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Paignton Zoo has welcomed a new species – the wonderfully-named gentle lemur. There’s more than a little of the teddy bear about them, with their thick, grey-brown fur and beady amber eyes. The babies are said to be especially cute – and the zoo certainly hopes to see babies in due course.

The gentle lemur – more correctly, the Alaotran gentle lemur - is the only primate that lives entirely in marshy habitat. In the wild it can be found in reed beds around Lake Alaotra, in north east Madagascar.

But why the name? Are they really gentle? It depends who you ask. Gentle lemurs...

Staff at a top regional conservation charity have shared their successes and frustrations as they try to reduce, reuse and recycle consumables in their cafes and restaurants.

Wild Planet Trust is the charity that runs Paignton Zoo, Living Coasts in Torquay and Newquay Zoo in Cornwall. Staff and volunteers work to reduce the zoos’ impact on the planet in as many ways as they can – but it’s not always an easy or a simple process.

Trust Environmental Officer Pete Morgan: “There’s a lot of misinformation and half-truths about sustainability and the recycling of consumables....

It sounds like the latest police drama – the Zoo Evidence Officer is on the case, searching for clues, combing through paperwork and tracking down the truth.

In fact, the new post, based at Paignton Zoo in Devon, is about detecting science-based evidence for the best ways to care for, manage and breed animals in zoological collections for conservation purposes.

Wild Planet Trust, the charity that runs Paignton Zoo, Living Coasts in Torquay and Newquay Zoo in Cornwall, has been awarded a grant to recruit a post-doctoral researcher for a year. The Trust’s Field Conservation...

We often reach for a heat pack to ease aches and pains, with maybe a bit of a massage if we’re lucky. This is exactly the treatment 35-year-old Sophie is getting right now. The only difference is – she’s a giant tortoise.

Paignton Zoo’s Aldabra giant tortoise Sophie weighs 106 kilos, 233 pounds or 16 stones. She’s one of six confiscated by Customs from an illegal importation and handed to Paignton Zoo for safe keeping in 1986. Individuals can live for 200 years. She could be the first giant tortoise ever to receive this sort of treatment.

Paignton Zoo Head Vet Ghislaine...