The animals at the London Zoo are getting a little extra attention this week as zookeepers conduct their annual count.
Every January, beginning right after the holidays, the U.K.'s London Zoo is obligated to count its creatures. The tall task is a requirement for the zoo’s licence but it’s also a way to keep track of the animals and their health.
But with more than 14,000 animals to count, from more than 300 different kinds of species, the task takes time.
“I think a day and a half,” said Micah Woodhams, whose mother Judith estimated it would take three weeks.
It actually takes zookeepers about a week to tally up every mammal, bird, reptile, fish and invertebrate. While the vast majority of creatures, including the tadpoles, are counted individually, the ant colonies are counted as one. The task requires patience and often creativity, which almost always includes food.
“In the case of let's say a Majorcan midwife toad, it's just one animal and doesn't move very much so pretty easy,” said Dan Simmonds, the zoological operations manager at the London Zoo.
“In the case of squirrel monkeys that are all jumping around, on the keeper's head, on the keeper's clipboard, the keepers use a lot of tricks.”
A conservation charity, the London Zoo shares the information obtained during the count with other conservation zoos around the world. The data helps manage worldwide conservation breeding programs for endangered species.
In 2022, that very program is how the London Zoo welcomed a critically-endangered western lowland gorilla named Kiburi. He flew over from Spain with the hopes of finding a mate in one of the females housed at the London Zoo. Last year, the zoo also celebrated the birth of two Sumatran tigers.
“They're a really good example of the importance of breeding programs that London Zoo manage to make sure we've always got long term safe, sustainable population of animals like Sumatran tigers somewhere on the planet,” Simmonds said.
