1, 2, 3 - lots...!
06/01/2022
The early part of January always results in media stories about Zoos counting their animals - a non-story of course as all Zoos know exactly how many animals they have on a daily basis and do not need to count them again just on New Years Day!
The truth behind this is simply the legal requirement to submit stock-lists annually to the local authority. Shots of keepers with clip-boards feed the hype, as in reality the submission is electronic and done from the Zoo office.
At Hamerton Zoo Park the data is split between those animals for which full details are kept, and those kept in groups so large that actually counting them would be impossible.
The first category shows an individuals - species split of 342 - 63 mammals, 192 - 53 birds and 40 - 16 reptiles.
These figures do not include fish and insects, and the many hundreds of individual Budgerigars, Zebra Finches, Harvest and Spinifex Hopping Mice for example, kept in our large groups.
From well over 1,000 individual animals of 150 species, taken at random in addition to well known animals such as our 1 Anteater, 2(!) Wombats, 3 Bears, 4 Tigers, 5 Zebras, 6 Cheetahs etc - the 2022 lists show 8 Two-toed Sloths, 9 Greater Grison, 10 Squirrel Gliders, 11 Collared Lemurs and 13 Binturongs for example, plus after three good breeding seasons we now have 41 birds in our flock of Greater Flamingos.
After a relatively quiet spell last year with many logistical problems, a number of new arrivals are expected during 2022, with six new species of mammals coming to the Park in spring, followed by a number of birds and reptiles later in the year.