Christmas trees are like catnip to Linton lions

January 7, 2014 • 8:12 am

I haven’t the slightest idea where Linton is in England, but I’ve posted a fair number of items from the Linton Zoo. (I’m sure readers will enlighten me.) Here, thanks to the feline-finding tenacity of Matthew Cobb, is a video of the lions at Linton going nuts when they get some recycled Christmas trees:

The BBC News describes the fun:

A pair of African lions have gone wild for Christmas trees after a Cambridgeshire zoo appealed for people to donate them for recycling.

The trees are being reused by Linton Zoological Gardens as big cat toys, bio-fuel and, if they still have roots, to enrich the zoo’s enclosures.

Manager Dawny Greenwood said the scented trees are “almost like catnip” for the resident big cats.

She added: “They just love the trees, it gives them hours of fun.”

Catnip, sometimes known at catmint, is a plant of the mint family and can cause many cats euphoria.

The zoo’s tigers and snow leopards also play with the trees, those that are “beyond their best” are used for the zoo’s bio-burner.

“This provides additional heating and hot water to help run our zoo at this very expensive, cold time of year,” said Ms Greenwood.

It’s a shame, though, that these magnificent beasts, evolved to roam free, are reduced to rubbing against Christmas trees. If I had my way, zoos wouldn’t be allowed to have beasts like these unless they were severely endangered.

If you live near Linton, take your tree there and help keep the lions from being bored.

26 thoughts on “Christmas trees are like catnip to Linton lions”

  1. Linton is a few miles south of Cambridge which itself is about 40 miles northeast of London. The zoo is lovely but a little old school and some of the enclosures are a bit small and tired.

    Our favourite zoo around here is Colchester which has red pandas (not in anyway related to Giant Pandas but even cuter).

    The interesting thing about Red Pandas is they have, in parallel with Giant Pandas, evolved a pseudo thumb from a wrist bone giving them what appear to be 5 finger pads and an opposable “thumb” to enable them to hold bamboo.

    This in itself gives creationuts nightmares (I have photos of them holding one of Ray Comfort’s bananas) but the biggest nightmare is their diet – 100,000 fresh bamboo leaves each per day making feeding them on an ark a bit problematic – particularly as they are a unique genus and so impossible to fit into the creationut’s “kinds”.

      1. The highest mountain tops were covered with water. Maybe christian angels defecated bamboo from their christ holes.

  2. Certain species of spruce give off an odor of cat urine when twigs and needles are rubbed. That looks like a spruce in the picture, but I couldn’t be sure from here. Generally fir trees are used for Christmas, but spruce are surely also used. Some foresters can identify spruce species by odor.

    1. I have certainly had that cat pee smell experience while hiking in Utah’s high deserts.

      1. Maybe juniper trees? Lots of juniper trees in the hilly areas of the high deserts of the western US.

        1. If you test juniper and spruce together, you will have no difficulty distinguishing. Juniper = gin; spruce = cat pee. Try it!

        2. Juniper smells wonderful ( much better than gin, though I know it’s made from thw berries). I had never thought of spruces as smelling of eau de chat but you may well be right. It might take the high and dry desert heat to bring out the aroma.

          Speaking of cat pee, several cats ago we had a feline who insisted on peeing in the fireplace. We had to have custom glass doors built to keep her out of the ashes. It took 4 or 5 fires to burn the stench out…

  3. Looks like Mr. Lion is having all the fun (and keeping it to himself) while Mrs. Lioness couldn’t care less.

    Is this dimorphism true for (real) catnip, as well?

    1. All my cats of both genders have been catnip “heads”.

      Ms Lion is telling Mr Lion to stop playing silly buggers and come help with the kids 🙂

    2. My current cat is male and doesn’t react to catnip.

      Unless I leave it bagged up, wrap an old pair of socks around the bag, leave it for a couple weeks for the odor to mature, and then give him the socks without the bag of catnip. Sometimes he also likes the bag the catnip was in.. but not the nip itself- he just wants to roll on the empty bag.

  5. I enjoyed the sound of the birds in that video clip. And what’s all this about heat at this cold time of the year? It sure looks warm to me!

  6. “The zoo’s tigers and snow leopards also play with the trees, those that are “beyond their best” are used for the zoo’s bio-burner.”

    This seems like a very brutal way to euthanise ageing big cats, but I guess it’s sound from an ecological point of view. Am I just too squeamish, I wonder?

  7. There could be method to Leo’s madness. I don’t know about spruce trees, but I’m wondering if the lions would respond the same way to pine trees. Pine sap is known for its insect-repelling qualities. I’ve also read that the sap of some evergreens can ease insect bites. Some people say that the smell of spruce is a great relaxant. We had a dog who was very fond of lying amongst pruned cedar branches. She used to smell so lovely afterwards!

  8. A reader enlightens:
    Linton is a village in Cambridgeshire, England, near the border with Essex.

Comments are closed.