Monkeys, tigers, meerkats, and other animals are getting new toys this week thanks to pet owners who wanted their furry companions to pose with Santa.

Four Pet Valu stores -- three in Winnipeg and one in Selkirk -- offered pet pictures with Santa earlier this month, with people paying $5 each for the privilege.

With help from the corporate head office in Ontario, the stores raised enough money to buy $820 worth of toys for animals at the Assiniboine Park Zoo.

"We all just decided, hey, this might be a cool idea," said Barbara Van Bergen, manager of the St. Boniface Pet Valu store in Dominion Centre. "I was at the zoo about a month ago visiting the monkeys and I saw they needed new toys. They were playing with old blankets."

Thanks to the donation, the monkeys will now get plush toys, the big cats will get a variety of balls, the birds will get mirrors and seed ropes and the meerkats will get tunnels to run through.

"Anything new always causes great excitement. Everyone always wants to play with it first, so it causes great commotion," said Bob Wrigley, the zoo's curator, adding they are grateful for the donation. "It's remarkable that the people in the pet business obviously love animals so much that they thought of the zoo animals at Christmas."

The zoo is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day through the holidays and Wrigley invited people to come watch the animals play with their new toys.

"The monkeys carry their toys around but will probably end up pulling them apart after a while," he said. "It will be fun while it lasts, though."

The zoo has received toy donations at Christmas in the past, including some presents that were actually wrapped, which the monkeys had great fun with. "They just went crazy tearing up the paper," Wrigley said. "It was just like watching little kids rip open presents."

The toys were dropped off on Dec. 21 and will be distributed to the animals over the next few days.