Spring can be a busy time here at Monarto, endeavouring to complete the many tasks required prior to the heat of summer. The annual medicals for many of our native animals happen around this time, with moves into new enclosures ready for the coming breeding season.

These cute joeys recently had their first ever health checks!

Greetings, my name's James, I'm one of the native keepers at Monarto Zoo and currently hand raising a Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby. I've named her Myrtle in honour of the late owner of Myrtle Springs Station in Leigh Creek, where I did a lot of work with the Aroona Dam Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby Project. Myrtle has been bred for export to San Diego Zoo and is being hand raised to reduce the stress of this long voyage.

In May 2011 one of our zookeepers, Nathan Langley, traveled to Franklin Island in the Nuyts Archipelago National Park, just off the coast of Ceduna, to catch greater stick-nest rats to supply an insurance population on the Australian mainland. Franklin Island is one of the last places the indigenous rat occurs naturally; by the 1930s they had become extinct on the mainland due to predators and increased grazing pressure from introduced herbivores. Adelaide Zoo's stick-nest rats live in the Nocturnal House and have designed and built their own exhibit, very impressive given its small size!

Adelaide Zoo's stick-nest rat family is expanding! Photo: Dave Mattner

How well can you identity our feathered friends at Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary?

Did you know Tasmanian Devils patrol an area in a large figure of eight pattern in the wild? And so, with a little poetic license, the legend of the Looney Tunes cartoon character, Taz, spinning around from place to place, was born.