CONNECTIONS between West Somerset zoo Tropiquaria and the Queen are being celebrated to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee.

Tropiquaria director Chris Moiser said the zoo had ‘slightly tenuous’ links with the Queen.

Mr Moiser said the country’s Royalty had a long and historical involvement with animal collections, the earliest known being that of Henry 1 (1100 - 1135) who had his palace at Woodstock, Oxford, surrounded  by a stone wall.

Later collections were kept at the Tower of London, and when it closed many of the animals went to then-new Regents Park.

In the early days, the Royals who liked exotic animals were often given animals by overseas royalty as a means of securing peace and trade.

Mr Moiser said the Queen had received numerous animals during her reign, typically presented during Royal visits with the animals usually sent to London Zoo.

He said two examples were of particular interest, the first being a personal connection to when the Queen visited The Gambia in December, 1961, where she was given a two-year-old Nile crocodile for Prince Andrew by the people of Berending, a village on the north bank.

“I was to visit Berending with a group of students in 1996 to examine a sacred crocodile pool there, and subsequently described it for the British Herpetological Bulletin,” said Mr Moiser.

“A friend of Tropiquaria is currently working in a veterinary aid position a few miles from there now, on the other side of the river.”

The second link related to the Queen’s tour of Australia in 1963 when the main function of the visit was to visit Canberra to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the city’s foundation.

Mr Moiser said she was presented with a number of animals by Taronga Zoo, Sydney, including two white Bennett’s wallabies which went to Regents Park, and subsequently to Whipsnade Zoo, either directly or their offspring.

“White wallabies of this species are albinos and as is often the case with albinism it is a genetic issue determined by one pair of recessive genes,” said Mr Moiser.

“As far as I can see there were no white wallabies in the UK before then, although the species in its grey form was here since Victorian times. In the intervening years the number of white wallabies in the UK has increased considerably, and so it seems that the original pair have 30 or so generations on spread their genes far and wide in the zoo populations, and more recently to some in private ownership, and indeed the odd feral animal, too.

“We would like to think that ours are descendants of the two that came here from Taronga in 1963.”