From the opening moments, as ‘Keeper Cam’ shows us cheetah mum Sia and her litter of five little furball cubs, it’s clear Zoo Mum has plenty of the cuteness factor you might expect of a zoo documentary.
But these are no ordinary times at the zoo. Colchester Zoo in England, home to around 200 different species spread across 24 hectares (60 acres), is normally one of the busiest in Britain, but the global pandemic saw the zoo shut for months.
For the small team of staff still working at the zoo, there’s still plenty to do, though, and in fact the closure has meant a chance to do things a little differently, with some fun results (look out for the primates fascinated by an unusual visitor to one of their windows!).
Zoo Mum follows zoo curator Sarah Forsyth as she leads a team of keepers caring for all the animals.
For Forsyth, the zoo isn’t just where she works – she actually lives at Colchester Zoo, too, so in the middle of a pandemic this has become, as the documentary points out, pretty much her whole world.
“This job isn’t just a 9-til-5 job. It is a lifestyle and I guess it has kind of taken over. I made the choice not to have a family because the zoo and the animals are my family. All of my nurturing is taken out on the animals,” she explains in the show.
As the one-hour documentary unfolds, we get to meet many of those animals, including her surprising favourite.
“So as a curator at a zoo I’m not supposed to have a favourite. But I can’t help it,” she confesses. "Rhinos really are absolutely one of my favourite animals to be around. They don’t look like the sort of animal you would have a very close relationship with but it’s not the case at all. They really are amazing animals”.
And so we see the team check in on Astrid, a rhino due to soon have a baby (after a 19-month pregnancy!), and an already-sizable rhino calf, six-month-old Lottie, as she has her first in-person meeting with a towering giraffe.
Sarah with Lottie Source: Eye Film
A parade of animals fills Zoo Mum, from elephants who live out on the Africa plain section, to sea lions and meerkats - even a wandering armadillo.
“The animals have really missed the visitors. They haven’t had the same levels of interaction as they would have had normally so the keepers have had to come up with new and exciting ways of keeping our animals enriched and busy,” Forsyth explains. “And one of the things they came up with was, well actually we can take these animals out and about in the zoo because we haven’t got any visitors here to get in their way. And that’s what we’ve done. We’ve discovered that Gomez, our giant hairy armadillo, is a particular fan of going round and seeing other animals in the zoo.”
While there may be no visitors, one thing doesn’t change at a zoo: the annual baby boom. Cue shots of energetic baby monkeys, those little cheetah cubs and many more.
And then, after three months of closures, the zoo gets some unexpected news: zoos are allowed to open again, and the Colchester Zoo team have only one week to get ready. Along with grass to be cut and hedges to be trimmed (that’s a lot of work given the size of this zoo), the animals need to be ready too. Those cheetah cubs need vaccinations before they can go out in the main enclosure with their mum, and now that lockdown has ended, a few residents are able to head to new homes, including a tiny African antelope. Born at the zoo, he’s old enough to clash with his dominant dad, so it’s time for him to move to a new home, one where he has some new friends to enjoy.
A lemur family at Colchester Zoo. Source: Eye Film
“There are tears. I’m not going to lie. On some occasions we do get very upset, but we know they are going to great zoos. We’re working with great people and we keep in touch to make sure they are okay,” Forsyth explains in the documentary.
But new arrivals come to the zoo too, such as a box of tiny geckos which have come from Bristol Zoo. And of course all those baby animals.
One of the cheetah cubs on the prowl. Source: Eye Film
It’s all part of the constant flow of life at the zoo; part of what makes the ‘zoo mum’ love her job so much. “I’ve always wanted to work with animals,” she says.
Zoo Mum is now streaming at SBS On Demand:
