How this Dordogne animal park disrupts the daily lives of deer, fallow deer, wolves and other protected wild animals

At Le Thot in Thonac, a prehistoric park 7 km from Lascaux IV, keepers create special features to stimulate their wild guests. This summer, they are renewing the VIP Keeper for a Day experiences.

Here , we come across Heck aurochs, which seem to have escaped straight from the Halls of the Bulls, the original in the "real" cave and that of Lascaux IV, the neighboring international center of parietal art. They have the horns, the stripe on the back, only the size at the withers betrays their reconstruction compared to the authentic (much larger) one. Welcome to the Thot park, in Thonac in Dordogne , barely 7 km from the world capital of prehistory, where these great extinct animals graze peacefully. "We have a lot of them, almost too many, we're going to give some away. We let them reproduce, our aurochs are happy," laughs Clément Delbary, a qualified keeper (authorized to care for wild animals) and animal manager at the Thot.

In this 8-hectare park, owned by the Department and managed by Semitour , animal welfare has been elevated to both a virtue and a necessity. Four keepers and the entire park team oversee this. With the exception of a few goats and goats, accessible for cuddles, the inhabitants of these places, descendants of their prehistoric ancestors, are wild, although born and raised in captivity.

Approaching the animals of Thot, yes, but keeping your distance, ears open. Here, the keepers are also educational mediators. "It's forbidden to look for our animals in the wild; we're very controlled," explains the animal manager. Whether it's American bison, aurochs, wolves, or reconstructed Tarpan horses, all are subject to national, sometimes global, monitoring. Inko, soon to be 28, the park's only Przewalski horse, native to the steppes of Central Asia, is one of them. This wild horse shares its life with a Poitou donkey. The keepers, who watch over it, feed it from a distance, always in pairs. "In the 1970s, there were only 13 stallions in the world, compared to 2,000 today. We hope to be able to enter breeding programs in the future, but it is a global coordinator who manages the family tree and its implementation,” explains Clément Delbary.

New for 2025, the keepers are testing occasional enrichment to stimulate the animals and change their daily routines. For deer, for example, they hang apples on ropes, acacia or hazel branches (they love them) in unusual places. "For wolves, who are fearful in captivity, we do things differently. They like routine. Breaking it stresses them out. We've tried duck feathers, sheep wool, or horse manure in tree trunks," explains Clément Delbary.

Each animal retains its instinct, whether prey or hunter, depending on the situation. "We're lucky not to have animals that stereotype [like bears or felines] and go crazy in captivity," adds the instructor. "We tested these enrichments in April, and we noticed that the deer, for example, were already starting to get tired of them. We're mainly going to talk about it to the public, not necessarily schedule meetings, perhaps during occasional tea parties this summer," warns Anne Sopena, director of Thot.

At Le Thot, everything is done to offer an informative and fun approach to our distant past. In addition to the numerous workshops (see below), this summer, the park will continue to offer "VIP keeper-for-a-day experiences" every Thursday morning, for 80 euros, starting at 8 a.m. "The idea is to arrive early, before the park opens, to be fully immersed in the role of a keeper for two hours," explains Clément.

A little behind-the-scenes tour that takes in the kitchens where animal rations are prepared, the feeding of the fallow deer "by hand", the feeding of the ibex, and the "training" with the wolves, understand their careful observation. At the dawn of summer, visitors are already enjoying the daily feeding sessions (fallen deer and wolves), where learning is fun. Axelle Pradeau, keeper, invites the public to count the males in the deer enclosure, to differentiate between the brockets (adolescents) and the fawns. Quite a program.