³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Breakfast, lunch and dinner for 3,000 animals every day of the year - it’s an extensive menu, a mind-boggling list of ingredients and the tab is huge. Keeping everyone at Edinburgh Zoo and the Highland Wildlife Park fed and watered on a daily basis requires precision planning and careful budgeting, and there are some very particular diets to be catered for.

Edinburgh Zoo’s head storeman, George, knows exactly what everyone’s needs are – fruit and veg, bamboo and eucalyptus, honey and peanut butter. He has it running like clockwork - but there is a hitch when 400 bales of hay arrive.

Keeper Calum is helping keep costs down by breeding meal worms on site. These worms provide a tasty and nutritious snack for the squirrel monkeys. The brown capuchin monkeys, however, are more than happy with an onion, and as well as loving the taste, they also like to rub themselves with them too!

The zoo’s 15 chimps are on a health kick and can be prone to diabetes and obesity. Senior keepers Amanda and Georgina have an ingenious way of making mealtimes more interesting and fun – by creating an artificial termite hill.

Meanwhile, there are efforts under way at the Highland Wildlife Park to preserve one of Scotland’s most iconic species – the Scottish wildcat. With wildcats under threat of extinction, there is one group at the park for the public to get close to and a second group tucked away out of sight to give them privacy to reproduce, and there is excitement in the air as the keepers think they might have kittens.

Cat conservation officer David oversees the wildcat projects and is waiting anxiously for news on an application for an EU grant, without which the future looks bleak.

Keepers Karen and Gillian have the job of taking zebras Archie and Allingham from the zoo across the water to a new home in Fife, and there is a buzz of anticipation about a possible new arrival in Edinburgh – red panda Ginger is keeping everyone guessing as to whether or not she has a baby hidden in her nesting box.