Adelaide Zoo Welcomes 2 Cape Porcupine Brothers

Two Cape Porcupines, brothers Walter and Winni, arrived at Adelaide Zoo on Thursday, May 2, after being transferred from Monarto Safari Park.

Born in August 2023, the young porcupines are the first of their species to call Adelaide Zoo home, the zoo said in a press release sent to Storyful.

“This was the first time the young porcupines have moved habitats so it was a big day of new sounds and experiences, but Walter and Winni were very calm throughout the trip," the zoo’s senior keeper, Elise Maurer, said.

Cape Porcupines are the largest porcupine species globally.

Walter and Winni, who are eight months old, currently tip the scales at about 12kg. However, they’re still growing and are expected to reach their full size of 27kg, the zoo said. Credit: Adelaide Zoo via Storyful

Video transcript

Very exciting.We have two recent arrivals, two little male porcupines.So they arrived a few days ago, and they're settling in very nicely.And they haven't come too far, which is nice.They've come from Nardo Safari Park.So it was only about an hour away, which was, uh, a nice, smooth transport for them, which was really good.Yeah.So they arrived just before lunchtime, and we they had a crate that was divided into two.So it had two separate doors, and we opened the door for Winnie for, and he came charging out straight away.And we had been told he was the more confident of the two.So that suited him, uh, to a T. And then Walter, when we opened his door, he took about 20 or 30 minutes to come out.He was a little bit more hesitant, a little bit more cautious.And that's kind of what we're seeing here in the habitat as well now, So we do two feeds in the day.Uh, obviously, they are a nocturnal animal.So they do spend the most of the day the most part of the day sleeping.Uh, but we tend to feed them early in the morning and late in the afternoon.So the most activity we've found here is later in the day, Uh, so sort of, you know, 44, 30.We're sort of trying to do their main feed.And we are seeing Winnie come out and, uh, venture out about that 430 mark.So you maybe lucky and catch them.Then we do also try and do a feed, and we will eventually be working towards doing training sessions.But at the moment, we're just trying to get them settled in, um, but just, uh, a a smaller feed in that morning, period around 9.3010 o'clock as well.