Largest database of wild animals in human care

Managed by Species360 (formerly the International Species Information System) which is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS) is an online database devised to assist with animal husbandry in zoological settings by collating the inventories of hundreds of wildlife institutions around the world. Up until 1 October 2020, the ZIMS database has listed 12,235,951 individual animals representing 24,023 species, since it was founded in 1974; the number of living animals recorded in ZIMS as of the same date totalled 2,904,653 representing 15,911 species.

As of 1 October 2020, ZIMS has 1,254 institutional members (zoos, aquaria, wildlife sanctuaries/rescue centres and animal collections) from 96 different countries and 22,250 users.

A typical ZIMS entry includes key data such as age, sex, parentage, place/date of birth and circumstances of death. The ZIMS database is also a critical tool used to assist zoo breeding programmes, which support conservation efforts in the wild, as well as a repository of medical information that can be utilized by zoo-based veterinarians. By cooperating with CITES, IUCN and other organizations, ZIMS data is used to support conservation science and inform conservation policy.