Zoo Tales

Many of the animals at Colchester Zoo are classified as endangered or vulnerable.  More than 40 species are part of European Endangered Species breeding programmes. 

Aardvarks are nocturnal and solitary

These programmes co-ordinate breeding of animals between European zoos, and oversee any transfers in order to maintain a healthy population.  Then should one of the species become extremely rare in the wild, the possibility of reintroduction could be considered.

Colchester Zoo is one of only three in zoo's in Europe that breed aardvarks.  Two have been successfully breed at Colchester.  Adult aardvark OQ gave birth on 10, January - the baby has been named Magic.  They don't know whether the baby is male or female - they are very difficult to sex as young - a sample is sent away for DNA testing.

Baby aardvark Magic and mother OQ

Baby aardvarks are very small when born - Magic weighed only 1.36kgs.  Two months on Magic weighs 15kgs.  She was a difficult baby to rear, she didn't suckle from mum straight away so had to be syringe fed with mum's milk.  It wasn't until she was couple of weeks old that she started to suckle.

BBC Essex's Renee Hockley-Byam met with keeper Nicole Upsher to find out more about the aardvark and the work involved looking after them.