Gotta catch 'em all - 13th January 2023

The annual audit of London Zoo's residents is a mammoth undertaking for the Zoological Society of London.

It's up to the stocktakers at the world renowned London Zoo, inhabited by in excess of 300 species and approximately 14,000 animals, to catalogue any annual changes in the population.

Zoological operations manager Dan Simmonds reflects on a positive year.

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.'

From the beefiest mammals to the tiniest amphibians, every effort's made to tally each individual critter, but this presents a vast array of challenges, and keepers require all manner of tactics to compile a precise database. In the case of fish swimming at the coral reef, photos prove the tried and tested technique to avoid miscalculations. Those overseeing the 'tiny giants' have a more straightforward game plan, whereby they merely catalogue the number of ant colonies, rather than count every head.

Playful creatures like the squirrel monkeys and Humboldt penguins demand that keepers employ more ingenious tactics, including games, to get the job done.

The significance of an accurate stocktake for international cooperation can’t be underestimated according to Dan Simmonds.

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 isn’t all about the numbers, it’s also about celebrating the new arrivals, including births, as well as being able to map out the future needs of the zoo's residents, making the necessary adaptations to their habitats.