Zoo reveals food shopping list for 16,000 animals

Other than not wanting to end up in the lion enclosure, you've probably never given a second thought to what animals at the zoo eat.

But London Zoo has just revealed their annual food shopping list -- and if you thought your family eat like animals, their mega-order should put it into perspective.

Every week the zoo gets through more than a tonne of bananas and apples and each years their 600 different species eat nearly nine tonnes of meat.

Other items on their giant annual shopping list includes thirteen tonnes of carrots, four tonnes of eggs and two tonnes of cabbages.

Unusual foods also on the menu include 240 coconuts for the hyacinthine macaws and bearded pigs plus 78 kilos of popping corn for its four gorillas… who love movie night.

Zookeeper Nicky Jago said: "Feeding all of our animals is a mammoth task. They all have different dietary requirements which need to be met, and some individuals are fussier than others.

“Our male sloth, for example, doesn’t like mushrooms but our female sloth loves them, and our armadillos don’t like food that’s too crunchy for them – so we’ve definitely got our work cut out."

A sophisticated computer programme is used to help zookeepers create a diet equivalent to that which the animals would eat in the wild, providing them with a diet full of the best possible nutrition.

But dinners aren’t just handed to animals on a plate; mealtimes are vital enrichment for them. Zookeepers spend hours making sure the animals have to work for their food just like they would in the wild.