Celebrating Zena's 15th Birthday and trying out a new toy for the cats.

22nd May 2011

Today we celebrated our white tiger Zena's 15th birthday. She had been with us since she was 2 weeks old and has lived most of her life with her sister Zia. To celebrate we made up a birthday present box and filled it with smoked salmon a favourite treat that went down extremely well with Zena.

Also, as part of our continued focus on providing the cats with new enrichment and things to do, we decided to make a new toy that we tried out with our tigress Lola today. It is a big cube of firehose, very heavy, that can be swatted around and take the brunt of a big cats claws and teeth. The cats enjoy the texture of the fire hose also and of course love really getting their teeth into playing with this one! Of course we can hide little bits of meat using the hose to give an added incentive for the cats to go nuts on it and give it a good clobbering! Here are some photos from this mornings trial run with Lola:

 Zena investigates what could be in her present...

 She discovers there is a lovely armoa of salmon to be found:

It dosent take long before she working her way through the box picking up the salmon goodies as she goes:

 Zia of course had to come out and check out what all the comotion was about:

 It turns out Zia wanted one of the candles and carries it off into the bush:

Zena and Zia both enjoyed the treats to be found in Zena's present:



Photos of Adala the Black Lemur's new baby

Here are the latest photos of the Black Lemur baby who is venturing out to explore the world more and more when not hanging off mum Adala's belly:

Another New Baby!

We're thrilled to announce a second black lemur birth at the Isle of Wight Zoo. First time mum Aprily had her baby yesterday - a great discovery for the keepers when they came into work that morning. This follows Adala's baby, who was born on the 20th April.

Aprily has so far been a little shyer than Adala was, and so we haven't been able to get a really good view of the baby. However they seem to be bonding well and Aprily is showing every sign of being a great Mum.

Our black lemurs are part of the European Endangered Species Programme, which involves zoos across Europe cooperating to introduce suitable lemurs to each other in the hope of maintaining a genetically healthy group of animals. As black lemurs are classed by the IUCN as a Vulnerable species it's vital to have a zoo population to back up their wild relations.

We don't know yet if the baby is male or female, but hopefully it will have a bright future helping conserve its species.



Although we weren't able to get any pictures of the new baby yet, here's one of Adala's daughter. She doesn't look too pleased to be having her face washed in public.

New set up for the Tree frogs + Hanging with the boys

8th May 2011

Today we arranged the living quarters of our White's Tree Frogs. In the previous arrangement we had observed that they would not use all the space they had and often were hidden away so they couldn't be seen. Yesterday keepers rearranged the accommodation to improve these problems, and gave them improved substrate that retains moisture more effectively increasing the humidity which is good for the frogs.

All the frogs are in view in this photo, see if you can spot them all!

Photo of the Day:

Here we have Charlie Brown and brother Snoopy chilling out on the top of their 'Kopje' (a South African phrase for a rocky outcrop)
in their enclosure at the end of the day:



Raising Money for Wild Tigers - Global Tiger Patrol

5th May 2011

Our eduation officer, Tracy, will be walking the entire circumfrence of the Isle of Wight to raise money for tigers in the wild! This money will go to the Global Tiger Patrol who we pledged a certain amount of funds too each year and this year we have commited to raising three times the amount of money for the Global Tiger Patrol as previous years, so this is where the fund raising comes in!! If you feel you would like to be able to help tigers in the wild please sponser Tracy through this webpage:

http://www.justgiving.com/Tracy-Dove

The extra money we will be raising this year will help our man in the field by being able to supply him with the funds to hire two field assistants amoungst other things to be able to increase the education work and extend the work across a wider area. More information about the Global Tiger Patrol can be found here:

http://www.globaltigerpatrol.org/

Many Thanks to anyone that can help out.