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.

Ranthambore Revamp

Thanks to the hard work of our staff, volunteers and friends at Aquatic Engineers the Ramthambore was drained, cleaned and fitted with a new pump in July.

This has allowed the animal care team to think up lots of fun new enrichment activities which make the most of the water. It does, however, mean they have had to get into their waders. Ben is pictures here setting up a raft for Diamond and Aysha, and also hiding some meat in the tree. This encourages them to swim, jump and use their problem-solving skills to work out what to do.

Big cats are not as intelligent as the monkeys, but they are very committed to their dinner and they will usually manage to solve the keepers' puzzles.

Enclosure Redesign

Our parks team are currently busy landscaping one of our enclosures ready for the arrival of some Bennett's wallabies.

This was our first ever tiger enclosure, and it has served the zoo very well over the past thirty years. However, it was a little isolated from the rest of the big cats and there wasn't any room for expansion. The team therefore decided to house all our tigers in The Tiger Sanctuary and Big Cat Territory areas of the zoo, leaving this enclosure free.

We though that wallabies would be a great addition to this area of the zoo. A walk-though area will mean that people can enter the enclosure and meet the animals.


Benches have already been installed, and now the parks team are busy laying turf. We're torn on whether it looks like it should house hobbits or tellytubbies! We hope to welcome the wallabies in the next two weeks.

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: