ZSL London Zoo’s famous annual stocktake kicks off new year

Zookeepers at ZSL London Zoo have dusted off their clipboards, calculators and cameras as they counted up all the animals at the zoo‘s annual stocktake yesterday.

Caring for more than 300 different species, keepers faced the challenging task of tallying up every mammal, bird, reptile, fish and invertebrate at the zoo – counting every creature from gorillas to Galápagos tortoises.

2022 saw the arrival of many new animals at ZSL London Zoo, from a Critically Endangered Western lowland gorilla named Kiburi to two Sumatran tiger cubs named Zac and Crispin. Ten Humboldt penguin chicks hatched on Penguin Beach last year, while tiny pygmy goats Chestnut, Buttons and Truffle joined the herd in June.

ZSL‘s Zoological Operations Manager, Dan Simmonds, said: “With more than 14,000 to count at ZSL London Zoo, our keepers all have their own ways of tallying up the animals in their care – from taking pictures of the coral tank in Tiny Giants to avoid counting the same fish twice, to using training and rewards to count larger groups such as our squirrel monkeys and Humboldt penguins.”

The almost 200-year-old conservation zoo has to submit  an updated  number of animals each year as part of its zoo license, providing information which is also shared with the international zoo community to inform its collective global conservation breeding work.

Dan added: “The stocktake is also a chance to reflect on all the amazing births and arrivals we’ve celebrated over the past 12 months, and always makes for a busy start to the year!

Also featuring in the tally for the first time is snappy big-headed turtle Celia, whose parents were rescued from the illegal wildlife trade and given a new home at the zoo‘s Reptile House in 2018. The tiny hatchling will soon make the move – along with 1,339 other reptiles and amphibians – to an exciting new home at London Zoo, ‘The Secret Life of Reptiles and Amphibians’, opening in Spring 2023.

For some zookeepers, the count is as easy as 1-2-3, but imaginative tactics are used by others to ensure every resident at the zoo is accounted for; the Tiny Giants team cheat and count ant colonies as one, instead of tracking hundreds of individual ants, while the herpetologists take photographs of the tadpole tank to help complete their count.

The annual audit takes keepers almost a week to complete and the information is shared with other zoos around the world via a database called ZIMS, where it’s used to help manage worldwide conservation breeding  programmes  for  endangered  species.

To find out more about ZSL London Zoo‘s vital conservation work, head to zsl.org

The total count in 2022 was:

Creatures: 14,296

Species: 386

2022 saw the arrival of many new animals at ZSL London Zoo, including: 

Critically Endangered Western Lowland gorilla, Kiburi, who arrived from Loro Parque in Tenerife as part of a global breeding programme. 

Baby porcupine Hershey was born in front of excited zoo visitors last March, weighing just 350g at birth – approximately the weight of a can of cola!   

Sumatran tiger cubs, Zac and Crispin, were born to mum Gaysha in June. 

Chestnut, Buttons and Truffle the pygmy goats joined the herd in June.

Ten new penguin chicks were born at London Zoo last year, including five chicks who were hand-reared by zookeepers after their parents were unable to look after them. 

Main image credit: ZSL London Zoo/Dominic Lipinski

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