Frustrated and exhausted travellers at Heathrow have been complaining recently of being treated like animals, caged in the terminal with little to drink and taunted by snarling ground staff.

Little wonder then that Frankfurt airport, the main European competitor to Heathrow, has decided to make a point by treating its animals in transit even better than its pampered business-class humans.

The animal lounge in the airport is equipped with all mod cons - subtle lighting to simulate night and day, sound-proofing, organic food and hostesses who stroke on demand.

“We want them to shed the stress of air travel,” Marco Klapper, a senior keeper, said. “Today our passengers include a batch of 20 polo ponies, some cormorants, quite a lot of geckos and the usual dogs and cats. They're all getting along fine.”

The animals are fed and watered - monkeys are given nuts just like business-class humans - and the dogs are walked. About 60 keepers are employed by the lounge, enough to sweet-talk nervous animals according to instructions proferred by owners.

The lounge, which covers 3,700sqmetres, has been in operation since the weekend and so far there has not been a single complaint. It is all a long, long way from Terminal 5.

“We do our utmost to make sure nobody gets lost. The basic rule is that neither coffins nor living animals should ever be mislaid,” Nils Haupt, the spokesman for Lufthansa Cargo, which operates the lounge, said.

The creation of the lounge is a response to the volume of animals being transported across the globe: 14,000 dogs and cats pass through Frankfurt alone, as do 1,500 horses and about 3,000 tonnes of ornamental fish. Polo ponies are frequent travellers, typically arriving from Buenos Aires, stopping over in Frankfurt, then flying on to a tournament in Dubai. The animal lounge has to ensure that they do not arrive at their match with jet lag.

The lounge has export, import and transit sections, which is crucial for health reasons, but within the three areas there is no distinction between species. They are kept in separate stalls, with individual temperature controls and lighting. Cats will be kept at a safe distance from the birds, dogs from the cats, bears from the fish - temptation is to be avoided. Air rage may be a depressingly frequent phenomenen among celebrity humans, but one would not want to encourage it in a lounge full of sore-headed pumas.

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