of day also has an effect. Lizards appear when the sun shines and many toads, frogs and also kalongs only appear active when the sun sets. The reproduction of nearly all species in the Bush is flourishing. Even 'difficult' animals like pitta birds and anhingas regularly have offspring. Also the offspring of the colombiform birds and aardvarks; for both species a European herd book exists.

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