With bunches of lettuce and bucketloads of nuts, London Zoo kicked off its annual animal count Friday, coaxing everything from goats to gorillas out of their enclosures for the celebrated stocktake.

The zoo, which is nearly two centuries old, performs the nearly week-long formal tallying early each January, with several new additions already proving to be the highlights.

"We've had some really successful breeding successes over the last year," animal operations manager Dan Simmonds told AFP, listing the 11 penguin chicks, three Asiatic lion cubs and two baby gorillas born in 2024.

The zoo also rescued from Chile 53 Darwin's frogs, which are among so-called Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species, and bred a number of Socorro doves now extinct in the wild.

The keepers in the various enclosures will be kept "very busy" over the coming days as they count more than 10,000 animals from over 400 species, Simmonds noted.

"We've been on the go........

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