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.