Animal Diaries Archive

What's in a Primate diet?

Primates are currently off display

25 July 2008

Every animal that lives at Australia Zoo is treated like royalty. The best enclosures, more love from their keepers than they can ask for, exciting activities and of course the freshest food that is going – not to mention a bigger variety than you and I even allow ourselves at home.

Our Primates are no exception and are definitely spoilt. We have designed a specialised diet that caters to their every need (and wants). Taking into consideration iron levels, vitamin c, d and essential acids we put together a meal that is not only good for them, but tastes great as well. Our lucky animals are given a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables, from kiwi, rock melon, honeydew, berries and watermelon to sweet potato, carrot, zucchini and squash; and that’s not the half of it! Of course they have their favorites – banana is the equivalent to chocolate for primates with apple and corn following close behind in most popular food contest. But it doesn’t end there…

We also like to give our primates treats, just because they are such amazing animals. Sultanas, mixed nuts, and a specially designed primate cake get our kids jumping for joy, but we are careful not to give them to much sugary foods. We don’t want them acting like kids on red cordial or like our head primate keeper Jodi after she has eaten a block of chocolate. Crazy!

But wait there’s more. Some of our primates also are leaf eaters so we make sure we give them fresh cut browse, and not just once a day but from anywhere up to three times a day. They love to eat fig leaves and enjoy it more when it still has some fig fruit left on it. Now you may be thinking that is a lot to eat in one go, but we actually feed these guys between 3-4 times a day. We give them breakfast, lunch and dinner and then snacks in between. Talk about being spoilt.

Our animals love living here at Australia Zoo and I think it is very clear to see why they would.