Keepers are Whipsnade Zoo start their annual stocktake
The count will take over a week to complete
It's one, zoo, three for keepers at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo as earlier today they began the mammoth task of their annual animal count.
As the largest zoo in the UK, the Beds-based establishment is home to more than 10,000 animals including invertebrates, birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.
The stocktake is expected to take up to a week to complete and this year there are a few new arrivals to add to the list.
In August the staff at Whipsnade celebrated the birth of endangered Asian elephant calf, Nang Phaya, and November saw the birth of giraffe calf, Wilfred.
Elsewhere, a two-month-old, critically engendered, Visayan warty piglet joined the zoo, as well as hundreds of critically endangered and extinct-in-the-wild freshwater fish.
Head of Zoological Operations, Matthew Webb said: “Today marks the start of the annual stocktake, where we make sure every animal is recorded as part of our official zoo license requirements.
“We’ll also share the information with other zoos around the world, as the numbers are used to inform conservation breeding programmes for endangered species.
“Some species are easy to count, but others can be tricky: our huge, tropical butterfly house provides a challenging counting job for our keepers, while our almost 200 deer have to be counted with a degree of stealth!”
The information is shared with other zoos around the world via a database called ZIMS, where it’s used to help manage the worldwide conservation breeding programmes for endangered animals.