COLCHESTER Zoo has revealed it cares for 184 unique species following a head count of its animals.
It follows an emotional 2021 for the attraction which saw the death of Igor, its popular Amur tiger.
Now the zoo has released its numbers which reveal it hosts more than 1,200 individual animals, colonies and groups of fish, reptiles, and other smaller species.
The total number of species it plays home to is made up of 68 mammals, 47 fish, 19 birds, 34 reptiles, nine invertebrates and seven amphibians.
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The zoo’s animal care team and animal records department are now working to collate all the final figures and will submit the data to a central database, as well as to the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
A spokesman for Colchester Zoo said: “Many of our larger animals can be easily counted, however, there are some species, such as our many shoals of fish, birds and insect species, that are counted as one group."
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