ZOOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATION 

ZSL LONDON ZOO BODY CONDITION SCORING PROJECT

 

This project was particularly exciting because it combines my two favourite things, animals and drawing. It has been a great opportunity to sketch at the zoo, and meet the zookeepers and their incredible animals.

 

The zoo is very keen for the project to continue on into 2016. Weight can give a good impression of an animal's body condition, but there can be large variations between individuals so it is important to look at visual cues too. Sometimes the practicalities of weighing zoo animals make it difficult to do frequently, but body condition scoring is quick and easy and requires very little training so it can be a useful tool to assess animal weight and condition. Each score has five sets of diagrams illustrating how the appearance of the animal might change as its body weight increases or decreases.

 

These images are produced by combining my experience as a veterinary nurse with information about anatomy and physiology. I begin by discussing each species with the keepers and the zoo's veterinary nurses. This is vital because it help me to decide on the postures and views I'm going to use for each species. I then research the animals underlying skeletal and muscle morphology and combine this with sketches drawn from life at the zoo and images from the zoo's archives. In the case of the Hippo’s I also looked at images of wild pygmy hippos taken by camera traps. In the case of the Red Kangaroos I looked at photos taken of wild kangaroo’s during drought to get the emaciated kangaroo image. Once I’ve drawn the images I send them to the zoo’s nutritionists and veterinary staff to be checked before inking over them.

 

This is a wonderful project and I love being a part of it, but it does make me wonder sometimes if our assessment of ideal weights is correct or if it is slightly skewed towards the ideal being slightly plumper than nature intended. It’s an interesting topic that I would like to explore further.