London Zoo embarks on two-day job counting 14,000 animals

The yearly stocktake is a requirement of the zoo’s annual licence.
Max McLean3 January 2024

Staff at London Zoo began the daunting task of counting around 14,000 animals on Wednesday, from giant tortoises and millipedes to penguins and tigers.

The yearly stocktake is a requirement of the zoo’s annual licence, and sees zookeepers count hundreds of species over the course of two days.

These include Sumatran tigers, Asiatic lions, Galapagos giant tortoises, zebras, penguins and endangered Seychelles giant millipedes.

Dan Simmonds, zoological operations manager, told the PA news agency: “It’s a really important day for us.

“Much as we know how many animals we’ve got here at the zoo, we like to formalise it once per year and it takes up to two days to count the animals.

“Across about 300 species, by the end of tomorrow we’ll have counted somewhere in the region of 14,000 animals.

“The keepers have got lots of tricks up their sleeve to be able to count these animals.”

New additions to the zoo in 2023 included a female sloth and six Socorro dove chicks, a species which is extinct in the wild.

Once all creatures have been recorded, the information will also be shared with zoos around the world as part of the ongoing effort to manage worldwide conservation breeding programmes for endangered animals.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in