Photo Feature: Edinburgh Zoo

The animals at Edinburgh zoo look relaxed. And what do relaxed animals do? They have a nice time reproducing themselves, creating baby relaxed animals.

Edinburgh Zoo’s breeding programme is quite remarkable. A self styled “conservation zoo”, it puts a lot of thought into ensuring that its breeding adults “get on well”. Whenever you visit you can see a list of new arrivals displayed in the main entrance hall and it’s usually a pretty long one.

	The surroundings lend themselves to happy honeymoons.
Despite being a stone’s throw from the centre of Scotland’s capital city, the zoo’s animals have 82 acres of rolling parkland to play around in

This means that if the big cats are feeling anti-social and snooty, just like your pet moggie at home, they will go and sit in a tree and no amount of “Here, Sweet Kitty!” will coax them down again.. 

But then, that’s the attraction of this zoo – being able to see animals behaving naturally.

Visit the wart hog enclosure and you are left in no doubt what wart hogs like doing – they like having ploughing competitions! What a mess! You don’t want one of those piggies in your veg plot.

Edinburgh Zoo also boasts a whopping penguin pool, with a self-sustaining colony of penguins that have been breeding here since 1919. They are dead cute these penguins and you can see them waddling around trying to balance an egg on their feet (You might like to try this at home, but maybe not on the living room carpet, unless your egg is hard boiled.)

The koalas are the zoo's biggest new boast but as they too behave totally naturally, they are not the most exciting thing to watch. For koalas sleep in the trees. That’s what koalas are for (Oh, and for eating eucalyptus, of course). And one furry sleeping bum (presumably attached to furry sleeping legs and furry sleeping body, although that's not verifiable) looks pretty much like the next.

If it’s antics you want then try the sealions and the otters. Great performers, these. Fabulous swimmers, obviously but also real show offs. Playing to the gallery and hugely popular with everyone.

Photos: Scott Liddell

Text: Kay Green