How London Zoo deals with the mammoth task of counting all the animals
By Michal Skýpala
With exactly 20,166 animals in their care, ZSL London Zoo’s keepers spend a week tallying up all the animals head by head during an annual count each January. It is a requirement of the zoo’s license and keepers often need to use treats to entice animals to show up for the counting.
On the bright side for keepers, tiny creatures such as ants and locusts are counted in colonies. Collected data is then shared with other zoos around the world to help in the protection of endangered species. So what species has the Zoo most of? It is the moon jellyfish and if you are wondering what the whole list looks like, click here. Obviously the list keeps evolving, for example couple months ago the ZOO welcomed the arrival of a new baby hippo. Newborn was named Hodor after the loveable gentle giant from the hit TV series Game of Thrones.
Tedious work does not end at the count, throughout the year keepers are recording the heights and weights of all the animals, information which helps them to monitor their health and well-being. ZSL’s zoological manager, Mark Habben said: “We have to know the vital statistics of every animal at the Zoo – however big or small.
Counting sounds easy, but how would you measure tigers, lions or elephants? The keepers have to use various methods to get the creatures on the scales. The penguins are tricked into walking on to the scales using fish while squirrel monkeys follow a blue ball on a stick. For larger animals, the scales are disguised as patches of grass in order to record their statistics. Hanging breakfast up high is prepared for the lions to encourage them to reach up to their full height.
Not all of the animals are left in the zoo for the rest of their life. Just recently conservationists are celebrating the successful reintroduction of thousands of tiny endangered tree snails to their former home in French Polynesia, thanks to a global breeding programme coordinated by ZSL London Zoo.
The release is the result of an international collaborative conservation programme between zoos and collections across the world, including Bristol Zoo, Chester Zoo, Marwell Zoo, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and ZSL London Zoo in the UK. Following three dedicated decades of joint work at 15 institutions, last month conservationists from ZSL supervised the release of more than 2000 snails on the islands of Moorea and Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean.
