Baby zebras and pandas among Banham Zoo’s new arrivals as keepers complete annual count

It has been a mathematically challenging start to the year for zoo keepers at one of our region's biggest attractions.

Staff at Banham Zoo had the daunting task of counting each and everyone of their 2,000 animals in their yearly audit.

At the start or end of each year staff count every single animal at the zoo to update their records, from meerkats to lemurs, to giraffes and cockroaches.

This year the count included the zoo's four male Gelada baboons, who are led by the alpha male Malachi, and a Grevy's zebra foal, who was closely guarded by the zoo's four other zebras.

A month-old African spoon bill chick was easily spotted by staff in the penguin enclosure nestling by its mother in a nest, but a male Linne's two-toed sloth, who took up residence in May in the zoo's sub-tropical house, Eureka, proved more elusive to find in the rafters of the enclosure.

The count also took in a two Royal pythons, some of the thousand or so Madagascan hissing cockroaches, and four friendly giraffes.

There was a similar count at Africa Alive!, in Kessingland, the zoo's sister site.