A lot's been happening since the last update.

25th July 2011

With the summer season in full swing, the zoo is at it's peak and a great place to see the cats out enjoying the Sun. Unfortunately this can sap a keeper's energy is quite well by the end of the day and so apologies for the lack of recent blog entries! A lot has been happening at the zoo, and a lot to write about and so to give a brief summary we have had:

- The moving of Chiquita the jaguar to her new enclosure
- A tiger health check up
- Renovation and maintenance of the water features in Ranthambore and Kahna enclosure which are now complete and being used by the tiger.
- Renovating Chandru's old enclosure (he moved to a new one earlier this year) to create a habitat for wallabies
- Watching the baby black lemur (which were yet to name!) grow up and bounce around over mum Adala and dad Mitsio (who look like they would do anything for 5 minutes peace sometimes.)
- Bonding with a new red fox colony at the zoo.

To make up for a lack of images, here's a shot of Aysha running through the water feature in Ranthambore from a couple of days ago, that sums up the summer feeling at the zoo in my eyes:

Black Lemurs

Adala's baby is nine weeks old today. She is now able to leave her mother for short periods of time, although she always sticks close to her. Most of her time is now spent clinging to her mother's back.

She has been exploring her environment, and so her keepers have had to make some modifications to baby-proof the enclosure. Tiny lemurs can fit through tiny gaps, so the team have been covering any suspicious spaces with chicken wire.

Unfortunately Aprily's baby did not survive. He died of natural causes and all indications show that Aprily was being a very good mother to him. The whole team was saddened by the news; although losing animals is part of zoo work, it is always upsetting.

We take heart from the fact that Aprily was such a good mother, and we hope that some time in the future she will be able to have another baby.

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.

Baby Black Lemur Born This Past Week!! + Enrichment for Spider Monkeys

25th April 2011

We are very pleased to announce that a new baby Black Lemur has been born this past week at the Isle of Wight Zoo! Born on the 20th of April, this past Wednesday, the little baby has been clinging onto the underbelly of mother 'Adala' since then. She is very difficult to see but you might be able to catch a glimpse of a tiny head or tail protruding from Adala's underside, probably with father 'Mitsio' (affectionately known as 'Scrappy') making noise near-by. Black Lemur babies cling to their mother's underside for 3 weeks when they will then move onto their mother's backs until they are fully weaned at 5-6 months.

Those of you that have been to the zoo will know that the Black Lemurs are quite small, so one can appreciate the little one's current size in this photo of it's head set against the backdrop of mother Adala's fur. It's head is about the size of a fifty pence piece!

We shall be holding a naming competition for the new Black Lemur once the sex of the young one has been deduced.

The Spider Monkeys got a new object to play with today in the form of a hanging tyre for them to swing on. It is always good to change around the environment the animals live and give them new things to explore, especially adding into the equation the dynamic of a swinging tyre! Here Zoo Curator Paul Bailie tests the fun potential of the swinging tyre before letting out the Spider Monkeys to have a go:



Photo of the Day:

The Spider Monkeys Ike and Jackson also got a few generous spreads of strawberry jam hidden in the climbing wall holds that were put up for them a couple of months back. They hadn't really used the new climbing wall groves since they were installed so what better way to get them to explore their ability and use for climbing that to hide jam inside of them!

Here one of the Spider Monkeys looks at his jam covered fingers before eating the tasty treat whilst showing off his ability to use his prehensile tail as a 5th limb. The shadows make an interesting addition to the image.



More Successful Cat Enrichment and Celebrating Being A Keeper

15th April 2010

All the keepers were pretty happy today as we were greeted by some delicious blueberry and white chocolate cheesecake. This was to mark our Primate Keeper Amy starting as a keeper here at the Isle of Wight Zoo a year ago today. Amy intially started in the Zoo Shop as she had a qualification and interest in wildlife photography and she wanted to get closer to the animals to practise this craft more frequently. If one talks to Amy it is clear her passion is with Primates and this can be pinpointed to the first time she was allowed to go and meet the Ring Tailed Lemurs for a 'Lemur Painting' (i'll keep you guessing...) experience. A position became avalible for Amy to join the animal care team and she has been looking after the lemurs, spider monkeys and capuchins since then - quite a broad spectrum of personalities in that group!

Today Amy went in and gave the Ring Tailed Lemurs a special treat as well to mark the occasion and here they are getting their noses stuck into some bread and jam with Amy:

Photo of the Day:

Meanwhile on the cat section we have been giving our cats a workout and keeping them healthy as we try to do each day. Today one of our largest, if not the largest male cat we have, 'Chandru' was treated with the 'fishig rod feed'. Chandru is an ex circus tiger that we were able to give a home to. He was raised with Lions when he was a cub so certainly did not have the most natural upbringing. Interestingly enough, when the Lions start their territorial calls, he often joins in. He must think he has some lion in him! Chandru is 15 years old and it's great to see that he is still so athetic and ready to put a good effort into catching his food, a real good work out for him today!



'Sitting in the morning Sun' and keepers in awe of leaping abilities of one of our tigers!

4th April 2011

As reported in the last blog entry, the cat keepers have been seeing how the cats react differently to the large fishing rod that has been lowering down chunks of meat for them at the big cat feeds. We had so far tested it on Casper the White Lion, our youngest cat, who after initally being unsure of this strange new method of eating and playing, had become a keen participant in jumping up and working for his food, often grabbing the food before the keeper intended as he jumped higher than we thought he would. Then there was Rajiv, who seems to enjoy playing the waiting game, not wanting to put the effort in to jump most of the time, instead waiting for it to come down to his chomping jaws.

Today we fed Rajiv and Lola with the fishing rod. As usual we had a quite tame session with Rajiv. We then moved over to feed Lola and I managd to get the fishing rod over the enclosure fence, and before I could start lowering it down for her we were stunned by what must have been a 2 - 2 and a half metre standing vertical leap!! There was no run up or prop used, she just looked up and jumped straight up to grab the food. I was not expecting that at all and Lola rewarded me on the other end of the fishing rod with a nice adrenaline rush as she caught me completely off guard! Lola is a 15 year old cat and we take our hats off to here at her athetic ability at this age. She certainly has a lot of respect from the keepers and the from the watching public.

We hope to continue to enrich and exercise all our cats with this method, but as keepers we certainly look forward to feeding Lola like this again - what a beautiful tigress she is!

Photo of the Day -

'Sitting in the Morning Sun, I'll be sitting when the evening comes...'

I'm sure the great Otis Redding would have got one very well hanging out with a group of lemurs. Lemurs are known as Sun worshipers as most species can often be seen in the very amsuing pose of what is literally sun bathing and something us humans can certainly relate to. Lemurs have 'low metabolic basal rates' which helps them conserve energy during the dry season in Madagascar and can lower their metabolic rate to 20% below what would be expected for mammals of the same body mass. This trait is the reason for many of the lemurs behaviours to conserve loosing energy to heat loss such as group huddling and of course sun bathing.

Here is one of the iconic Ring Tailed Lemurs we have enjoying a sun bathing session this morning. He was perched in the tree tops with the 2 other members of her group doing the exact same thing: