London Zoo is putting all its animals on the scales this week – in one of the world’s wildest mass weigh-ins.
The zoo’s total inventory of some 19,000 creatures will be measured and tallied by keepers as part of an annual stock-take.
The heaviest – and tallest – is Maggie the giraffe, at 13ft tall and 750kg. The smallest is the leaf cutter ant at 5mg.
London Zoo’s Animal Manager Angela Ryan explained: “We weigh and measure the animals on a regular basis, as it’s a key way of monitoring their overall wellbeing.
“The information is recorded and is shared with zoos around the world.
“The annual weigh-in is when keepers make sure all information is up to date and takes about a week.
“As well as a tool for understanding a species’ health, knowing an animal’s weight and size can also help to identify pregnancies, vital for our worldwide conservation breeding programmes.”
Keepers have to be very imaginative and patient when it comes to getting animals to stay still on scales and they use food rewards and even scales disguised as patches of grass.
Tiger’s paw prints were measured at London Zoo and the data used when tracking tigers in the wild. Conservationists can estimate the age of a tiger by the size of their paw print.
Angela said: “Our conservationists in Indonesia rarely see the tigers they are working to protect because they are so elusive, but they know the rough age of the tigers they’re tracking by measuring their paw prints – something recorded from tigers at our zoo.”
There are an estimated 19,035 animals at the zoo and 592 species for the keepers to catalogue.
Another heavyweight contender is Kumbuka, a male gorilla, who is 6ft and 190kg. At the last check, komodo dragon Ganas was 5ft long and 31kg.
Visitors can get involved next weekend by guessing the total weight of the zoo’s Humboldt penguin colony. The lucky winner gets an overnight stay at the zoo’s Lion Lodge. More details at zsl.org .
