London zoo animal count

How many animals live in London Zoo? That's the question keepers at the Zoological Society of London ask during the annual stocktake.

The world famous zoo's home to over 300 different species and around 14,000 animals. However, this year's stocktake notes numerous additions to the zoo's family, as zoological operations manager Dan Simmonds explains.

Dan Simmonds: 'Probably the star of the show has been our western lowland gorilla, silverback gorilla, Kiburi, who's been introduced to our resident gorillas here and is doing incredibly well. We had two tiger cubs, we had 10 Humboldt penguins, some of which were actually hand-reared by keepers here. So, generally it's been a really exciting time at the zoo and numbers growing.'

Whether it's huge gorillas, teeny frogs or baby turtles, every creature's counted and their information carefully recorded, but with such an array of animals the keepers have to employ some imaginative techniques to capture the correct numbers. At the coral reef they take photos to ensure the same fish don't get counted twice. The 'tiny giants' team who are responsible for the ants have come up with a bit of a cheat, counting each ant colony rather than trying to count every single ant.

Other keepers who are in charge of the squirrel monkeys or Humboldt penguins use training and tricks to count the members of larger groups. The importance of this animal stocktake stretches far beyond the zoo itself.

Dan Simmonds: 'So it's really important that we keep a accurate record of all the animals that we have here at the zoo. We record that onto something that's called ZIMS - Zoological Information Management System - and we share that globally with all of the zoos that we cooperate with around the whole world. And that's a really important part of the management of our captive breeding programs.'

The stocktake offers keepers a welcome chance to celebrate the many births and new arrivals of the past 12 months. It also better prepares them to plan for the future of the animals and their facilities and enclosures.

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