Visitor numbers at Edinburgh Zoo are up 200% thanks to the recent arrival of giant pandas.

The male giant panda at Edinburgh Zoo has been taken ill suffering from colic.

1. The Battle of the River Plate.

They can dive, swim and glide but even the penguins at London Zoo will find it difficult to hide from keepers who have the tricky but essential task of counting every animal in their care.

Agyness Deyn is to attempt the transition from walking the catwalk to treading the boards, with a West End debut pencilled in for early next year. The role in The Leisure Society may not be too much of a problem for the supermodel, as it was described yesterday as a "toxic comedy" that offers a "glimpse into a grotesque world of self-indulgent excess". Ms Deyn will play Paula, a "promiscuous free spirit" invited to the dinner party of a self-obsessed professional couple that spirals out of control.

Populations of the festive favourite soar, but not so for its fellow red-breasts

Sir David Attenborough has defended using footage in his Frozen Planet series of a polar bear tending her newborn cubs that was shot in a zoo.

First there was the prawn sandwich brigade, then the rubber chicken circuit. Now the corporate hospitality industry is bracing itself for the birth of the bamboo banquet.

The prestigious Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has been awarded to The Independent's Environment Editor, Michael McCarthy.

With fewer than 2,500 giant pandas left in the wild and 312 living in captivity, every breeding pair is vital to the continued survival of the species. Little wonder that the imminent arrival in Britain of a couple with a successful reproductive history – the first pandas to be in the UK for 17 years – has been eagerly anticipated by conservationists and animal lovers.

They stare lifelessly from every shelf: platypus, slipper lobster, flying fox, penguin, pocket gopher, hagfish, tiger, tapir, koala, sea squirt, elephant, tree shrew, dodo, armadillo and thousands more. Elsewhere, 18 baby moles are crammed in a jar, like hairy gobstoppers in a sweet shop.

China said today it will gift Britain a pair of giant pandas as vice premier Li Keqiang marked the second day of his official visit to the UK with the signing of trade deals worth an estimated £2.6 billion.

Our article, 'Warring tigers,escaping birds, marauding snakes: it's chaos at London Zoo' (16 October 2010) referred to a report following an informal zoo inspection which took place in July 2009 . The title suggested that the matters were current not historical, and so was misleading as many of the issues highlighted in the report had already been resolved by the zoo, some before the 2009 inspection. Some details were also inaccurately reported. London Zoo, as the article stated, was praised in the inspectors' report and was said to be run 'extremely well'.

Why is rarity so prized? What deep psychological roots in us does it tap? It clearly has nothing to do with the inherent properties of a given object, as a tatty and overprinted postage stamp will have immense allure for stamp collectors, if very rare, whereas a clean and exceptionally beautiful stamp which has just been issued in its millions will carry no cachet.