As the zoo celebrates its 200th birthday, photographer David Levene captures the people keeping their (sometimes very dangerous) patients healthy and happy. Introduction: Patrick Barkham
Some images may be upsetting to young audiences
How do you shift a sedated rhino? Can a dormouse be drugged? What happens to a lion with an unusually small ear canal? How does the world’s longest venomous snake respond to treatment?
Not easily, was the answer to the final question, as Guardian photographer David Levene discovered during a year following intricate veterinary operations on some of the world’s most endangered animals.
When Levene took a photograph of a king cobra snake just after it had received an anaesthetic, the animal affectionately known as King Arthur gave him its own version of the hairdryer treatment. “I was the first person he saw after he’d been jabbed in the tail and he reared up and opened his mouth and started spitting at me. I was behind glass but I told him, ‘It wasn’t me!’” says Levene.
