A who's who of wallabies and another broken feeding pole!

Monday 24th October 2011

Who's who in our latest arrival the wallabies

Since the wallabies arrived at the zoo a couple of months back, they have become increasingly friendly and understanding of who is giving them their food as well as where they need to go at the end of the day when it comes to putting them away for the night. The public feeding sessions are going very well also.

Of the 6 wallabies we have, 4 of them readily come bouncing over upon the first indication of food, whilst we are still waiting for 2 of them to loss their inhibitions and becoming more trusting.

In the meantime the challenge is to try and find features to try and tell them apart. The wallabies are affectionately named after Seseame Street characters and the two that we are less keen to come over are 'The Count' and 'Mr. Snuffleufagus' as they are known. These two are quite distiguishable from the others as 'The Count' is the only albino white wallaby we have and 'Mr Snuffleufagus' is the largest brown wallaby. The problem lies in identifying the remaining 4 brown wallabies, especially essentially they all have very similar personalities. So the only logical solution is to bring to the blog a new feature that will run of the next few days to help with this process of telling the wallabies apart: a new 'Wallaby of the Day' feature! Over the next 6 blog posts we will try and feature a different Wallaby for each day.

Here is an almost complete group shot before one decided to hope off. The way the wallabies are positioned, this photo wouldnt look too far out of place on the front of a album cover, maybe they should form their own band!

Halloween starts to appear at the Zoo

With Halloween at the end of the month, our education officer Tracey has created a stark reminder to the scary situation in the real world of conservation by creating a conservation graveyard. This highlights a range of species that have gone extinct at the hands of man, destroying their habitat or actively hunting them to extinction in some cases. Hopefully we can keep it that we dont have to add too many additional species to future displays like this, but unfortunately that is not very likely.

Modification to Casper's Enclosure

Our male White Lion, Casper has a bedroom attached to his enclosure like all the other cats at the zoo do, but for him, the way it is designed, he has to down a tunnel past Diamond and Ayshas enclosure to reach it. This is fine as long as Diamond and Aysha arnt already in their enclosure as with the cats being close to each other it would cause a bit of a stand off through the bars. So our Paul from the maintenance team was putting up a curtain of sorts today to prevent this from happeneing and with any luck will allow Casper to have access to his bedroom permanently whilst he is in his enclosure without having a growling exchange with Diamond and Aysha. Here Paul is installing the barrier whilst Aysha checks his work for any errors!:

Capser shows his strength again - Another pole broken!

One of the cats favourite things is to hunt. It is illegal to put live prey enclosures so to best thing we can do is simulate a hunt by moving food around on a feeding pole. This really exercises the cats muscles and is very beneficial for their health as well as being very fun for them (Casper ususally get fed three seperate pieces using this method and he usually stops eating the first piece as he would rather chase the second piece once it starts to be dangled down).

Well, Casper being the burly young alpha male of a lion he is, has broken quite a few of the devices we have used to feed him in the past with his sheer strength and today indeed he managed to completely bend a steel scaffolding rod we have been using to feed him.

In the shot below this was the act that bent the rod finally and when he pulled down on this, the rod bent. The aftermath can be seen in the bottom photo!

'Here's Bonnie....!!'

23th October 2011

Today we managed to get a few shots of Bonnie our new Red Ruffed Lemur that arrived on the 11th October from a collection in Bath called Endangered Madagascar. She is a 7 year old female and new girlfriend to our previously single red ruffed bachalor Andro.

Lemurs are social animals and so it is important for them to have company. Andro did previously live with his twin sister but they both have a genetic condition that causes them epilpsy and unfortunately despite daily medical treatment she succumbed to this condition earlier in the year leaving Andro by himself. The new pair of Andro and Bonnie are getting on fine and enjoying each others company. Because of Andro's condition he will not be a breeding animal because it would not be beneficial to the breeding program to pass on his genes.

These shots from today are from feeding time at the 12.30 talk which is the best time to see the two in action,

Red Ruffed Lemur 'Bonnie':



Hanging out foraging for fruit:

Bonnie is on the right hand side on this photo. The two lemurs are distinguishable by their eye colour, as you can notice Bonnie's eye are yellow and in the next photo, Andro's eye can be seen to be more orange.

Andro's firey ear tuffs blowing galantly in the wind:

The first frosty morning and a delivery of beer (kegs)!

20th October 2011

This morning was the first frosty morning we had down here on the Isle of Wight and the first need for the ice scrapers to come out for the frosty car windows in the morning. With the dynamic environment of the zoo, I took the camera around on the cat opening procedures in hopes of capturing this first frost in some way. I didnt really have an idea about how this might happen but I did notice that the woolen sheep's fleece's that we put in the cat enclosures for enrichment had managed to aquire a very frosted look overnight. Nothing too interesting however, but when we let Raijiv our for the morning, he came straight over to the fleece and started to roll around in it, treating the camera to a great photo! We had sprayed the fleece with a perfume fragrance (we give the cats different smells every morning) and this particular one sent him into rolling around mode!

Visitor treats cats to beer delivery!

We discovered a few months back a new enrichment toy for the cats that came about by accident really. Through trying to float some tiger food in the pond for Diamond and Aysha, we had tied two metal beer kegs (empty) together to act as buoyancy for the food. It was successful and made the cats swim out to get their meal. What we found however is the cats were more interested than the beer kegs than the food! This was because when they pulled them along the countoured ground it made all sorts of rattling and clanging noises that very much interested the cats! Especially Aysha, she was found playing with this toy for hours, and continues to enjoy recieving this toy to this day!

We had a visitor watching in the public audience one day by the name of Kieran and when one of the keepers mentioned about hoping to aquire some more beer kegs so that more cats could enjoy the idea (if we gave the beers kegs to one set of cats, you could visably see the jealousy in the rest of the cats as they watched them being pulled around). So Kieran decided he would take the challenge upon himself, along with the help of his dad, to source the zoo some more kegs for us; And indeed he did! We aquired enough kegs to make the zoo sounds like a catherdral if we gave a pair to all the cats and they decided to pull them around at the same time!

We are very grateful to Kieran and his Dad for helping the zoo out and the cats are of course very appreciative. Kieran came down to see the kegs being used with the cats and we gave a pair to Zena and Zia as well as Diamond and Aysha. The real show was watching Dimoand and Aysha trying to work out how they would approach the kegs that we had placed floating in the water. Kieran and the rest of the audience watched as the two cats contemplated swimming all the way in to get them. As the cats got nearer and nearer, tensions raised and there were a few growls along the way, but it was Aysha that finally got them in the end. She hadnt stopped playing with kegs by the time I left!

Hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr. Fox...

19th October 2011

Mr. Fox

For the past few months, the animal team have been getting to know a red fox that came to us from the British Wildlife Centre that had arrived there after being found orphaned. We have been encouraging him to get used to us, and our resident interns have spent hours upon end sitting with him in his offshow enclosure. On Sunday, we moved Mr. Fox, as he is currently known, into a on-show large ex-cat enclosure that he will now have the run off. Knowing he would be quite elusive whilst he is getting used to his new enclosure, I was hoping to grab a photo for the famous blog of him being released into the enclosure, but sure enough it all happened too quickly! The challenge now is to try and grab a shot of Mr. Fox investigating his new enclosure, as we will be keeping an eye on his behaviour to see how he adjusts to the new environment. So fingers crossed for some positive fox updates soon!

Cat Photo of the Day:



Here is Zena's having a quick drink from her stream today. Hopefully she will be admiring her reflecting more vividly with the planned cataract removal scheduled to take place within the next few weeks.

Another day of sun-bathing here in.. the middle of October!!

15th October 2011

Again we had fantasic weather here at the zoo today and walking around the zoo doing my keeper chores, I personally felt I would be quite happy joining the cats for a bit of sun-bathing!

Our Bengal Tigress Zia, can often be found on top of her rock soaking up some rays, but it is less familiar to see her sister the white tigress Zena doing the same. That's why it was great to be able to snap this photo of the two sisters both in the same frame of mind, chilling out together in the Sun, with Zena rolling around on her back in contentment in the cave below.

This is especially good to see, as Zena has been on a course of medication for a loss of appetite for the past couple of months and she is back to 100% now. This of course has come to the detriment of the zoo's bank account as she has been treated like a royal princess and is eating 5kg of minced chicken breast a day to satisfy her picky appetite! She absolutely loves in though and it's good to see her back in good health, ready for her eye operation in the coming weeks to attempt to remove her cataract.

A few more shots of Zena enjoying the Sun:

Primate Photo of the Day:

One of the most unique characters on the primate section is certainly the previously very overweight Mongoose Lemur, 'McLovin'. He lived most of his life as a sailor's pet, overindulging in the finer things in life such as grapes and bananas until he came to the Isle of Wight Zoo. He still carries a large amount of excess skin on his belly as a permanent reminder to his previous eating habits!

With the development of one of the lemur enclosures that has meant 'McLovin' and his lady friend 'Soa' have permant access to a very large enclosure, the keepers have been helping the lemurs aleviate their fears of this new wide open space and try and coax the lemurs out into the sunshine with some of their favourite fruits. Today we managed to get McLovin out to enjoy the sunshine on this lovely day, and as he doesnt normally venture this far, usually remaining in the shade, today's photo of the day is McLovin out in the sunlight heading towards a pile of some of his favourite things.

As an interesting note, some of our pairs lemurs that have never seen each other before, are meeting each other for the first time through the mesh thanks to the development of the lemur enclosure and this has resulted in all sorts of amusing interactions. Lemurs are generally harmless, but poor old McLovin here had his tailed yanked on by Mork, one of the lemurs living next to him now, which certainly made him speed up his usual waddle!

The fragile nature of plants (especially in tiger enclosures)

15th October 2011

We were planting some new vegetation in Chandru's enclosure today and as animals tend to thoroughly investigate something new in their enclosure, I always wonder whether the plants will survive their first meeting with the cats. To be fair the cats have quite a good track record at the moment, as when Chiquita the jaguar was moved into her new enclosure, she had quite a collection of pretty looking but very fragile plants that I was wagering might not see the next day. However all those plants are still standing and her enclosure still looks very attractive.

With the handful of new plants going into Chadru's today, I wondered if he would be any more destructive. Todays photos show the precarious situation these plants find themselves in as the same plant that is seen being planted here, is also seen in the background of the set of photos from today of Chandru's feeding session and you can imagine that once these cats get focused on food, all regard for the gardening goes out the window! Luckily for this helpless bamboo, Chandru was far enough away to spare it from his onslaught of tackling his food down from the rope and it lives to survive another day!

Zena's Eye update and New Lemurs

Thursday 13th October 2011

As always at the zoo, quite a few things have been happening since the last update!

Zena's Eye

We had Zena's eye looked at by an eye specialist on Monday. She was safely and successfully anethetized and moved to the vetinary room to be able to look at the cataract situation in her eye with specialist equipment. Indeed, the opthamologist confirmed that Zena's eyesight is very limited in the day time. Interestingly enough her eyesight in darkness is much better as when the pupil naturally dilates in low light, it expands past the mass of the cataract, allowing her to see.

Now that all this is confirmed, looked at and assesed, the next stage is to have the opthamologist come down again and attempt to remove the cataract. This is now on the cards and we will keep you updated with that.

New Red Ruffed Lemur

The primate section has enjoyed the arrival of 3 new primates recently. One of which is a new female Red Ruffed Lemur named 'Bonnie' who came from a collection in Bath. A female Red Ruffed Lemur had been on the zoo's want list for a while, as our only other Red Ruffed Lemur, 'Andro' has lost his sister earlier in the year to complications in the gut. With lemurs being social animals, it was anticipated that Andro would get on very well with Bonnie.

These two were introduced to each other for the first time yesterday and they did indeed get on very well. This however will not be a breeding pair as Andro carries genetic traits that are not wished to be passed on in the breeding program for the survival plan of this species. Hopefully we can get some photos of for you soon of the two new love birds.

New Ring Tailed Lemurs

Other recent arrivals include two male Ring Tailed Lemurs with the intention to hopefully add them to our current Ring Tailed Lemur group to increase it's size. We currently have a group of 3 ring tails that we hope to add these two to. Again hopefully some photos coming soon of the, finger crossed, happy band of 5 ring tails all enjoying the Sun together.

In the meantime enjoy photos from life at the zoo today:

Cat Photo of the Day:

Female Jaguar Chiquita enjoys a perch in the mid-morning Sun

Primate Photo of the Day:

The baby Black Lemur has grown up! The baby born back in April is getting ever harder to distinguish from her mother, especially when they are making odd faces at feeding time! Her the youngster crams some carrot into her cheek pouches at the morning feed.

Simple but effective primate enrichment

8th October 2011

Just an insight into some of the ways we keep the cheeky little monkeys happy today with a simple but effective enrichment we give them every morning. Instead of placing the food in easily accesible places inside the enclosure, our tour guide Faye is seen here throwing the selection of mixed fruit onto the roof. This may seem like a lazy way out, instead of going into the enclosure to put the food in, but in fact the slices of fruit on the roof gives about 20 minutes of 'enrichment' for the monkeys. Just like the way they would be climbing and pulling off fruits from tress in the rainforests the monkeys have to use their muscles to climb around and then use their minds to manipulate the fruit through the holes in the mesh.

This is especially fitting for the spider monkeys who have what is effectively a 5th limb in the form of their prehensile tail, that they can use to hang off the roof with whilst they use their hands to manipulate the fruit.

The fruit on the roof also brings out some often hidden athletism in the capuchin monkeys and here we seen capuchin monkey 'Bailey' trying out some Indiana Jones type manovures:



Summer's over - The Blogging season returns!

7th October 2011

The recent heat wave that just passed was the last teetering of a very enjoyable and busy summer here at the Isle of Wight Zoo. Summer is always the peak time for any zoos in the country and I'm sure the visitors, staff and possibly even animals (well maybe the primates) have many fond memories of the Summer of '11 and the stories to tell. So where have the blog posts been?!

Well the essence of this particular blog is to share the daily life at the zoo and of the animals right from where the action happens at the keeper's perspective, and indeed the lack of posts gives an insight into a keeper's perspective - summer is an extremely busy time for a zookeeper!! And so now that the summer is over, the blog is enjoying a little mini relaunch and we will endeavour to maintain frequent updates from here on end.

So here we have a nice and hefty post to kick things off. To share a little secret, the blog relaunch was inspired by Lola. This shot was captured this morning as we were watching Lola trying out a new enrichment feed, and though we treat and view all our cats equally, Lola has to be the best looker! She needs to be on the front of a magazine and I needed to share this image - what a beautiful animal. She's coming up to her 14th birthday at the end of this month and we are happy to report she is still in great physical health.

The official first 'Wallaby Encounter'

Meanwhile today at the zoo we had the first official 'Wallaby Encounter'. The Isle of Wight Zoo acquired 6 male Bennet's Wallabies from Woburn Safari Park in August as a new way to bring visitors closer to animals through providing a close encounter interactive experience with these animals. For the past few weeks since their arrival they have been enjoying their new living space, a large enclosure that served as a tiger enclosure here at the zoo for over 30 years (don't worry - no tigers are still living in there now! Chandru was the last tiger to occupy the area and he has now moved to an improved enclosure in the Tiger Sanctuary part of the zoo), and getting settled in. The keepers have been bonding with them and have earned their trust. With the acquired trust has come a sigh of relief from the keepers as well, as the task of getting the wallabies in for the night has shorted from a hour long uphill battle to a shorter 10 minute endeavour.
Today was the first time we let members of the public volunteer to come in and feed the wallabies their favourite 'marsupial browser pellets'. It went very well and the wallabies seemed to be happy to come up and grab the pellets from the hands of strangers. We are hoping to be able to have this as a permanent fixture of the zoo soon, so do come visit over the autumn and winter weekends to have a perch on a bench and feed our wallabies!

New Lemur Enclosure

Over the past few weeks, our maintenance team member Paul has been working hard turning what was an enclosure with an absurd amount of unused space to a new environment for 3 species of lemur and giving much improved living space to 6 individuals. Previously only one pair of lemurs had access to the enclosure space and they probably only used ~ 5% of the enclosure. So a redesign was always on the cards. At the same time, we needed to give improved accommodation to 2 other pairs of lemurs we had, so with the unused space we have divided the enclosure into 3 different enclosures and will showcase different lemur environments found in Madagascar. This will also give visitors the opportunity to see 4 lemurs the Isle of Wight Zoo held, but were not on show to the public. I personally, speaking from the cat team, am very much looking forward to walking past the enclosure and seeing all these new characters enjoying their new living space.

Today the physical revamp of the enclosure was completed, including the division of the enclosure into three and the necessary access tunnels that the lemurs will hopefully venture down!

Here are a few photos of it's development in progress:

1st September 2011 - Digging out the old enclosure

15th September 2011 - Putting up the framework

29th September 2011 - Putting up the mesh, with help from a volunteer group from the Navy!

6th October 2011 - Putting on the finishing touches. Now work will be done putting in the vegetation and details to create the 3 different environments. Well done Paul!

Future Plans

And to finish off, an update from our veterinary schedule. Zena, our one-eyed white tiger (she lost her eye to glaucoma in 2006) is scheduled to have a check up on her remaining eye in the very near future to see if there is anything we can do with the cataracts she has in this eye. We hope to have a professional look at this remaining eye very shortly and we will keep you updated.

Zena's eyesight is limited currently with the cataracts, but she is certainly our most popular cat with the visitors. On the cat team we are happy to see Zena perk up back to top recently from from a bit of a lull caused by an illness that seems to have been improved with the course of medicine she received. Additionally we will be giving Zena a new health check up imminently. To celebrate her being back at a 100% here is a photo of her looking very lively from a few days ago on the 4th of October. This look was created when she looked up in response to call from a keeper and of course she came over to the fence to give an affectionate hello once this photo was taken:

Ben Thompson - Big Cat Care Team.