It's heads you win as London zoo-keepers begin annual count

Zoo-keepers given the mammoth task of counting every animal at London Zoo are hoping to expand their creepy-crawly collection during the coming year.

Handlers in the tarantula enclosure hope to increase the arachnid population by breeding the distinctive Mexican red-kneed bird-eating spiders, after discovering last month that one of the eight-legged females at the zoo was actually a male.

Senior keeper in bugs Mark Tansley said: "We use the females for our spider talk. About a month ago we discovered that one of them is male. We are hoping to use that one to mate with some of our females."

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Staff at the zoo yesterday began counting all creatures great and small as part of the annual stock-take. The task is not too arduous for meerkat keepers but for other animal handlers the inventory could take up to four weeks.

Staff in the aquarium have to head-count more than 4,700 fish while bug keepers have to tally-up thousands of tiny insects.

Mr Tansley said: "It is a lot easier to count the larger mammals such as the gorillas or the lions but when it comes to invertebrate, they are a lot smaller and are more prolific breeders."

During the census, bug handlers have to estimate the size of ant colonies, count millipedes into tubs and carefully unearth creatures that live underground.

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But one of the most difficult tasks is counting the hundreds of butterflies at the zoo.

"The butterfly census is quite tricky," Mr Tansley said. "We go in to count them before the heat goes on while they are resting on the plants.

"As soon as the heat goes up they fly around and it is impossible to count them."

Recent additions to the zoo's population will be included in the census. A baby western lowland gorilla will be counted for the first time after it was born last October.

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