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Animals totted up for zoo's stocktake

Marwell Wildlife Woman in green coat holding a clipboard a large brown okapi stands to her right.Marwell Wildlife
Marwell Wildlife Woman with black trousers and dark green coat holding a clipboard standing next to green-framed windows of an animal enclosure - several small bush dogs are seen through the glass. Marwell Wildlife
Keepers have logged every mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, invertebrate, and fish at Marwell Zoo during its annual stocktake
It takes keepers about a week to complete the count up which includes bush dogs

All creatures great and small have been counted at a Hampshire zoo during its annual stocktake.

The process saw keepers at Marwell Zoo near Winchester meticulously log every mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, invertebrate, and fish in the zoo.

The official count, a legal requirement of the zoo's licence, saw more than 500 animals across 145 species totted up.

A colony of Humboldt penguins, a rare okapi calf and a critically-endangered, cotton-top tamarin baby are among the new arrivals added to the zoos stocktake this year.

The herd of Przewalski's horse foals, which were once extinct in the wild but have seen a comeback thanks to conservation efforts, also grew by four in the past year.

And other arrivals in 2024 included Warjun, a male snow leopard which came from the Czech Republic; and Cherry, a female red panda introduced as a companion for Tashi, Marwell's resident male red panda.

The results are shared with zoos around the world using the ZIMS Species360 database.

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