International
Zoo News Vol. 50/4 (No. 325) June
2003
CONTENTS
FEATURE ARTICLES
Early Experience of Sexual Paul A. Rees
Behaviour in Asian Elephants
Towards an Archaeology of Zoos Cornelius Holtorf and David Van
Reybrouck
Some Notes on Restraint Box Farshid Mehrdadfar, Joe Shuler and Ken McCaffree
The Zoos of the Isle of Wight John Tuson
* * *
Almost everyone must be familiar with the proposition
that, given enough time, a monkey randomly typing would produce the complete
works of Shakespeare. (In an internet search, I found over 5,000 websites
containing the words `monkey', `typewriter' and `Shakespeare'!) The idea –
which goes back at least to the biologist Julian Huxley (1887–1975) and
possibly even to his grandfather T.H. Huxley (1825–1895) – was originally used
to support the case for the evolution of life on earth, by indicating that any
structure, however complex, can be built up by a sufficiently long series of
random changes.
Paignton Zoo was recently the scene for what press
reports rather misleadingly described as an `experiment to test' this theory.
Lecturers and students from Plymouth University installed a computer in the
enclosure of the zoo's six Sulawesi macaques. Predictably, the monkeys did not
systematically apply themselves to typing; they sat on the computer, chewed it,
bashed it with stones, excreted on it, and after a month had produced only five
pages of text mostly consisting of the letter S, with smaller numbers of A, J,
L and M.
From the viewpoint of serious science, the
`experiment' was obviously irrelevant; indeed, I'm not sure what, if anything,
the university team were hoping to prove. One report described the project as
`performance art', and indeed it received some funding from Britain's Arts
Council. No doubt visitors to the zoo derived some entertainment from the
exercise; but the reports I have seen do not mention whether the zoo used it to
drive home any serious message. If not, an educational opportunity was missed.
A four-week trial is, of course, totally irrelevant in
the context of what is best described as a `thought experiment' in mathematical
probability theory. But the original proposition can be used as the jumping-off
point for a lesson on evolution. It was so used by Richard Dawkins in Chapter 3
of his book The Blind Watchmaker (Longman, 1986). Dawkins starts by
taking, not Shakespeare's complete works, but a six-word, 28-character phrase
from Hamlet, and calculates the probability of producing that phrase by
a series of random hits on a keyboard (limited, for simplicity's sake, to just
26 letters and a space bar). The required phrase is just one out of 2728
possible 28-character phrases; so there is a one in 2728 (or
approximately 1:1040) chance of the monkey getting it right first
time. My own calculation, assuming that the monkey works continuously and takes
just 15 seconds to type 28 characters, suggests that he could take up to 533
years to produce that six-word phrase, let alone the Bard's complete works.
Calculations of this kind have been seized on by creationists, who ridicule
scientists' belief that a similar process has given rise to all the earth's
biodiversity in a mere 4 ´ 109
years or so. But of course the process isn't really similar at all. As Dawkins
points out, the crucial difference is that whereas for the typing monkey every
successive keystroke is as random as the preceding ones, evolutionary change is
cumulative – each step builds on all the steps that have gone before.
This vastly reduces the time needed to construct a complex pattern. With
creationism still alarmingly prevalent even in educated Western societies, it
would be a pity for zoos to miss any opportunity of publicizing the scientific
view of how life developed on earth.
Nicholas Gould
* * *
EARLY EXPERIENCE OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR IN ASIAN
ELEPHANTS
BY PAUL A. REES
Introduction
Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are facing
global extinction in zoos (Rees, 2003) and it is therefore imperative that
calves born into the population are sexually competent. In their recent review
of zoo elephant welfare Clubb and Mason (2002) point out that some bulls never
develop normal sexual behaviour. Nevertheless, they recommend that females
calves should be kept with their mothers for all of their lives and that bulls
should not leave their mothers until the natural age of dispersal in the wild,
between the ages of 10 and 15 years. There is some evidence that sexual
behaviour develops early in Asian elephants and it may, therefore, be important
to expose potential mates to each other (or to other individuals of the
opposite sex) at an early age. Calves kept with their mothers for an extended
period will be deprived of early interactions with calves of the opposite sex
if none are present within the natal group. As Clubb and Mason suggest, it may
be important to keep calves with their mothers for an extended period for
welfare reasons. But it may be more important to keep them in social groups
that contain reproductively active adults and unrelated calves of both sexes.
Methods
The observations presented here were made during a
detailed study of the behaviour of a herd of Asian elephants held by the North
of England Zoological Society at Chester Zoo. Some of the results of this study
have already been reported (Rees, 2000, 2001a, 2002, in review).
The history and composition of this herd has been
described elsewhere (Rees, 2001b). At the time these observations were made it
consisted of five adult cows (Thi, Sheba, Maya, Kumara and Jangoli), an adult
bull (Chang), a juvenile bull (Upali) and a cow calf (Sithami). During the
study two bull calves were born (Po-Chin and Assam).
Observations of the herd in their outdoor enclosure
were made on over 100 days from January 1999 to the end of June 2001. Ad
libitum direct observations of sexual behaviour were made during the day
between approximately 10.00 and 16.00 hours when the elephants were in their
outdoor enclosure. Additional observations were made of newborn calves inside
the elephant house, including observations of Po-Chin on 11 days during the
first month after birth.
Observations
Early manifestation of sexual behaviour or an interest
in such behaviour in others may take a number of forms within a herd
environment:
– Young bull
calves exhibiting interest in the urine and faeces of adult cows;
– Penile
erections in bull calves;
– Calves
exhibiting courtship behaviour, culminating in mounting;
– Presence of
calves during adult courtship, mating and during the `mating pandemonium'.
Testing urine and faeces
Chemical signals from the adult cow are important in
the sexual behaviour of Asian elephants (Rasmussen and Schulte, 1998). Adult
bulls test samples of urine and faeces using the Jacobson's organ, a
specialised gland located in the roof of the mouth.
Bull calves show interest in elephant dung and urine
from a very early age (Table 1). Po-Chin was observed lying prone on the floor
of the elephant house sniffing the urine of an adult cow at the age of just 40
hours (photo, below). He was observed eating dung at the age of 13 days, but
may have done so earlier. When better able to co-ordinate trunk and foot, a young
bull calf will break open and test the dung of cows in a similar fashion to an
adult bull (photo, p. 202, top).
Penile erection
Upali was observed mounting with an erect penis for
the first time when aged 4.5 years. However, bulls are able to achieve penile
erections at a very early age. Assam was observed with an erection when just
four days old, while suckling from Thi. This was clearly not a sexual response
and may have been the result of frustration at being unable to locate the
nipple immediately.
Juvenile mating
The first juvenile mounting behaviour observed during
this study occurred when Sithami was 12.5 months old and Upali was 4 years 2
months old. However, keepers had observed this behaviour before the beginning
of the study (M. Jones, pers. comm.).
The herd was observed for 232 hours on 45 days over a
period of approximately 10 months from mid-January to early November 1999, when
Upali was between 4.2 and 5.0 years old and Sithami was between 1.1 and 1.8
years old. During this period Upali mounted or attempted to mount Sithami on
102 occasions, and an adult cow twice. Sexual behaviour of the adults clearly
stimulated sexual behaviour in the calves and on occasions Upali mounted
Sithami within seconds of Chang mounting an adult cow. Table 2 illustrates
sexual activity observed on 17 May 1999 when Chang mounted Sheba three times
and Upali mounted Sithami 10 times. Detailed results of a study of the effects
of adult sexual behaviour on juvenile sexual behaviour will be reported
elsewhere (Rees, in review).
Presence during adult mating
Young calves raised with breeding adults may be
exposed to adult sexual behaviour when they are very young simply because they
remain close to their mothers and allomothers (`aunties'). If an adult bull is
given access to a mother when her calf is very young, this may expose the calf
to adult sexual behaviour at a very early age. Po-Chin was first exposed to
adult sexual behaviour at the age of 15 days. Chang kicked Po-Chin out of his
way as he courted Sheba (the primary allomother), but the calf was,
nevertheless, very close to her hind legs when Chang eventually mounted her.
Mating in elephants is often (but not always)
accompanied by a `mating pandemonium' in which many members of the herd
participate. Such ceremonies have been described from the wild (Moss, 1988) and
consist of the herd gathering around the mating couple in a state of enhanced
excitement which involves vocalisations, urination and defecation. Often the
calves followed the courting adults so closely that they had to be pushed out
of the way by the adult bull. During attempted or actual intromission Sithami
was observed sniffing and touching the genital areas of the adults involved.
Table 1. Early sexual experience of a bull Asian
elephant (Po-Chin).
Age (days) Behaviour
0 Born within cow herd
1 Observed
testing adult cow urine aged 40 hours
13 Observed
eating faeces of another elephant
15 Introduced
to Chang (father)
Very
near adults during courtship and mating
Present
as juveniles play-mount
17 Near
adults during courtship and mating
Present
as juveniles play-mount
Observed
eating mother's faeces
Table 2. Juvenile sexual activity stimulated by adult
sexual activity (17 May 1999).
Time of adult sexual activity Time of juvenile sexual behaviour
(Chang mounts Sheba) (Upali
mounts Sithami)*
09.42
10.52 10.52
10.58
11.01
11.04
11.25
11.37
11.38
11.46
11.48
11.59
13.31
* Upali aged 4.5 years, Sithami aged 1 year 5 months.
Discussion
The observations presented here demonstrate that young
calves may be exposed to adult sexual behaviour from an early age if kept in a
social group containing sexually active adults. The basic elements of sexual
behaviour appear to be present in bulls from a very early age, and calves
appear to mimic the behaviour of copulating adults when both sexes are kept
together. Calves show an interest in courtship and mating in adults when they
are just a few days old and may be present during a mating pandemonium when the
opportunity arises.
Early social isolation has been shown to have
deleterious effects upon courtship and copulatory behaviour in mammalian
species as diverse as chimpanzees (Rogers and Davenport, 1969) and rats
(Gruedel and Arnold, 1969). The sexual behaviour of male mammals is
particularly sensitive to variations in early social experience (Estep and
Dewsbury, 1996). In some species, males show an enhancement of sexual
performance if they watch other males mount females prior to their own mating.
It is impossible to say from the observations
presented here whether or not early sexual experience is important to the
proper development of sexual behaviour in Asian elephants. However, it is clear
that young calves respond in a variety of positive ways when exposed to adult
sexual behaviour and to other calves of the opposite sex. Calves kept only with
adult females or in single-sex groups are deprived of these experiences, and it
is possible that such deprivation could have an adverse effect on their social
and sexual development, as it does in other mammals. Chester Zoo is one of a
very few zoos in the world where calves of both sexes are kept with breeding
adults.
Acknowledgements
These observations could not have been made without
the co-operation of the staff of Chester Zoo. In particular, Mick Jones (Head
of the Elephant Section) kindly gave me access to the Elephant House during
periods when the elephants were off-show.
References
Clubb, R., and
Mason, G. (2002): A Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants in Europe: a
Report Commissioned by the RSPCA. Animal Behaviour Research Group,
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.
Estep, D.Q.,
and Dewsbury, D.A. (1996): Mammalian reproductive behaviour. In Wild Mammals
in Captivity: Principles and Techniques (eds. D. G. Kleiman, M.E. Allen,
K.V. Thompson and S. Lumpkin), pp. 379–389. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.
Gruendel, A.D.,
and Arnold, W.J. (1969): Effects of early isolation on reproductive behaviour
of male rats. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 67:
123–128.
Moss, C.J.
(1988): Elephant Memories. Elm Tree Books, London.
Rasmussen,
L.E.L., and Schulte, B.A. (1998): Chemical signals in the reproduction of Asian
(Elephas maximus) and African (Loxodonta africana) elephants. Animal
Reproduction Science 53 (No. 1–4): 19–34.
Rees, P.A.
(2000): The introduction of a captive herd of Asian elephants (Elephas
maximus) to a novel area. Ratel 27 (4): 120–126.
Rees, P.A.
(2001a): Captive breeding of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus): the
importance of producing socially competent animals. In Trends in Wildlife
Biodiversity, Conservation and Management (eds. B.B. Hosetti and M.
Venkateshwarlu), Vol. 1, pp. 76–91. Daya Publishing House, Delhi.
Rees, P.A.
(2001b): The history of the National Elephant Centre, Chester Zoo. International
Zoo News 48 (3): 170–183.
Rees, P.A.
(2002): Asian elephants dust bathe in response to an increase in environmental
temperature. Journal of Thermal Biology 27: 353–358.
Rees, P.A.
(2003): Asian elephants in zoos face global extinction: should zoos accept the
inevitable? Oryx 37 (1): 20–22.
Rees, P.A. (in
review): Some preliminary evidence of the social facilitation of mounting
behaviour in a juvenile bull Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Journal
of Applied Animal Welfare Science.
Rogers, C.M.,
and Davenport, R.K. (1969): The effects of restricted rearing on sexual
behaviour of chimpanzees. Developmental Psychology 1: 200–204.
Dr Paul A. Rees, School of Environment and Life
Sciences, University of Salford, Salford M6 6PU, U.K. (E-mail: p.a.rees@salford.ac.uk)
* * *
TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF ZOOS
BY CORNELIUS HOLTORF AND DAVID VAN REYBROUCK
Since Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin's classic study Zoo
Culture (1987), research within the humanities and social sciences has been
increasing steadily about both the history of keeping exotic animals and
various socio-cultural aspects of zoos as phenomena of the modern world. The
latest books are Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier's comprehensive
volume Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West (English
translation 2002), Jeff Hyson's Urban Jungles: Zoos and American Society
(2002), Elizabeth Hanson's Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American
Zoos (2002) and Nigel Rothfels's Savages and Beasts: the Birth of the Modern
Zoo (2002). The now emerging field of `zoo studies' lies at the interface
of various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences including history,
sociology, human geography and cultural studies. Now archaeologists too are
making their contribution (Holtorf, 2000; O'Regan, 2002). Since 2001, the
British Academy has been supporting an international network project of eight
young archaeologists, historians and a philosopher who are working on zoos from
an archaeological perspective. The project involves a series of four workshops
and associated joint zoo visits, the organisation of three sessions at
international conferences, and a collective publication at the end.
As archaeologists we are, however, not particularly
interested in the beginnings and history of early zoos which we could try to
excavate (cf. O'Regan, 2002). Nor do we particularly care about locating and
preserving any archaeological sites on zoo grounds against the interests of the
zoo concerned. Instead we want to make an innovative and challenging
contribution to contemporary zoo studies by building on the rich tradition of
methods, approaches and themes that have been developed within the flourishing
discourse of contemporary archaeology. As archaeological work is mostly cross-disciplinary,
our project is too – in addition to archaeological expertise, project members
have backgrounds in history, anthropology and philosophy (see Margodt, 2000;
Åkerberg, 1999; Åkerberg, 2001).
There are a number of distinctively (though not
exclusively) archaeological approaches, methods and themes which we want
to make fruitful for studying zoos.
The archaeological approach
We are investigating zoos as material places inhabited
by both animals and humans. Zoos can be seen as complex built environments
containing architecture, constructed landscapes, and various kinds of
artifacts. These elements of zoos can be studied empirically. A comparative
study of either all the material culture in a single zoo or various kinds of
material culture (e.g. cages, zoomorphic toys, signposts) in different zoos
will reveal larger patterns. But individual features, too, can become
indications and clues for what zoos are, or were, about. Such an archaeological
perspective is not inferior to that of a historian or sociologist who will use
different kinds of sources. Instead, the focus on the material culture of
the zoo allows a complementary perspective that makes our overall knowledge
about modern zoos considerably richer.
A similar debate about the relevance of archaeology to
the study of recent periods, such as the twentieth century, has been conducted
among archaeologists and others over the last decade or so. There is now little
doubt that archaeologists can make a valid contribution to our understanding
even of recent times, within living memory (see e.g. Buchli and Lucas, 2001).
Some people might say that the archaeological perspective is particularly
important compared to what emerges from archives or interviews, because it is
concerned with people's actual behaviour and not with what they or others say
and write about it. Since archaeologists are used to focusing on the spheres of
ordinary and mundane everyday human behaviour, their insights about zoos may in
some respects be more relevant than those of other approaches that might give a
lot of weight to the perspective of zoo managers and their institutions.
As a form of non-verbal communication, material
culture is sometimes hard to read, but it is far from being mute. Reading this
rarely-considered empirical category therefore requires an appropriate
methodology.
Archaeological methods
The archaeological approach usually involves a set of
particular methods. As our main sources are physical rather than textual,
fieldwork in `the material world' is definitely the most evident one.
Archaeologists take field visits very seriously, and this implies more than
excavations. Through all sorts of surveys, archaeologists are used to
inspecting, studying and discussing sites, landscapes and artefacts during
prolonged stays in the field, taking detailed notes about both material
features and their tentative interpretations. Other important methods include
well-established ways in which material culture is documented, analysed and
interpreted. Plans or sketch maps and photographs are elementary aspects of
surveying. Artefacts are carefully described, depicted and compared. The
interpretation of material culture can now draw on several decades of
archaeological theory taking on board many intellectual advances, from hermeneutics
to post-structuralism (Tilley, 1990).
Archaeologists are also used to applying different
scales of time and place to the same object of study. The same artefact or
feature can represent or evoke different points in both short-term and
long-term time-scales. For example, a given enclosure may be newly built but at
the same time represent an old enclosure design; a display about the human
inhabitants of the rainforest may evoke no longer acceptable notions of
idealised primitives, but simultaneously try to save the local communities'
resources from destruction in the future. Sites and displays can thus point
simultaneously to the past and to the future. Similarly, archaeologists look at
single artefacts both individually in their own specific place and as part of
much larger sites or structures. For example, a plaque on a bench may
commemorate a particular person who enjoyed visiting the zoo, but it is also a
detail in a large garden landscape which people are to enjoy by walking,
talking, and resting – and which is partly maintained by donations.
Archaeological themes
There are a number of particularly important themes
which archaeologists have discussed in some detail and with some
sophistication, and which re-occur in zoos. Space allows only the discussion of
some of them here (see Holtorf, 2000, for some more). One such theme is the
interpretation of landscapes and the built environment, including architecture.
Archaeologists have for many years been talking about how human beings inhabit
their surrounding environments in terms that avoid any simplistic
nature–culture dichotomy. A historical perspective shows how both our
landscapes and townscapes have been created by differently privileged human
beings and have been changing continuously. Human environments are inhabited by
giving them specific meanings and by making them parts not only of everyday
routines but also of special rituals and ceremonies. The zoo is not only a
created garden landscape representing the power of the person or institution owning
it. The zoological garden also carefully structures the ways in which paying
visitors can normally experience and use it. Visitors are expected to move
through a seemingly self-contained and secluded environment on pre-selected
paths leading to marked viewpoints described in guidebooks, stopping at
designated places for activities such as reading information boards, witnessing
staged feeding performances, using the playground, or eating in the restaurant.
A second familiar archaeological theme is that of
human origins and evolution. Few zoos omit a display about human evolution, and
they often point to the fact that gorillas and chimpanzees are our closest
relatives among the animals, both genetically and behaviourally. Primates, like
early human ancestors, are strange and familiar at the same time. They tend to
be interpreted as persons and in almost human terms, but they are at same time
also very different from us today. Just like zoo visitors in front of the
primate enclosures, archaeologists have been struggling with defining precisely
what it means to be human and where the human–animal boundary can be drawn in
time and space. In zoos, however, there is also an immediate physical answer to
this question: the limits of the cage (see discussion below). Maybe the
particular appeal of studying both human ancestors and primates lies precisely
in this oscillation between like-us and not-like-us.
A third theme which archaeologists have engaged with
in some detail is that of preservation. The `Green' ethics of preservation and
conservation are as much part of the daily practice and self-proclaimed
intention of modern archaeology as of that of contemporary zoos. Today, wild
animals, just like antique vases or prehistoric hand-axes, are exposed to
similar discourses and practices in terms of illicit trade, conservation
efforts and museological contextualization. Siberian tigers are talked about in
the same way as Etruscan grave goods: they should not be stolen or traded, but
carefully documented, preserved, and presented to the public. Why is it that we
talk about such incredibly different worlds with one and the same set of words
and metaphors? What does this similarity reveal about early 21st-century
attitudes towards authenticity and commodification? Moreover, archaeologists
are used to considering the impact of present behaviour on long-term survival
of a site or artefact, and we tend to take great care in protecting and
conserving artefacts or sites at risk. This goes together with continuous
debates about norms and values that govern inevitable prioritisation in
preserving, conserving, and archiving. The often-stated aim is to protect the
cultural heritage for future generations in both museums and in the landscape.
This has equally been said concerning the protection of the natural heritage in
zoos (which are museums for animals) and natural habitats. Increasingly, zoos
have also become concerned with their own heritage, as more and more zoo
enclosures and buildings, for example in London and Antwerp, or even entire
zoos like Hagenbeck's Tierpark in Hamburg and Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna,
have become scheduled historic monuments.
These are some of the most important ways in which we
as archaeologists believe that we can make a contribution to contemporary Zoo
Studies. To see how an archaeological perspective can enrich our understanding
of contemporary and historical zoos, it may well be worth while to focus
briefly on the topic of cage design.
An archaeology of the human–animal boundary
In recent years historians of ideas have given
considerable attention to the changing relationships between humans and
animals. It is a fascinating field of study, but by focusing on philosophers,
scientists and writers the impression was given that the theme was a strictly
cognitive phenomenon. Nothing could be less true, though. At its root, the
human–animal relationship has a very tangible, practical and material dimension
and affects all segments of society. Indeed, if there is one place where
cognitive schemes about humans and animals are reproduced, consumed and
negotiated by the wider public, it must be the zoo.
Zoos are central to the Western experience of animals.
And the fact that they mostly attract children takes nothing away from that,
because it is precisely during childhood that fundamental notions about culture
and nature, humans and animals are being formed – in particular through the
physical organization of the material world. If there is one locus where the
human–animal boundary has literally been materialized, it is the cage. Fences,
bars, glass windows, wet moats and electric wire are more than mundane
construction materials – to study these is to study the architecture of the
human–animal boundary. And to study these from a historical perspective promises
formidable insights into the development of human–animal relationships.
Strictly speaking, public zoos are a 19th-century
invention. But before that date, royal and imperial menageries existed
throughout Europe and beyond. Consisting of at least an aviary – in particular
filled with pheasants – they also often sheltered more exotic animals obtained
by gifts from foreign rulers: ostriches, lions, monkeys. In general, the
architecture was fairly simple: cages were rudimentarily designed to prevent
animals from escaping or attacking, the forms were simple, and often copied
from existing architecture. In the 18th-century royal and imperial menageries
of Versailles and Schönbrunn, though, the zoo had an octagonal plan, permitting
a panoptic vision of the entire collection – and thus of the entire Creation.
There is a remarkable degree of parallelism between this type of zoo design and
contemporary taxonomy. Indeed, by carefully subsuming species into different
physical entities, cage architecture clearly reflected taxonomic
classification; it was an implicit copy of the divine order behind it. While
Linnaeus subsumed humans in the category of the primates, along with his
contemporaries he still saw a structural difference with animals. Humans still
stood at the top of the great scale of being. Essentialism remained, boundaries
could not be blurred, cages were categories.
After the French Revolution, the royal menagerie of
the Jardin des Plantes in Paris became the first public zoo in the world. As a
consequence of this seminal episode, in the second half of the 19th century
zoos developed into extremely popular urban attractions. More than just animal
collections, they also housed museums, libraries, concert halls, bandstands and
gardens. In contrast to the menageries, the architecture evolved into highly
elaborate buildings that were more than functional units of confinement and
display. Instead, they were full of references to exotic, orientalist and
colonialist buildings. In the heart of European cities, Egyptian temples,
Moorish palaces and Byzantine cloisters were built to shelter animals. Glass
and steel, the materials of the industrial revolution, were used to evoke
far-off countries. This was a highly visible architecture which did not hide
its constructedness. Units were called the `giraffe pavilion', `monkey palace',
`reptile house' – the zoo symbolically domesticated wild animals by putting
them in recognizable, human-made buildings. The panoptic vision firmly remained
in place: when entering a pavilion, the visitor could at once see the entire
display. Animals were immediately visible in their cage. But despite this
visual proximity, the boundary between animals and visitors was extremely
demarcated: massive wrought-iron fences, heavy steel bars, impressive masonry –
the Victorian zoo did not allow confusion. Animals were visually near but
physically separate.
It is certainly no surprise that this enhanced
preoccupation with demarcating came at a time when the human–animal boundary
was heavily debated. The rise of Darwinism and the discovery of fossils like
the Neanderthal had undermined the age-old essentialism. New sciences like
parasitology and bacteriology showed that we were surrounded by invisible, but
potentially dangerous animal creatures. And entomologists studying social
insects had discovered the existence of complex, parallel societies nearby. The
late 19th century can be seen as a time of coming to terms with this new, and
sometimes threatening, proximity of animals. While cattle markets, abattoirs
and tanneries were expelled to the suburban fringes, exotic animals made their
entry into the heart of Western cities. But they could only do so through an
extremely well structured material regime. The design of cages was, therefore,
similar to two other architectural novelties of the Victorian age: the prison
and the psychiatric asylum.
Already in the early 20th century, protest rose
against this way of displaying animals. Carl Hagenbeck in particular
demonstrated that a `cage-less' zoo was possible and indeed enhanced the visual
experience of the visitors. In his Tierpark at Stellingen near Hamburg the
animals lived mostly in outdoor enclosures, separated both from the visitors
and from each other by hidden moats, so that they appeared like actors on an
impressive stage.
Later, architectural modernism came to influence zoo
design. As an architectural movement it had started in the 1920s and '30s but
remained extremely popular during the 1950s and '60s. According to the
modernist doctrine, architecture could influence society. Through the use of
spacious rooms, clear lines, even surfaces and lots of light, modernist
architects sought to enhance the quality of living in an industrial age. This
included the animals' living conditions in the zoo: from London Zoo's
well-known penguin pool (1934) and the entire design of Rotterdam Zoo (1938) to
much more recent enclosures like the gibbon cage at Stuttgart Zoo (1973) and
the penguin pool at Hannover Zoo. Despite differences in style and function
between these examples, they nonetheless show how wider enclosures were now
filled increasingly with social communities of animals instead of one or a few
representative individuals. The resulting architecture was highly visible and
explicit: it did not deny the fact that it was human-built. In one glance, you
saw penguins and concrete. But boundaries between animals and visitors were
strictly `functional': in the 19th-century design of Amsterdam Zoo the giraffe
cage had a fence five metres high, thus preventing the giraffe from bending its
neck down to the visitors; in Rotterdam Zoo, however, only two planks separated
giraffes from onlookers – one could literally touch the animal's head and legs.
Why did the need for demarcating the human–animal
boundary become less strong? Modernist zoo architecture went hand in hand with
the emergence of a new subdiscipline in biology: ethology, the study of animal
behaviour. Animals were no longer a threat, but became a modernist model for
understanding social behaviour in cramped spaces – cities and cages alike.
Following research by Tinbergen, Lorenz and, at a later stage, Jane Goodall,
the well-being of animals in zoos was now seen as being dependent on the
possibility of natural behaviour. This was the time when tractor tyres, steel
ladders and climbing ropes entered the cage. `Unnatural' as these objects may
now seem, they once formed part of a programme of behavioural enrichment and
social engineering. In Honolulu Zoo, gorillas were even `behaviourally
enriched' by a rope through the fence which invited visitors to play some
tug-of-war.
With Carl Hagenbeck's theatrical principles of
enclosures with hidden human–animal boundaries as one precursor, `hyperrealism'
has over the past two decades become the dominant paradigm in zoo architecture.
Almost all large Western zoos stick to that principle now. Hyperrealist zoo
displays share a number of characteristics: the enclosures are wider still, and
often have enormous dimensions, up to several hectares. They include not just
several specimens of one species, but several sympatric species together, such
as giraffes, ostriches and impalas. Cages have given way to enclosures in which
certain elements of natural habitats and landscapes are reconstructed or
simulated. Today we no longer speak of `pavilions' and `palaces' but of `the
chimpanzee island', `the African savannah', `Wild Asia', `Jungle World',
`Amazonia'. The panoptic vision, so omnipresent in zoo history, has made room
for the exploratory gaze: visitors have no longer any overview of the
enclosure, but follow a winding road which permits selective looks so that
animals have to be sought between branches. The quiet inspection by the
Victorian bourgeoisie has been replaced by the frantic restlessness of Western
adventurers-visitors. Wilderness is staged with all the props imaginable: not
just plants, but also sounds, smells, temperature, humidity. And most important
of all, the boundary between animals and visitors is visually minimalized.
Often it consists only of a puddle or a fibre-glass rock, while the electric
fencing is hidden from sight. This is implicit architecture, architecture which
hides its `constructedness'. Though the outside can sometimes be spectacular
(cf. Lisbon Oceanarium, or Cornwall's Eden Project), once inside, the visitor
is given the impression of walking in a pristine environment. The real boundary
is no longer between visitors and animals, but between outside and inside.
Hyperrealist zoo design clearly stems from the desire
to enhance the living conditions of caged animals, but it also meets the
public's demand for seeing animals in `natural' surroundings – that is,
untouched by Western economy or technology. Away with highly functional tractor
tyres: the only explicit human artefacts allowed in are evocative ethnographic
objects.
The 19th-century cage served to protect the bourgeois
from the beast; the late 20th-century cage also protects the animal from the
visitor. A fundamental shift has taken place. The Victorian visitor could ride
an elephant, throw coins at a crocodile and feed the llamas; but today we
cannot tap windows, show mirrors, scream, run or feed. The evident superiority
and freedom of humanity has been turned into a questioning of anthropocentrism.
While this is healthy, there is also some irony in the fact that the popular
appeal of hyperrealist architecture, made possible through Western industry and
technology, is based on scepticism about that very industry and technology.
Conclusion
This very brief overview of cage design from an archaeological
perspective shows how the material culture of every age is imbued with all
sorts of meanings and propositions. Ideas about taxonomy and animal behaviour
have shaped the dens and cages of Western zoos, but so have perceptions of
wilderness, animal welfare and visitor expectations. Zoo architecture tacitly
represents scientific, ideological and commercial premises. This is one field
where, in our opinion, an archaeological approach is particularly well suited
to making a significant contribution to zoo studies.
Note
Discussions within the project `The Archaeology of
Zoos' have informed the content of this paper. The project members are Tony
Axelsson, Department of Archaeology, University of Göteborg, Sweden; Dr Sarah
Cross, English Heritage, Portsmouth, U.K.; Dr Kathryn Denning, Department of
Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; Dr Cornelius
Holtorf, National Heritage Board, Stockholm, Sweden (co-leader); Koen Margodt,
Department of Philosophy, University of Gent, Belgium; Oscar Ortman, Bohusläns
Museum, Uddevalla, Sweden; Dr David Van Reybrouck, Department of History,
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (co-leader); Dr Sofia Åkerberg,
Department of Historical Studies, University of Umeå, Sweden. As the result of
our project we hope to publish a book in a few years' time. Our next joint
conference session entitled `The Archaeology of Zoos' will be held as part of
the 5th World Archaeological Congress in Washington, DC, 21–26 June 2003.
References
Åkerberg, S.
(1999): Nature simplified: the illusion of nature in zoos. In Nature
Improved? Interdisciplinary Essays on Humanity's Relationship with Nature
(eds. E. Mårald, C. Nordlund, L. Pitkä-Kangas and S. Åkerberg), pp. 39–50.
Umeå: Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet.
Åkerberg, S.
(2001): Knowledge and Pleasure at Regent's Park: The Gardens of the
Zoological Society of London during the Nineteenth Century. Department of
Historical Studies, Umeå Universitet.
Baratay, E.,
and Hardouin-Fugier, E. (2002): Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the
West. Reaktion, London.
Buchli, V., and
Lucas, G. (eds.) (2001): Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past.
Routledge, London and New York.
Hanson, E.
(2002): Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos.
Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.
Holtorf, C.
(2000): Sculptures in captivity and monkeys on megaliths: observations in zoo
archaeology. Public Archaeology 1: 195–210.
Hyson, J.
(2002): Urban Jungles: Zoos and American Society. UMI, Ann Arbor.
Margodt, K.
(2000): The Welfare Ark: Suggestions for a Renewed Policy in Zoos. VUB
Press, Brussels.
Mullan, B., and
Marvin, G. (1999): Zoo Culture: The Book about Watching People Watch Animals
(2nd ed.). University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.
O'Regan, H.
(2002): From bear pit to zoo. British Archaeology, December 2002, 13–19.
Rothfels, N.
(2002): Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. Johns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore.
Tilley, C.
(ed.) (1990): Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and
Post-Structuralism. Blackwell, Oxford.
Dr Cornelius Holtorf, Riksantikvarieämbetet,
Stockholm, Sweden; Dr David Van Reybrouck, Department of History, Catholic
University of Leuven, Belgium. (Corresponding author: Cornelius Holtorf, cornelius.holtorf@raa.se)
* * *
SOME NOTES ON RESTRAINT BOX DESIGN FOR OKAPI
BY FARSHID MEHRDADFAR, JOE SHULER AND KEN McCAFFREE
In writing this article, it is our intention to share
with our colleagues a glimpse of the husbandry practices that have successfully
allowed us to establish captive management guidelines for okapis at San Diego
Wild Animal Park (WAP). The information gathered and presented here will
continue to strengthen this database as our collection grows. It must also be
noted that this information has been, and will continue to be, a compilation of
data gathered and submitted by a number of keepers throughout the history of
our collection in this institution. The consistency of the husbandry practices
maintained by this team has made this article possible. The partnership and
close working relationship established and maintained between the Mammal
Department (San Diego WAP), Veterinary Services (San Diego WAP) and our sister
facility (San Diego Zoo) has allowed us unparalleled access to the resources
needed in order to succeed in planning and designing the device that has been
incorporated into our husbandry routine. This article's aim is to share details
of the design and use of this device; the steps taken to implement a new
training regime for our collection will be described in another article.
Introduction
The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) remains one of the
major zoological mysteries of Africa, so little is known about its behavior in
the wild. The species was only officially `discovered' in 1901 by Sir Harry Johnston,
the British explorer, whose interest had been aroused by the persistent rumors
of a horse-like animal, living in the forests of the Belgian Congo, that was
hunted by the pygmies. `Okapi' is the name that the pygmies gave to this
creature.
The species' present distribution is confined to the
rain forest of the northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) up to the Uganda
border and the Semliki River in the east. About 5,000 of the estimated 30,000
remaining wild okapi live in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Ituri Forest, a
remote region that was badly affected by armed conflict in 1997–98.
The okapi's characteristic giraffe-like features
include skin-covered horns and lobed canine teeth, together with a long,
extendible black tongue, which is used to gather food into the mouth. Only the
males are horned, although females sometimes have a variable pair of horn
sheaths. Unlike giraffes, okapis have glands on their feet, and they have also
been reported to mark bushes with urine. These factors, together with their
solitary existence, imply a social system based on male territoriality. The
okapi has been a protected species since 1933. However, hunting remains a real
problem. Subsistence hunting is unlikely to have endangered the status of the
species, but this is not the case with the bush-meat trade, which now threatens
all the larger forest mammals, including the okapi, in the more accessible
parts of its habitat.
Brief history of okapi at the San Diego Wild Animal
Park
The park received its first okapi (1.0 Mokolo) on 13
December 1978. Two days later we received a female named Kamino. Both animals
came to us from San Diego Zoo, and were paired up shortly after arrival. The
first calf was born at the park on 27 July 1980. As of December 2002, San Diego
WAP has had a total of 30 births.
Objective and design of the okapi restraint box
The zoo community has come a long way from simply
exhibiting animals for amusement. Further understanding of the term `training'
provides one more step toward better and more complete care and sound animal
keeping. Having a team project and a closer rapport with our animals has been
another decisive factor toward achieving our goals. Although training has
always been a part of an animal keeper's job (training the animals to shift to
and from an exhibit, moving them to different holding areas, etc.), the present
level of training has given us a more expanded and formal role as animal
keepers performing our daily routines.
Traditionally our okapi `standard operation procedures'
(SOP) have been generally based on the free contact concept. Although we have
been extremely successful with our husbandry practices, this method had
precluded us from utilizing a number of routine procedures that we thought
could be performed without the use of chemical agents. After reviewing the
number of such procedures performed on each animal (e.g. hoof trims, body
palpation, grooming, etc.), and understanding and adhering to our safety
policy, a project team was formed and given the task of exploring and compiling
all available ideas that have been in practice in different facilities. From
the beginning it was our goal not to exclude the concept of free contact, but
to come up with ways in which both free and protected contact could be utilized
(depending on the temperament of the animal and the procedure on hand) and
included in our SOP. The project team didn't have to travel far to discover
that the idea of the okapi restraint box (ORB) had been thought of and was well
into its design phase at San Diego Zoo.
Our colleagues at our sister facility were extremely
kind and accommodating by including us during different procedures involving
the ORB. After reviewing and on-site observation of the device in use, the
project team gained new members including our colleagues from the zoo as well
as our partners at the WAP Veterinary Services. The following objectives were
defined and presented to the curatorial staff for their review and comments:
– Safety of the
animals and the staff;
– Realistic
identification of the procedures that could be performed by utilizing the ORB;
– Further
enhancement of the device in use at San Diego Zoo (e.g. movable side
wall/hugger, quick release wall allowing fast access to a side yard, keeper
friendly access panels);
– Natural
history of the okapi;
– Presentation
of the current husbandry routine (SOP) of the area and the modified version of
the SOP after placement of the device in our housing facility;
– Labor
allocation for acclimating the animals to this device and the training goals
identified for our husbandry routine;
– Recruitment
and establishment of close partnership between the Mammal Department and
Construction and Maintenance Department for this project;
–
Placement/location for this device in our housing facility;
– Publication
and presentation of our efforts;
– The
importance of information gathered by utilizing this device for and toward
scientific research (partnership of art of husbandry and science of captive
animal management);
– Presentation
of the design concept to our partners in the Development Department with a view
to securing donation money for construction of the ORB.
Shortly after our presentation to the curatorial
staff, we not only received their full support but were also given access to
the resources necessary to accomplish our task.
Brief description of our husbandry routine
Our guests at the San Diego Wild Animal Park can view
our okapis in the `Heart of Africa' exhibit (opened to the public in 1997).
Animals are walked to their exhibits and holding pens daily and are housed
individually in their bedrooms every night. This routine has provided us with a
unique opportunity to build a close relationship with our collection.
Included in our okapi SOP is an in-depth list of
behaviors that are currently in process of being shaped and target behaviors
that are shaped and established by different trainers. Since the placement of
the ORB, a number of behaviors have been added to our list; these include but
are not limited to:
– Thorough
tactile examination of targeted animals;
– Routine blood
collection;
– Routine
temperature collection;
– Hoof care;
– Ultrasound
examination;
– Milk
collection;
–
Administration of medication.
In order to further share our efforts with our
colleagues, we are in process of developing video footage of this device and
its applications at our facility. (We will advertise the availability of this
video in Animal Keepers' Forum and International Zoo News when
completed.)
Acknowledgments
This team is indebted to the following individuals for
their close support and guidance: Dr Larry Killmar, Dr Alan Dixson, Randy
Rieches, Carmi Penny, Dr Don Janssen, Dr Jeff Zuba, Dr Jim Oosterhuis, Dr Jack
Allen, Dr Phil Ensley, Dr Nadine Lamberski, Dr Jim Dolan, Bob McClure, Linda
Smith, Curby Simerson, Terry Mulroney, Michael Ahlering, Frank Stoudek, Andy
Blue, Lance Aubery and Gary Priest. We are grateful for the generous donation
of Kathy Pickard and Dr Roger Tibbetts. We would like to express our sincere
thanks to our team members and all the excellent keeper staff at the Wild
Animal Park's Mammal Department, and specifically the HOA (Heart of Africa)
team. We would also like to thank and recognize the efforts of our team member,
Tony Franceschiello, for the photo documentation of our efforts.
Farshid Mehrdadfar, Joe Shuler and Ken McCaffree,
Zoological Society of San Diego, San Diego Wild Animal Park, 15500 San Pasqual
Valley Road, Escondido, California 92027, U.S.A.
* * *
BY JOHN TUSON
The Isle of Wight is located about ten miles, twenty
minutes and thirty years away from mainland England. It's a relaxed, rather
old-fashioned place, neatly summed by the British novelist Julian Barnes, who
wrote of `a combination of rolling chalk downland of considerable beauty and
bungaloid dystopia'. Each year its population of around 130,000 is boosted by a
huge number of tourists – and amongst the attractions that entertain them are a
number of animal collections. These include several relatively minor
establishments – a rare breeds farm park which also maintains some exotic
species (Asian otters, meerkats, crowned cranes), a falconry centre and a small
marine aquarium amongst them – but there are three significant zoos on the
island: the Isle of Wight Zoo in Sandown, Amazon World in Newchurch, and the
Flamingo Park Wildlife Encounter in Seaview.
The Isle of Wight Zoo is the longest established of
this trio, having been founded in 1955. Writing in 1957, Geoffrey Schomberg saw
fit to mention the zoo's `numerous collection of the smaller species of bird
and mammal' (British Zoos, p. 79). But by 1972, and the same author's Penguin
Guide to British Zoos, the verdict was rather dismissive, with the zoo's
owner's claim that he had the largest lion in the world being ridiculed: `What
is certain,' wrote Schomberg, `is that the enclosures are neither the largest
in Europe, nor in Britain.' By 1977, and Anthony Smith's seminal Animals on
View, the zoo had vanished from the radar: Smith wrote of several hundred
places but did not include the Isle of Wight Zoo. To casual observers it may
have looked as though the Isle of Wight Zoo was just another of the cornucopia
of collections which disappeared, largely unmourned, through the 1970s. In
fact, in 1976, the zoo had been acquired by a former RAF pilot, Jack Corney. In
the quarter of a century since, it has been redeveloped, revitalised and
reborn, to the extent that it is now a satisfactory small zoo with a clear
sense of purpose and much to commend it. If one criticism is to be made of the
zoo, it would be that, in common with many British zoos, it is occasionally
guilty of an excess of vulgarity and hyperbole. The zoo's promotional leaflet
is perhaps the best indicator of this: `Britain's most educational and
entertaining zoo!' it announces in near-hysterical tones, while a series of
vox-pops suggest that many visitors have found their visit to Sandown to be an
almost religious experience: `the ambition of a lifetime fulfilled' says a
Russian, while a more local guest concludes `mega, great, brill, ace as usual!'
One visitor, presumably not a regular zoo-goer, even describes the place as the
`best zoo we've ever been to – brilliant!'
The truth of the matter is rather more prosaic. The
Isle of Wight Zoo is a perfectly pleasant establishment, in which an attractive
collection of big cats and lemurs is maintained in what are thoroughly
reasonable enclosures. The cats – lions, jaguars, leopards and about 16 tigers
– are held in cages not unlike those at Howletts and Port Lympne – although the
Isle of Wight versions are considerably smaller. Perhaps rather more
interesting are two large lemur cages, in which four species are mixed
according – vaguely - to their geographical provenance. Ring-tailed and
black-and-white ruffed lemurs are, predictably, to be seen, but so too are
white-fronted brown and black lemurs (Eulemur fulvus albifrons and E.
m. macaco). The enclosures are large, open-topped and well furnished and
planted, and with some attractive graphics, this is a strong display. In addition
to the zoo's core species, there are also various other primates from the more
common end of the spectrum (grivet, brown capuchin and black spider monkeys),
coatis, leopard cats, some unremarkable birds, and a small and routine reptile
house that does contain several poisonous species. Some intelligent talks and
presentations are offered each day, and the conservation message is delivered
enthusiastically and consistently.
There is a sense at this zoo that quite a lot has been
squeezed into a small area – the zoo is largely set inside the walls of an old
sea fort, constructed to repel Napoleon – and it is certainly not the animal
wonderland which the publicity might lead one to expect. But, nonetheless, this
is a solid, fairly traditional place, doing what it does quite well.
Amazon World is a very different zoo. Different from
the Isle of Wight Zoo, that is, but also very different from pretty much any
zoo I have ever had the chance to visit. It is a truly extraordinary place,
with a large collection, containing a startling number of real zoo rarities,
presented in a way that goes from the wonderful to the really very ugly. Its
mammal collection includes the standbys of every small zoo – prairie dogs,
meerkats, mara, agouti – but it also includes some A-list animals which would
enliven many a more prestigious establishment: Hoffmann's sloth (which have
bred), pygmy opossum, prehensile-tailed and brush-tailed porcupine, tamandua
(two different subspecies), zorilla, hairy armadillo. The bird collection, too,
has its highlights, including at least six different members of the
Ramphastidae (toucan) family. Much of the collection is housed in a massive
greenhouse, and this part of the zoo, with large numbers of free-flying birds
(including some very friendly white-cheeked and violet turacos), and some
rampant plants, could be very good indeed. The mammal accommodation here,
though, is a little unimaginative – rectangular cages, not always large, not
always well-furnished. At the time of my visit a tamandua, for example, found
its very open cage almost surrounded by visitors, with just some scanty
branches to enhance its environment. This may well have been a temporary
exhibit, and we are all aware that every zoo has an occasional black-spot, but
this really wasn't good enough. Unimpressive, too, are a string of box-like
enclosures loosely themed as a desert area, in which species such as Egyptian
fruit bat, Nile monitor and fennec fox are to be seen in unimaginative
surroundings. Amazon World also has an outdoor area, and here the ugliness
really kicks in: wire mesh, mud and pathways combine in a mélange of awkward
planning. And while some species seem to do reasonably well – the peccaries and
the capybaras probably won't complain too loudly – there are further enclosures,
including some for a variety of the more commonly-seen lemur species, which
aren't really up to standard.
Amazon World does, in places, look something of a
mess. Huge numbers of signs and graphics litter the place, including a string
which offer quotations from such zoological luminaries as George Bush.
Museum-type displays purport to tell the story of agriculture, using some
fairly unconvincing plastic pineapples. Cages seem to have been crammed in
wherever there is room for them (and often where there isn't).
It is certainly to be applauded that Amazon World has
tried to be different, and I will seldom complain about a zoo which looks
beyond the obvious species for its collection. There is, too, an enthusiasm
about the place which is commendable. But perhaps this is a zoo which is trying
to do just too much. Maybe concentrating on doing half as much, but doing it
twice as well, would pay dividends.
Flamingo Park Wildlife Encounter (not Zoo,
note, or Bird Garden, but `Wildlife Encounter', whatever that might
mean) is an altogether more satisfying place. Tucked in behind the small
seaside town of Seaview, it's an unremarkable establishment in many ways, very
conservative in its displays and, perhaps, unambitious in its aims. But it is
good at what it does, and since its founding in 1971 it has offered a pleasant
hour or three for its visitors. The collection is dominated by large numbers of
wildfowl (many of which wander freely, and all of which can be fed by
visitors), and there are flamingos, too, of course – about 100 in total, of
three species: lesser, Chilean and Caribbean. A fairly large pool for
Humboldt's penguins has seen a fair amount of breeding, and there are other
birds at the showier end of the spectrum: parrots and macaws (several in a long
flight cage, a smaller version of the much lauded example at Paradise Park in
Cornwall), pelicans, owls (most notably the African marsh owl Asio capensis),
some demoiselle cranes, and various pheasants and laughing thrushes. There is
little to get the aviculturalist's pulse racing, nor will the mammalogist be
massively excited by the red squirrels, white wallabies and solitary Canadian
beaver which are to be seen here. However, those who appreciate a pleasantly
laid-out garden, filled with clean and tidy aviaries, enhanced with a busy
programme of talks and presentations, will enjoy Flamingo Park very much indeed
– no matter how absurd its appellation.
The Isle of Wight is a slightly sleepy place, not at
the cutting edge of things, certainly, but attractive enough to make tourism
one of its most important industries. Along with various dinosaur-themed places
(the island is a hot-spot for fossils) and some buildings of great historical
importance (amongst them Queen Victoria's holiday home, and the castle in which
King Charles I was imprisoned), it is good to see zoos so heavily represented.
And while none of these three zoos would on its own account justify a trip
across the water from the mainland, each is certainly worthy of a visit by
anyone who has already made that trip.
John Tuson, 44 Cowper Street, Hove, East Sussex BN3
5BN, U.K. (E-mail: johnnytuson@hotmail.com)
* * *
Dear Sir,
I thought IZN 50 (2) was a particularly good
issue; the balance and range of articles was excellent. However, I read with a
little scepticism and, I must admit, a certain amount of consternation John
Tuson's report on the new Omega Parque zoo in Portugal.
I wish the Birchenoughs every success with their
zoological venture, as I would anyone opening a collection of captive animals
to the public in this day and age. But despite his commendable efforts to
enthuse over Omega Parque, Mr Tuson was unable to convince me that this
zoological garden will be anything more that a compendium of clichés universal
amongst small-scale, low-budget politically-correct zoos Europe-wide.
The process of homogenisation that is sweeping across
British zoos in particular is summed up at Omega Parque. But the park’s
salvation is its location in a country where political correctness has not
inflicted serious damage on its admittedly small and less developed zoo
community. As John points out, Omega Parque contrasts quite starkly with its
neighbouring zoos, and to the Portuguese it will be a refreshing change. It will
be a popular facility amongst the population for that reason alone, though I
personally hope it does not set a precedent.
With the simple and self-professed aim of housing
stock surplus to EEPs, the facility will fulfil its role quite adequately. And
to that end it has my full support.
Kind regards,
Sam Whitbread,
38 Demesne Road,
Whalley Range,
Manchester M16 8HJ, U.K.
[John Tuson writes: I could not agree more
strongly with Sam – the homogenisation of zoo collections is, in many ways, an
undesirable trend. If he were to visit Omega Parque, therefore, he would be as
delighted as I was to see white-bellied spider monkeys, belted ruffed lemurs,
double-wattled cassowaries and broad-nosed gentle lemurs – none common in
captivity – alongside the more predictable waldrapps, red pandas and Sulawesi
macaques (delightful species all, of course, but rather more frequently
encountered in the European zoo world). More than that, though, he would see a
zoo that is different. The design of Omega Parque, and the principles
which lie behind it, mark this out as a zoo that stands apart form the common
herd. A simple detail – the refusal to use disposable crockery and packaging in
the café – is one that, perhaps, appeals to me most of all: here is that
rarity, a zoo that really is true to all the talk about conservation. Remember,
too, that its location, in southern Portugal, means that it is the only zoo of
any quality at all for many miles around – talk of homogenisation in such a
zoo-desert is irrelevant. Instead, the zoo world should applaud the fact that
an establishment of this quality has appeared, and wish that establishment
every success for the future.]
Dear Sir,
After reading Herman Reichenbach's excellent article
`Zoos down under [IZN 50 (2), 72–85], I remembered reading a few
sentences in Bernhard Grzimek's book Four-footed Australians (1967)
where he mentioned that a platypus was sent to London Zoo some time during
World War II. The ship carrying the platypus was sunk a day's sailing from
Liverpool.
I have been unable to find any more information about
this interesting occurrence. Does any reader know who sent this animal and when
it was sent?
Yours faithfully,
Raymond Owen,
19 Brain Close, Hatfield,
Herts. AL10 8BT, U.K.
* * *
WILD CATS OF THE WORLD by Mel and Fiona Sunquist.
University of Chicago Press, 2002. x + 452 pp., photos, maps, 32 pp. of colour
plates, hardback. ISBN 0–226–77999–8. £31.50 or $45.00.
TIGER MOON: TRACKING THE GREAT CATS IN NEPAL by Fiona
and Mel Sunquist. University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 2002. xii + 193 pp.,
photos, paperback. ISBN 0–226–77997–1. £11.50 or $16.00.
Mel and Fiona Sunquist are a husband-and-wife team who
have been studying cats since the early 1970s. Mel, an associate professor at
the University of Florida, Gainesville, began his zoological career tracking
snow leopards in Pakistan with George Schaller, and went on to two years
studying tigers in Nepal's Chitwan National Park; Fiona joined him in Nepal,
and subsequently spent 15 years as a `roving editor' for International
Wildlife Magazine. Their combined qualifications in academic and field
zoology, scientific journalism, and lifelong fascination with cats make Wild
Cats of the World an enthralling read for all ailurophiles. It seems
certain to be the standard reference work on the subject for many years to
come.
The past three decades – roughly, the period since the
publication of the last comprehensive study of the Felidae, C.A.W. Guggisberg's
1975 book of the same title as the present one – has seen an exponential growth
in our knowledge of this family. Much of this knowledge has been acquired
through the work of field researchers using a technique, radiotelemetry, which
Mel Sunquist pioneered in the Chitwan project (and which is entertainingly
described – with much else – in Tiger Moon, a reprint, updated with a
new and optimistic afterword, of a book originally published in 1988). Other
methods – camera trapping and DNA analysis of faeces and hair – are in their
infancy but offer prospects of far more detailed information in the future. So
far, not all species have benefited equally from modern field research, and it
is striking how little is still known about many felid species. The bay
cat (Catopuma badia) – admittedly an extreme example – was first
collected by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1855, but no live one was photographed
until 1998: it is elusive, rare, and almost certainly endangered (and its
status isn't improved by the fact that animal dealers in Borneo believe –
rightly or wrongly – that Western zoos would pay a high price for a living
specimen).
After an introductory chapter on `The Essence of
Cats', discussing in general terms the family's morphology, senses,
vocalisations, and land tenure and social systems, and an agreeably brief and
simple taxonomic summary, the bulk of Wild Cats of the World consists of
36 species accounts. These broadly follow a common format – introduction
(mainly historical), description, distribution, ecology and behaviour, status
in the wild, and (where applicable) status in captivity and conservation
efforts. Tables, distribution maps and extensive references accompany each
account, and there are superb colour photos of every species (most of them
presumably taken in zoos, though this is not stated). The book ends with brief
chapters on field research techniques, relocating cats, and `conserving felids
in the twenty-first century', and appendices on CITES and IUCN listings,
olfactory and vocal communication, and reproduction.
The main emphasis of Wild Cats of the World is
on ecology and behaviour. If you want authoritative accounts of the latest
knowledge on how cats live in the wild, this is the book for you. For
information on wild status and conservation efforts, as the authors point out
in their preface, Kristin Nowell and Peter Jackson's Wild Cats: Status
Survey and Conservation Action Plan (IUCN, 1996) is still the best
authority to turn to. It must be said, too, that some of the Sunquists'
sections on captive status give an unjustifiably pessimistic view of zoos'
contribution to felid conservation. On the dust-wrapper, the publishers claim
that the authors `have spent more than a decade gathering information'; in some
cases, it seems, information they gathered more than a decade ago has not
subsequently been updated. On fishing cats, for example, they quote a 1988
figure of 33 in North American and European zoos: the current ISIS list gives
128 in those two regions (and 181 worldwide). On sand cats, they present a
bleak picture – `A few have survived in captivity for several years' – but ISIS
today lists 88, and my subjective impression is that this species is now well
established in zoos and increasing steadily.
This is, however, a relatively minor blemish. It's a
pity that readers from outside the zoo community will be given a misleading
impression of the current captive status of some cat species; but no one is
going to turn to this book primarily for information about cats in zoos.
What Wild Cats of the World does have to offer is a compendium of the
current knowledge on the feeding ecology, social organisation, reproduction and
development of every felid species. And in one respect the book's title is too
restrictive – those who, like me, are hopelessly addicted to domestic
cats will be pleased to find 14 pages devoted to this never wholly tamed
subspecies of Felis silvestris!
Nicholas Gould
SKYSCRAPERS AND SEALIONS by C.H. Keeling. Clam
Publications, 2002. 137 pp., illus., paperback. ISBN 1–874795–23–1. Available
only direct from the author, C.H. Keeling, 13 Pound Place, Shalford, Guildford,
Surrey GU4 8HH, U.K. Cheques and international money orders to be payable to
C.H. Keeling. Price, post paid, £10 (U.K.) or £14 (overseas, sterling only,
please).
THE CENTRAL PARK ZOO by Joan Scheier. Arcadia
Publishing, Portsmouth (New Hampshire), 2002. 128 pp., illus., paperback. ISBN
0–7385–1100–5. US$19.99.
Last visiting New York 14 years ago, I flagged down a
taxi one afternoon to take me to the Central Park Zoo. `The zoo?' the driver asked
with a short laugh, `This whole f... city's a zoo!' Bill Conway may well have
engaged the same driver once, as it was only a couple of years later that the
New York Zoological Society banned the word `zoo' in favour of `wildlife
conservation park' or `wildlife center'. To use a New York expression, the
Central Park Zoo just didn't get no respect.
It still doesn't in historical quarters: look up
`America's first zoo' in Google, and you'll be guided to the website of the
Philadelphia Zoo. Look up `Philadelphia' in the Encyclopedia of the World's
Zoos and you'll find `America's first zoo'. Yet, as Clinton Keeling points
out in the first book-length study of the Central Park Zoo, by the time
Philadelphia inaugurated its zoo in 1874, New York's first permanent menagerie
had a collection that would embellish most American zoos today, and a director
with a doctorate. Much of the controversy seems to do with semantics: what
constitutes a `zoo' in the first place? With the inauguration of the large and
magnificent New York Zoological Park (a.k.a. Bronx Zoo) in 1899, the small,
two-hectare (5.5-acre) menagerie in the centre of Manhattan became largely
ignored by visitors from outside New York. It was never `inaugurated' in the
first place; it just grew from a collection beginning, apparently, with
a bear and some swans deposited near New York's arsenal on the edge of Central
Park in 1859. It wasn't until 1864 – still a decade before the opening of
Philadelphia Zoo – that it received charter confirmation from New York's
assembly. Philadelphia's claim to having America's first zoo stems from the
founding of the Zoological Society of Philadelphia in 1859: from then on
Philadelphia wanted to establish a zoo. It simply didn't get around to
it until 15 years later.
It's frankly amazing that such an old and venerable
institution as the Central Park Zoo – and for millions of New Yorkers over
decades it was venerable – needed over 140 years to attract the
attention of a book writer. Now within the same year two books have been
published on its history, one largely a photo album, the other a text of modest
pretensions written by an Englishman who boasts of never having been to New
York. Mr Keeling is perhaps the most prolific zoo historian around: he has over
two dozen books to his credit, all published by himself, on the history of
various British menageries, including one he once owned and ran himself, and
recently another of which he was once curator. As the founder of the Bartlett
Society, established in 1984, he called into being the only organization
devoted to the history of zoos. One looks in vain for bibliographical
references in his works, but he is always generous in acknowledging sources.
And he never hides an opinion. Skyscrapers and Sealions is largely based
on information fished from those annual reports of the Central Park Zoo that
happen to be available in the library of the Zoological Society of London, as
well as cuttings (or photocopies) of newspaper articles sent in by American
acquaintances. As Mr Keeling himself emphasizes in his introduction, his new
book is largely an account of the zoo's animal collection, not the story of the
menagerie.
The Central Park Zoo was not so much written
as compiled by Joan Scheier: one in the series `Images of America' published by
a New Hampshire-based imprint of a small South Carolina publisher, it consists
of perhaps 200 photographs with mostly brief captions. Ms Scheier herself is
introduced on the cover as a docent at the Central Park Zoo and a past school
librarian. Her book shows enthusiasm, and the pictures are well reproduced.
What's missing, unfortunately, are dates: when was this and that photo actually
taken? Beginning with the very first, obviously 19th-century, illustration in
the chapter titled `Menagerie', I at least would have liked to know in what year
the picture was originally published. All the more so as the illustration,
taken from Harper's Weekly, is captioned `Zoological Garden,
Central Park, N.Y.' [my italics], bringing us back to the question of how a collection
had to be described before becoming recognized as America's first zoo.
Mr Keeling and Ms Scheier both divide the history of
the Central Park Zoo into three phases: the `menagerie' (c. 1860–1934),
the `zoo' (1934–1984) and today's `wildlife centre'. The wild-animal collection
in New York's Central Park was largely demolished and completely modernized
twice in its history: during the Great Depression, rebuilt mostly with bars and
brown brick as a project of the Works Progress Administration giving employment
to masons, craftsmen and artists; and again 50 years later after the zoo was
taken over by the New York Zoological Society and remodelled by what Mr Keeling
calls detestingly `the conservationists'. The polar bear is now the largest
animal in a zoo that once housed them all – elephants, rhinoceroses,
hippopotamuses, giraffes – on two hectares! But at least it does have polar
bears, which Mr Keeling (but not only Mr Keeling) now misses in most British
zoos. He and Ms Scheier both, presumably, would agree that their two, new books
on the history of the Central Park Zoo are introductions at best: may they
encourage an historian, say a Ph.D. candidate, with time and access to the
relevant archives to write the history of what really is the oldest zoo in
the Americas. Thanks to a British zoo historian, that at least should no longer
be questioned.
Herman Reichenbach
* * *
Working to save China's golden monkeys
Although golden monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana)
are considered national treasures in China and have been prominent in Chinese
culture for hundreds of years, little is known scientifically about them. Few
studies have ever been done of them until recently, because they are hard to
find and even harder to follow as they leap from tree to tree in their
mountainous terrain in the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hubei, and Gansu.
range also famous for its high concentration of. As leaf-eaters living high in
the mountains in small, isolated pockets of habitat, they are particularly
vulnerable to extinction. Fortunately, the Chinese government has set aside
several nature reserves, which have created safe havens for the golden monkeys,
and this has opened the door for some ground-breaking behavior studies by
researchers from San Diego's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species
(CRES) and their colleagues in China.
Professor Baoguo Li of Northwest University in Xian is
a leading primatologist in China. Since 1989, he and his research team have
been studying golden monkeys in Qinling, Shaanxi, a mountain range also famous
for its high concentration of giant pandas. According to the latest survey, 39
groups of the monkeys are found in this area; Prof. Li's work has concentrated
on two of these, East Ridge Troop and West Ridge Troop. Between 1989 and 2001,
he and his students conducted ecological studies of the monkeys under poor
observation conditions, often from more than 50 meters away. Although the team
was able to document feeding and ranging behaviors, they were unable to study the
animals' social behavior because it was almost impossible to recognize
individual monkeys.
In 2001, Professor Li, with assistance from Dr Chia
Tan, a CRES Millennium Postdoctoral Fellow, devised a plan to habituate the
West Ridge Troop to humans and subsequently learn about the monkeys' social
organization and behavioral patterns. Through food provisioning, they hoped to
improve observation conditions. Their efforts were rewarded in November 2001,
when a juvenile discovered that the items scattered on the ground were
palatable. Within a day, other individuals also made this discovery, and within
two weeks the entire troop was acclimated.
Golden monkeys, in addition to having a specialized
diet (primarily of leaves from about 85 plant species, supplemented by lichen
in winter), are known to form unusually large social groups. The West Ridge
Troop contains about 90 individuals and is organized into eight family units,
each of which is led by an adult male. Family units also contain a number of
adult females and their offspring. In the spring of 2002, 15 infants were born,
and all of them have survived to date.
Golden monkeys are extremely vocal, especially during
feeding periods and aggressive encounters. Thus far, it appears that a
dominance hierarchy exists among the family units. Agonistic interactions
between adult males are common at the feeding site and usually seem to be
instigated by the respective harem females. Social bonds between members of the
family unit are frequently reinforced via physical contacts such as embracing.
During resting periods, family members usually huddle together in a tree. They
often engage in social grooming, which is another way to enhance family ties.
During 2003, Professor Li and Dr Tan will further
examine the social structure of golden monkeys. In particular, they will focus
on vocal communications between troop members and detail the relationships
between individuals within family units as well as among the discrete family
units. By taking part in such conservation studies, CRES will work to identify
the special problems these monkeys face in the wild, while also seeking
solutions that will help this elusive and legendary species survive.
Abridged from Dr Chia Tan in CRES Report
(Spring 2003)
Philippine owl conservation project
A significant event in the history of Philippine
wildlife conservation took place on 29 November 2002, with the arrival of the
first three pairs of Philippine eagle owls (Bubo philippensis) at the
Negros Forests and Ecological Foundation's Biodiversity Conservation Centre
(NFEFI-BCC) in Bacolod, Negros. The animals were obtained on breeding loan from
the Department of Natural Resources Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau
(DENR-PAWB) through the generous support and assistance of Joaquin Gaw, administrator
of Avilon Zoological Gardens in Montalban (Rizal Province, Luzon) and William
Oliver, international coordinator for the Philippine Owls Conservation
Programme and director of Fauna and Flora's Philippine Biodiversity
Conservation Programme. The event constitutes the first ever such breeding loan
between DENR-accredited institutions in the country, and serves as the
pioneering effort for the proposed development of the first properly-structured
conservation breeding programme for this increasingly threatened endemic
species.
The six individuals intended to comprise an initial
founder stock were selected from among a total of 16 (6.9.1) birds held at
Avilon, all but one of which had been previously sexed and leg-banded. These
birds had been maintained at the zoo for varying lengths of time, though most
were acquired as chicks, and hand-reared, over the preceding two to three
years. The identity and sex of all birds was double-checked via their leg bands
and, where necessary, additional rings were added to aid future identification
via use of right and left leg bands for males and females respectively. All
birds were also given a brief health check before being transported to Bacolod.
As all the owls had been kept together in a single
large aviary at Avilon for several months prior to the move, they were housed
together on arrival at the BCC, primarily to monitor their adjustment to the
new surroundings and to encourage the natural formation of pair-bonds.
Tentative bonds were observed a few days after arrival; however, these may have
been a result of what appeared to be a hierarchy among the individuals, with
the more dominant pair taking the highest perch and the least dominant the
lowest. As aggression was observed among the three formed pairs, they were
transferred to separate breeding/flight aviaries, the construction of which was
sponsored by the World Owl Trust and the Owl TAG (U.K.) and the German
Avicultural Society (Owls Chapter) through the Zoological Society for the
Conservation of Species and Populations (ZGAP, Germany). Currently, one pair
remain housed together, while the others had to be separated because the
females began displaying aggression towards the males after about a month, with
the males taking lower perches or staying on the ground. All four are now
alternately housed, by sex, in separate but adjacent enclosures in an attempt
to re-initiate pair-bonding.
Maria Pilar Diaz, curator, NFEFI-BCC (3 March 2003)
South China tigers to be trained for reintroduction
Selected zoo-bred South China tiger cubs are to be
sent to South Africa, where they will be trained to hunt effectively in a
special area of 300 km2 that has been secured by the London- and
U.S.-based conservation organization Save China's Tigers. To maximize the
chances of success, this rehabilitation project will be conducted in parallel
with the on-going Meihuashan Chinese Tiger Rehabilitation project in Fujian,
China. When the tigers have successfully regained hunting skills and are able
to survive independently in the wild, they will be returned to a pilot reserve
in China. Meanwhile, China will start the work of surveying land and restoring
habitat and prey animals in the reserve. It is hoped that the first
rehabilitated tigers will be reintroduced into the wild in China in 2008, to
coincide with the hosting of the Olympic Games by Beijing.
Writing in Cat News (the newsletter of the
IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group) No. 37, Peter Jackson recognises that it would
be desirable to see the South China tiger restored in its homeland, where it
has had great cultural significance. `But reintroduction is a complicated and
difficult operation,' he goes on, `particularly with large carnivores; failure
is all too likely. While there is no objection to a captive population in South
Africa, or elsewhere, cat and carnivore reintroduction specialists believe that
there would be a greater chance of success if tigers were trained and prepared
in their natural habitat rather than where tigers have never lived.'
St Vincent amazon update
For many years, the St Vincent Forestry Department has
maintained a back-up captive population of the St Vincent amazon parrot (Amazona
guildingii) at the Calvin Nicholls Wildlife Complex in Kingstown. In 2002 a
number of initiatives were taken by various local and international
organizations to improve facilities at the complex. The most significant events
included the introduction of new specialist diet products, which are now being
donated regularly by Canadian pet food company Rolf C. Hagen; major renovation
works to the aviary accommodation buildings [see IZN 49 (5), pp.
276–278]; and a veterinary workshop organized by the Wildlife Conservation
Society. I personally undertook several husbandry review consulting visits to
the complex, these trips being jointly funded by Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary,
Barbados, and the Loro Parque Foundation.
For many years some breeding success has regularly
been achieved at the Wildlife Complex, but 2003 looks likely to yield the best
results to date. In April 2003 two pairs each hatched two chicks, which are all
currently being successfully parent-reared. One of these pairs had bred before,
but the other pair had previously been unsuccessful; a breakthrough was made
when staff noticed that their clutch of eggs did not appear to be turned
properly by the parents. Staff therefore hand-turned the eggs in the nest box
several times a day, resulting in the successful hatching of two chicks.
There is a significant captive population of the St
Vincent amazon on its native island, with some 40 birds either at the Wildlife
Complex or being kept by local custodians, who are licensed and regularly
inspected by the forestry department. The increasing breeding success being
achieved in 2003 brings heightened interest and momentum to the department's
conservation programme. The young birds reared will increase future pairing
options and their presence is a great inspiration to the forestry staff working
on conservation programmes.
It is hoped that with the continuing use of the new
specialist dietary products and the improved living environment for the birds,
future breeding seasons will be as successful, or better, than the results now
being achieved in 2003.
Roger Sweeney
* * *
Developing a new global animal information system
Standardised data collection and animal records are
very important to the zoo and aquarium profession. Many software programmes for
zoo and aquarium animal data management have been developed and distributed by
the International Species Information System (ISIS). ISIS, founded in 1974, is
an international non-profit member-owned organisation that serves over 580
zoological institutional members in 72 countries world-wide. But it is a small
organisation that has not been able to keep pace with the technological
advances in information management, and does not have the resources to ensure
the accuracy of the records it receives.
A notable inadequacy of the current ISIS inventory
software (ARKS) is that it does not track the history of group animals in much
detail. Nor does it allow for storage and monitoring of data about
environmental conditions. In addition, veterinarians have been working for
several years to find a replacement for the DOS-based medical records system,
MedARKS, and studbook keepers for the population management package, SPARKS.
Hence, many zoos are currently struggling with outdated software and
inconsistent records that hinder the ability to efficiently and scientifically
manage the animals in our collections. This has left collections searching for
alternative or additional data management strategies, and several institutions
and some zoo and aquarium associations have developed their own software. For
example, the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums
(ARAZPA) developed REGASP, software for managing institutional and regional
collection planning data, which is now distributed to all ISIS member
institutions, and is used by several regional associations.
In recent years both the American Zoo and Aquarium
Association (AZA) and ISIS have been investigating the possibility of
developing a global animal management database that is web-enabled and contains
up-to-the-minute information that is both accurate and secure. Although the
database must be flexible enough to meet specific regional needs, there must
still be a central, `core' database that allows free and easy exchange of
information between all participants. Concurrently, the international
zoological community formed the Global Animal Data Group (GADG), an informal
group of representatives from zoos, aquariums, zoological associations and
conservation organisations from around the world to discuss the same topic.
More recently, an International Animal Data Information Systems Committee
(IADISC) was established to further the development of a global Zoological
Information Management System (ZIMS). IADISC consists of scientific and/or
technical experts in the care and management of zoological collections from
each of the regional zoo and aquarium associations. The committee recognises
the need to integrate currently widely-used animal data systems in order to
include the work that has been achieved until now; so it will work closely with
ISIS to achieve common goals in developing the next generation of animal
information systems. IADISC is not a replacement for ISIS. ISIS is exploring a
restructuring which will give it the capacity to provide expanded services to
the entire zoological community in the form of ZIMS as the fifth generation of
ISIS software. ISIS will continue to be the neutral administrative home for a
global animal database, and all data that is stored in ISIS's global pooled
database will be imported into ZIMS. Hence it is of the utmost importance that
– while ZIMS is developed – ISIS and its members keep on working on all that
can be reached with the current software.
The mission of the ZIMS Project is to develop, deploy
and maintain a comprehensive information system to support a wide range of
animal management and conservation activities associated with zoological
institutions and the zoological community. Long-term benefits will be realised
in the system that can then grow with our global needs and utilise new
technology. But building any new software system is a complex process. The ZIMS
Project is no exception, and is made additionally complex by the diversity of
our zoological systems and of our institutional stakeholders. The project is
anticipated to take several years for delivery of a software product. The first
modules will deal with initial inventory and veterinary data, and will
basically replace current ISIS ARKS and MedARKS software, but with significant
structural improvements. Other modules will be integrated as soon as funding
allows. By visiting the ZIMS website (www.zims.org) you can stay
continuously informed on the progress of the project.
Abridged from Duncan Bolton and Frands Carlsen in EAZA
News No. 41 (January–March 2003)
Can AI contribute to rhino conservation?
A group of scientists at the Berlin Institute for Zoo
and Wild Animal Research have developed a new tool made of flexible carbon
fibre which may help to save the northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum
cottoni) from extinction. Dr Thomas Hildebrandt – already well-known for
his work with elephants – and his colleague, Dr Robert Hermes, are waiting to
find out whether a southern white rhino they inseminated at Budapest Zoo has
become pregnant. Success will offer hope to the critically endangered northern
subspecies. There are about 30 northern whites in the wild, in Garamba National
Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and ten in captivity, though that
includes only one potentially fertile female. But southern females, of whom
there are hundreds in zoos and reserves, could be used as surrogate mothers for
test-tube embryos of northern whites.
One of the most difficult things about inseminating
rhinos is their internal physical characteristics, including a 1.5-metre
reproductive tract. `The male normally mates for about an hour, which is very
impressive, particularly when compared to the elephant, which lasts about 40
seconds,' says Dr Hildebrandt. Handling such animals is dangerous, so some zoos
have started training programmes to make things safer for the vets, while
removing the need to anaesthetise the animals for every examination –
ultrasound scans are necessary to pinpoint the fertile phase of the rhino. So
Hildebrandt and Hermes have been working with Disney's Animal Kingdom, Salzburg
Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park in training female rhinos to accept the
scanning techniques.
Crocodilians can swallow underwater
The palatal valve, in the back of a crocodilian's
mouth, is a unique adaptation that seals the throat off from both air and
water. With this valve shut a crocodilian can grasp food underwater and not
have the water flood past into the esophagus or glottis. Essentially the inside
of a crocodilian's mouth is outside its body. Crocodilians obviously prefer to
keep this palatal valve closed while submerged, and come to the surface to
swallow their prey. It is often assumed that crocodilians are unable to swallow
food underwater, because of the overwhelming flood of water that would flow
into their body. However, we have witnessed three species of crocodilian
swallowing their food underwater. The first is a female freshwater crocodile (Crocodylus
johnsoni) housed alone. On several occasions she has picked up pieces of
meat from the bottom of the pool and proceeded to eat them without surfacing.
The second observation is of a female saltwater crocodile
(C. porosus) housed with her mate. This female swallows both above the
water and below, seeming not to have any preference for one over the other.
The most convincing observation has been a female
false gavial (Tomistoma schlegelii). She is currently housed in a large
exhibit with another female and a male. This exhibit affords visitors a
complete underwater view of the entire pool through four glass panels. Soon
after moving the female to this exhibit, I witnessed her taking a piece of meat
to the bottom of the pool and holding it. After about five minutes, she very
deliberately partially opened her mouth, then opened her palatal valve, and
quickly moved her head forward and swallowed the meat. She remained in a
resting position on the bottom of the pool for another ten minutes. Since she
had recently come to us from Audubon Zoo, I called the reptile staff there and
asked if they had witnessed this behavior. They said that they had. Apparently
the male Tomistoma at this facility was in the habit of stealing her
food if she surfaced with it. I have witnessed her swallowing underwater on one
other occasion. I believe the behavior is being extinguished by our training
efforts, as our male does not have an opportunity to steal meat from the
females.
I reluctantly included this subject in my talk at the
2002 Crocodilian Specialist Group (CSG) working meeting. I was just sure that
the crocodilian experts from around the world were going to say that this was a
very well known fact. But the only reference I found is little more than
guesswork on the part of the observer. Many CSG members came to me after the
meeting and thanked me for mentioning this, as they too felt they had witnessed
this behavior. Only one person said that they had actual video footage of a
crocodilian swallowing underwater, but apparently it does happen with some
frequency.
John Brueggen (General Curator, St Augustine Alligator
Farm, Florida) in Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetological Society Vol.
38, No. 2 (2003), p. 31
Fevers in antelopes
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
South Africa, recently published information on fevers in free-ranging
antelopes following an intensive study of impala and springbok at the National
Zoo's Lichtenburg Game Breeding Centre. Veterinarians treating a sick animal
typically measure its body temperature only when they suspect that it is
already ill. So nobody knows how fevers in mammals begin, how they end, or how
high they get. Scientists from the university have recorded, for the first time
ever, the complete pattern of natural fevers in free-ranging wild mammals.
The scientists were studying reactions to heat stress
in antelope and recording the body temperatures of the animals used. The fevers
were only discovered after analysis of the data was completed. It was found
that fevers lasted for as long as ten days and the body temperatures of the
antelopes often exceeded 41°C. It is not
known what caused the fevers, but the animals did not appear ill and recovered
without medical treatment. According to Peter Kamerman of the university's
School of Physiology, these unexpected recordings of natural fevers will
provide important information for veterinarians and help them to interpret the
temperatures they measure when examining an animal.
Zoon (National Zoological Gardens of South Africa)
Edition 3, 2002
* * *
COPENHAGEN ZOO, DENMARK
Annual Report 2002 – extracts from the English
language summary
The animal collection
In connection with the work of establishing an EEP for
chimpanzees, we wanted to add a group of pure West African chimpanzees (P.
t. verus), to the present collection. We already had a single specimen of
this subspecies, the female Grinni, who came to the zoo in 1974 when she was
only two years old. The West African chimpanzee may be sufficiently different
from the other subspecies to be regarded as a full species. Today the size of
the chimpanzee population in the wild is estimated at from 150,000 to 250,000,
of which only 10,000–20,000 are West African. During the work with the European
chimpanzee population survey it soon became apparent that two research
laboratories in the Netherlands and Austria had a number of West African
chimpanzees. Quite a number of them were born in the laboratories, but their parents
were imported from Sierra Leone in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are
thus of great value to the European breeding programme, which is particularly
focused on West African chimpanzees. In early June five (2.3) of these animals
arrived at the zoo from the Dutch research laboratory. On their arrival the Ape
Jungle was closed to the public to allow them to settle down in peace and
quiet. After inspecting their new surroundings they started vocalising loudly,
and our old group was quick to respond; however, the agitation soon subsided
and the new group calmed down. The two groups were gradually introduced to each
other, and by the end of the year most of them had been integrated into one
group.
In December the two old hippopotamuses were euthanised
to make room for Californian sea lions, Malayan tapirs and Asian elephants. Our
male hippo arrived from Budapest in 1978 and the female from Hannover in 1981.
Ever since, the pair has bred at regular intervals. Today hippos breed so well
in captivity that it is a problem to dispose of the offspring; but it is wrong
to prevent them from breeding, as parental care constitutes a great part of the
hippos' behavioural repertoire. We realised that our hippopotamus exhibit was
no longer up to current standards; in particular, the indoor area was too
small. So the indoor pools will now be used as a breeding facility for sea
lions, as experience from the existing enclosure has shown that sea lion
females need to be isolated when they give birth. The Malayan tapirs are moving
into the remaining part of the house, while the outdoor hippopotamus exhibit
will be integrated into the new elephant exhibit. However, hippos will return
to the zoo once a new, up-to-date exhibit has been built.
In October the female lions killed the male. Early one
morning one of the females attacked him when he tried to steal a bone from her.
This kind of aggression is quite common, and as the animals calmed down nobody
paid further attention to the event. When the male tried a second time everything
went wrong. Again one of the females attacked him, and this time the other
joined in. The females got hold of his throat and before anybody could
intervene he was dead – the carotid artery had been torn apart. Usually lions
establish a dominance hierarchy with the male on top. This is enforced by
aggressive confrontations, and the strength of the individual lion determines
its rank. Our male had not yet gained control of the pride. He was brought to
the zoo in autumn 2001 and joined the females in early spring the following
year. He frequently tried to achieve a leading position, but without success.
The females are three months older, and the difference in size undoubtedly made
it more difficult for him to gain power. However, previous fights did not
suggest that he would not succeed eventually. It seemed only a matter of time.
So why did it go wrong? We believe it was an accident – the females did not
attack to kill, only to confirm their position, but in the thick of the fight
one of them bit too hard.
Veterinary conditions
The red pandas were infected with French heartworm (Angiostrongylus
vasorum) by ingesting snails infested via fox faeces, and the male died
before the infection was detected. The female and cub were examined and found
massively infected. After an X-ray and ultrasound examination, treatment was
initiated, but unfortunately the infection was so massive that no treatment
could cure the lung damage, and both animals died.
The six-year-old male Asian elephant, Santosh, had
teased the alpha female, Inda, for quite some time. One Sunday she had enough
and bit the tip of Santosh's tail to pieces. A 30-centimetre length of the tip
was totally crushed and had to be amputated.
A group of eight Malayan giant pond turtles (Orlitia
borneensis) confiscated in South-east Asia, came to Copenhagen Zoo via
Rotterdam Zoo [see IZN 49:4, p. 232]. The turtles were in very poor
condition. Their plastrons were eroded from having been kept out of water on
concrete floors. An X-ray examination revealed large fishhooks in two of them.
Intensive treatment with massive doses of antibiotics and cleaning of the
plastron defects was initiated. After several months, seven of the eight
plastrons were in such good health that artificial hoof resin could be moulded
over the healing defects and treatment concluded.
As part of the breeding programme for the species,
Copenhagen received a male lesser Malayan mouse deer (Tragulus javanicus)
from Amsterdam. In quarantine, tests showed that the animal was infected with
BVD (bovine virus diarrhoea) virus. We contacted Amsterdam Zoo to try to detect
the source of the virus, and it turned out that eight of eleven mouse deer from
that stock were chronically infected and were shedding virus. Work has begun on
an action plan to eradicate the infection in the European population.
A female reticulated giraffe was heavily sedated to
have her fore hooves trimmed. Upon reversal of the sedation she could not
control her neck and was allowed to lie down and rest. In a lateral position she
suddenly regurgitated and choked. A post mortem showed that she had a broken
cervical vertebra of several months' duration. Despite no clinical symptoms it
was concluded that this was the cause of her balance problems when the sedation
was wearing off.
Research
Behavioural studies carried out in cooperation with
the Zoological Institute of the University of Copenhagen included the
following:
Social interactions of a pair of golden lion tamarins. The aim of the
project was to examine the possible effect of scents from other golden lion
tamarins (GLTs) on a pair that had shown no breeding behaviour. At the time of
the project the pair had been together for a year without breeding. The study
was carried out as a controlled experiment, first recording the tamarins'
behaviour without exposure to novel scents, then by providing branches that had
not been near tamarins, and finally by providing climbing branches from another
GLT breeding group's enclosure. The pair did not react to the fresh branches,
but very clearly to the branches with the novel scent. The female in particular
sniffed at the branches, and there is no doubt that GLTs can perceive novel
scents. However, the branches did not stimulate any increased sexual activity.
Thus there were no indications that the sexual drive was increased by the
introduction of scents from conspecifics that they had no former contact with.
Stereotypies and social interaction of two giant
anteaters. In early 2002 the zoo received two new giant anteaters, a male of 18
months and a female of a little under a year. At the time of the study they had
been together for six months, and the object was to analyse their use of the
exhibit as well as their mutual interactions. Their use of the outdoor exhibit
differed greatly. The male moved about a great deal outdoors, whereas the
female spent most of the time indoors. The male was more active than the
female, but part of his activity could be ascribed to pacing up and down the
house – the pacing decreased considerably when the female was present.
Proposals were made as how to break the pattern.
Use of outdoor exhibit and stereotypies in caracal. The
examination resembles the one above both as to content and form, the difference
being that the group of caracals consists of five animals: an adult pair and
their three (1.2) half-year-old young. The five animals use the exhibit very
differently. The adult male mostly keeps to himself but is often in the front
of the exhibit, whereas the adult female prefers to stay at the back with the young.
The male has developed a behavioural pattern of pacing up and down along the
edge of the exhibit, up to 76 times an hour. The report discusses this
stereotypy, and suggestions are made as to how to change it.
Time budgets, use of exhibit and interspecific
interactions between giraffe, impala and crowned crane. In spring 2002
the zoo opened a new mixed-species exhibit with five reticulated giraffes, six
impalas and two East African crowned cranes. All three species proved to be
very active in their new surroundings. The giraffes spent two-thirds of the
time moving about foraging, while both impalas and cranes spent about half the
time foraging. This is very similar to the behaviour of their counterparts in
the wild. The three species prefer different areas of the exhibit, so they do
not compete with each other and there are hardly any interspecific aggressions.
The conclusion is that the exhibit is functioning well and satisfies the
animals' needs.
Banded mongooses' use of outdoor area, activity and
social relations. At the time of the study the zoo's group consisted of
1.4 animals. Two of the females had been in the enclosure since 1993 and the
other two since 2000. The male also arrived in 2000 and was not related to any
of the females. The mongooses'activity pattern resembled that found in the wild
– i.e. they were active in the morning and afternoon and rested around midday –
but the total activity level was lower, and it is suggested that it could be
increased by stimulating their foraging behaviour. One of the old and one of
the young females often got into fights; this was expected, as an established
group of mongooses usually do not accept unfamiliar females.
Female dominance hierarchy, time budget and social
structure in a ring-tailed lemur group. The major part of the
observed behaviour was of a social nature – mutual grooming, close physical
contact etc. – whereas they spent a limited amount of time on more demanding
physical activities. There was hardly any aggression in the group and it is
described as stable. The lemurs spent more than half the time on the ground,
which is consistent with the situation in the wild, and they did not avoid any
areas of the exhibit. The hierarchy of the group was assessed on the basis of
each individual's behaviour towards the rest of the group and who rested with
whom. The group consisted of three sub-groups: the old females, the
one-year-old animals and finally the male, who kept much to himself.
Scent preferences of butterflies. The reactions
to different scents of butterflies in the zoo's Butterfly Hall were analysed.
The scents used were grape juice, lavender oil, vanilla with sandalwood and
pure vanilla oil. The results showed that different butterfly species typically
had different preferences. In addition, the placing of the feeders was of great
importance. The report discussed the butterflies' choice of feeding places
compared to their apparent scent preferences.
CBSG
On 30 September 2002 Copenhagen Zoo received an
official request from the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) asking
the zoo to establish and run a European office for the organisation. The object
of the European office is to increase financial support for CBSG and encourage
European conservation efforts in as well as outside Europe. The zoo was
honoured to comply with the request and is now the official headquarters for
CBSG Europe.
ROYAL ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA (Adelaide
Zoo and Monarto Zoological Park)
Extracts from the Annual Report 2001/2002
Adelaide Zoo
Highlights of the year included the birth of a siamang
in October 2001. This successful breeding was the result of a program started
in 1997 with the arrival from San Francisco Zoo of Mang, our breeding female.
She was paired with male Ulysses, who was the last siamang born at the zoo in
1987. The import of a female dusky langur from Singapore Zoo added
significantly to our animal activities in the South East Asian Rainforest
exhibit. She very soon became inseparable from our original pair; although not
endangered in its natural habitat, this species has declined in distribution
dramatically during the past decade.
A male Australian sea lion was born; it was mother
Shara's first baby, and continues the excellent record Adelaide has in breeding
this species. Shara was born at the zoo in 1997. The father, Berri, became
famous when he was rescued in poor health from Victor Harbor in April 1997. He
was nursed back to good health and hand-raised by staff to adulthood.
As part of a regional and global breeding program, the
zoo acquired a male bongo from Taronga Zoo, the first to be displayed here. A
female is currently being sourced from a number of institutions in the U.S.A.
and Europe.
The arrival of two hyacinth macaws marked the first
time this dramatic species had been exhibited at the zoo in more than 60 years.
These two were first acquired in December 1997 as a result of a confiscation
from a private breeder in Victoria under the Wildlife Protection Act, though it
was only in March 2002 that court proceedings were finalised and ownership
handed over to the zoo. A new interactive presentation involving rainbow
lorikeets was launched in the Australian Rainforest walk-through aviary. These
birds have been trained for a daily feeding presentation to the public as part
of the zoo's move towards improved visitor experience; a keeper presents a talk
during the feeding and provides opportunities for public interaction, and the
program has proved very popular.
The birth of Adelaide Zoo's, and Australia's, first
Aruba Island rattlesnake was a significant achievement for the Reptile
Department. This critically endangered snake species from the rainforests of
north-east Venezuela has been part of a captive-breeding program in North
American zoos for some years, but was only first imported to Adelaide this
year. The species has been extremely popular with visitors to the reptile
house, and a successful hatching of a single young in June significantly added
to the interest. Another pleasing result for the Department was the successful
hatching of artificially incubated blood python (Python curtus) eggs. It
was the first time this species has bred at the zoo, and the young proved
popular when put on exhibit for the first time. Blood pythons are listed as
threatened in their natural South-East Asian rainforest habitat; it is
estimated that up to 200,000 are taken from the wild every year for their meat
and skin.
Monarto Zoological Park
At Monarto, highlights of this extremely productive
year included the arrival of nine African painted (hunting) dogs from De Wildt
Cheetah and Wildlife Trust in South Africa. At the time of import, (May 2002),
there were only 29 painted dogs in zoos and parks throughout Australasia, and
unfortunately their blood lines were all related. The Monarto arrivals
introduced vital unrelated genetic stock into the region, in a bid to assist
the conservation of a species which is currently believed to be the most
endangered carnivore in Africa.
An ambitious cheetah breeding program saw a team of
more than 20 professional reproductive biologists, a sonographer, veterinary
and wildlife management staff artificially inseminate Perth Zoo's female,
Kitoko, with sperm from Monarto's male, Nyomfoza, during a four-hour procedure
at the park in December 2001. A female cub was born at Perth Zoo in March 2002,
but died one month later due to congenital birth defects, unrelated to cheetah
stock held at Monarto.
The park continues to display the largest giraffe herd
in Australasia, with the population totalling 12 at the end of June 2002.
Visitors are able to view these spectacular animals in conditions similar to
the wild, and were enthralled by the three giraffe births during the year. A
major construction of a giraffe crush has assisted the Wildlife Management team
in the organisation of this large herd.
In a joint project with other organisations, 50
hectares of the park have been planted in the first stage of a five-year
revegetation program, the largest of its kind in the history of South
Australia. More than 375,000 native trees and shrubs will be planted over the
next five years, returning 250 ha of cleared and degraded land to a thriving
native habitat.
Conservation
As part of a coordinated reintroduction program from
the Department of Environment and Heritage, Adelaide Zoo provided seven
captive-bred bush thick-knees (Burhinus grallarius) for release to a
site at Venus Bay in South Australia. This nocturnal bird is threatened in some
parts of its mallee and grassland habitat and has been regularly bred at the
zoo over many years. It is intended that a second release will take place in
the future.
Supervisor of Birds, Phil Digney, was seconded to
undertake conservation work for Birds International on the critically
endangered Seychelles magpie robin (Copsychus sechellarum) [see IZN
47 (6), p. 395]. Senior veterinarian Dr David Schultz also participated in the
program, which involved the translocation of a population from one island to
another. The species was on the verge of extinction only two years ago, but a
successful rat eradication program [see IZN 48 (7), pp. 455–6] has seen
the wild population begin to thrive.
Prof. Tim Flannery, Director of the South Australian
Museum, launched the booklet Tenkile at a special function hosted by
Adelaide Zoo. The booklet, co-authored by staff members John Gardner and Gert
Skipper, highlights the importance of tree kangaroo conservation in Papua New
Guinea (PNG). With text in both English and Pidgin, it will become an important
educational tool to be used by local PNG communities. Its focus is on the
plight of Scott's tree kangaroo (`tenkile') in particular. With fewer than 100
remaining in the wild, this species is now fighting for its survival in the
mountainous rainforest habitats of PNG where it is traditionally hunted for food.
TIERPARK HAGENBECK, HAMBURG, GERMANY
Annual Report 2002
It was 120 years ago that a species – or prominent
subspecies – new to zoology was first `discovered' at Hagenbeck's: the Somali
wild ass. London Zoo later acquired the type specimen – Carl Hagenbeck at the
time was more animal dealer than zoo director – on the stipulation that
Hagenbeck provide the British Museum (Natural History) with a pair of skins
from Somaliland with which a new scientific description could be corroborated.
Last year another species new to science and discovered in Hamburg's Tierpark
Hagenbeck was given a Linnaean name, and this one honoured the zoo in which it
was found: Nausithoe hagenbecki. That's a kind of jellyfish, and as such
certainly not as spectacular as a new equid would be, but the discovery did get
the Tierpark into the news, and offered the media an amusing story. Apparently
Hagenbeck's crown jellyfish was imported unwittingly and unseen in a shipment
of corals from the East China Sea about five years ago. For two years no one
noticed it, perhaps not surprising considering that the jellyfish at hand, when
finally discovered, was still a polyp only two centimetres long. Gerhard Jarms
of Hamburg University's Institute of Zoology knows a new jellyfish when he sees
one, however – among his students and colleagues he's known as `Dr Qualle',
that is `Dr Jellyfish'. With the Hagenbecks' permission (obviously) he removed
the specimen from the coral aquarium in the Tierpark's Troparium in which he
had discovered it, took it back to the university to better watch it grow, and
only last year felt sure enough of his discovery to publish the appropriate
description.
The only other species new to Tierpark Hagenbeck last
year were 3.8 Vietnamese sika from zoos in Karlsruhe, Münster and Langenberg in
Switzerland (replacing a herd of Indian axis deer in an enclosure shared with
blackbuck), African yellow-billed ducks (Anas undulata) joining the red
river hogs, and weedy sea-dragons (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus) from the
waters off south-western Australia, a spectacular addition to the Troparium
with its already impressive coral tanks. The inventory, taken this year in
early March, counted 2,496 animals representing 358 species (a few
invertebrates in the Troparium, of course, may well have been missed again).
That's the same number of species and five specimens more than were counted the
year before. Attendance was estimated at 838,000 including season-pass holders
not really checked off when going through the gate – an improvement over last
year of a modest four per cent. The friends-of-the-Tierpark society grew by c.
10% to over 1,400 members, and was honoured in June of last year with the Hamburger
Bürgerpreis, worth 1,500 euros (about the same number of US dollars or
£1,000). (No, the prize has nothing to with McDonald's; the name translates as
`Hamburg Citizen Prize' and is awarded annually by the local parliamentary
group of the right-of-centre CDU party, which now happens to be in power in
Hamburg.)
Mammals born in 2002 and early 2003 and successfully
raised to date include 2.0 great red kangaroos, 1.0 ring-tailed lemur, 3
hamadryas baboons, 0.1.1 mandrills, 1.0 Siberian tiger (two others from the
same litter died, sadly), 0.2 South American fur seals, 1.1 Brazilian tapirs,
0.1 Persian wild ass, 1.0 Chapman's zebra, 0.1 wart hog, 1.0 alpaca, 1.0
Chinese barking deer, 0.2 Vietnamese sika, 0.2 greater kudus, 1.0 bison, 7.7.1
aoudads, 1.0 Persian gazelle and, among endangered domestic breeds, 5.4 Anglia
saddle-backed swine. Birds successfully bred last year include 1.1 South
African ostriches, one greater, one Cuban and six Chilean flamingos, two white
pelicans, two boat-billed herons (C. cochlearius), ten red ibises, two
roseate spoonbills, one African woodland kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis),
two black-winged stilts (H. himantopus) and four sun conures (Aratinga
solstitialis). The Troparium was birthplace to 30 sea-ponies (Hippocampus
fuscus), now being bred here in the seventh generation, as well as 1.0
dwarf caiman, one mangrove rat-snake (Gonyosoma oxycephala) and seven
green tree-pythons (Chondropython viridis). An Indian and a Vietnamese
elephant are pregnant and expecting by August of this year.
The interior of the small house behind the lion grotto
within the Africa Panorama had not been substantially renovated since its
inauguration in 1907. Although always reasonably sufficient for the needs of
the lions when in there, with its circus-waggon-like cages it long remained a
reminder of the originally modest Wilhelmian (Britons would say `Victorian')
standards for animals kept in the back at Hagenbeck's. Actually the Tierpark
was probably quite brave to let visitors into the lion house these last
decades, but now after a 100,000-euro renovation almost doubling the space
provided for the animals inside, as well as modernizing the infrastructure, one
of the oldest buildings in the Tierpark, if still not state-of-the-art, is at
least no longer an embarrassment.
The only really new building completed last year was a
sala, a traditional Thai royal pavilion inaugurated in late August by
Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, daughter of the King of Siam, and paid for by
Thailand's consul general in Hamburg. Built of teak and redwood by 20 artisans
in Thailand over a period of about a year, using a traditional method with
neither nails nor screws, it was disassembled, shipped to Hamburg, and put back
together again on the bank of a small lake within the Tierpark grounds adjacent
to an old Burmese terrace built 90 years ago. Decorated by hand with perhaps
150,000 tiny gold plates, it soon attracted adolescent gold-diggers and
wood-carvers carrying pen-knives, bent on perpetuating the names of their loved
ones and taking home a vandalized souvenir. Within three days of its
inauguration, the sala had to be closed off to the public and is now
accessible only on special occasions. Even from the distance, fortunately, the sala
is a beautiful reminder that exotic artistes from overseas once performed
regularly at Carl Hagenbeck's Tierpark.
Construction work on a new main entrance across the
street from the underground station began last summer. The old entrance with
its bronze statues of wild animals and exotic warriors inaugurated with the
Tierpark itself in 1907, surely one of the most impressive gateways to a zoo
anywhere and the model for at least a few others from Japan to Peru, was
considered for years to be too far away – it is out of sight of the station and
the thoroughfare through which most local traffic now passes. (Actually it's
only a five-minute walk from the station, but visitors have complained
that they got lost looking for the way in.) The offer of a local sponsor
enthusiastic about a Nepalese tower he had seen at the 2000 World's Fair in
Hannover to finance a new entrance modelled after it encouraged the Tierpark to
try a new face. The new gate was inaugurated in early April of this year and,
well, visitors will certainly be surprised by its authenticity. Genuinely
authentic Hindu towers, at least in Nepal, are apparently devoted to promoting
propagation – a noble cause in any zoo. The tower at the World's Fair appears
to have been a censored one, however; Hagenbeck's is complete with brightly
painted, erotic wood-carvings in plain sight. Whether or not a zoo is the
appropriate place to introduce children to the Kama Sutra will presumably
occupy the letters page of the local newspapers in the months to come, but the
new entrance does remind one not only, as the Thai sala does, of the
ethnographic element that a visit to the Tierpark once entailed, but also that
the original Hagenbeck menagerie had its start over 150 years ago in Hamburg's
red-light district.
Herman Reichenbach
WALSRODE BIRD PARK, GERMANY
Annual Report 2002
Although the number of birds kept and bred at
Vogelpark Walsrode was similar to that of 2001, 2002 was a rather exciting
year. We had an unusually high number of first breedings, which came quite
unexpectedly, because many minor changes had been carried out to enclosures in
the course of the year. Small units have been combined into larger aviaries,
with a more naturalistic interior matching species-specific requirements with
regard to habitat preferences and social organization. Perhaps the breeding
successes of 2002 are an early indication of positive stimulation caused by
these changes.
Until the end of 2001, only two species of South
American trogons had successfully been bred in captivity. Asian and African
species of this group of colourful birds had never reproduced under human care.
In January, a pair of Javan trogons (Apalharpactes reinwardtii) showed
interest in a nest box, which we had filled with wood chips up to the top. This
was the beginning of a surprisingly successful trogon breeding season. Apart
from Javans, a pair each of Diard's (H. diardii) and red-headed trogons
(H. erythrocephalus) bred and reared young. In addition, two pairs of
white-tailed trogons (Trogon viridis), a species which we first bred in
1995, produced eggs, and four chicks grew up. [For further details, see IZN
49 (8), pp. 501–2 – Ed.] Unfortunately, we lost the female red-headed
trogon as a result of egg-binding, but we now keep small groups of all four
species, so that self-sustaining populations in captivity may be established of
some or all of them.
Two pairs of banded or blue-tailed pitta (Pitta
guajana) were rivals in the production of chicks, and by the end of 2002 we
had reared the astounding number of 31 young banded pittas. (There were many
more eggs, but a number of these were either infertile or lost, and a few young
chicks disappeared.) This looks like a breakthrough in the captive management
of pittas, which reproduce only sporadically in captivity.
Our kagus (Rhynochetos jubatus) had a long
break after two more chicks had hatched at the beginning of 2002. But in
November both pairs started laying again, and another chick hatched just before
Christmas. [For previous kagu breeding at Walsrode, see IZN 49 (2), pp.
119–120.] Outstanding among the cranes were chicks of wattled (Bugeranus
carunculatus), black-necked (Grus nigricollis) and black crowned
cranes (Balearica pavonina), all species which are rarely bred in
captivity.
In the waterfowl section, we managed to rear our first
pink-eared duck (Malacorhynchus membranaceus). This unusual small
Australian duck with specific feeding requirements is rather delicate, and its
ducklings are particularly difficult to rear.
During 2002, we suffered a number of setbacks in our
bird of paradise (BoP) colony. We lost both our breeding females of red and
great BoPs. The king BoPs, however, produced several fertile eggs, of which
four hatched, though none of the chicks were reared. Our young female superb
BoP (Lophorina superba) laid two clutches of eggs, but due to her mate's
age all of these were infertile.
After several failures in 2001, we were lucky with the
white-crested hornbills (Berenicornis comatus) in 2002. One chick of
this extremely rarely kept species fledged and developed into a strong male
bird.
For the first time ever we bred golden conures and
blue-headed macaws. The keas had a long period of pair-formation, but finally
one pair reared two chicks, and by the end of the year this and another pair
had produced fertile eggs. Another very rare parrot in captivity is Riedel's
eclectus (E. roratus riedeli), of which two chicks fledged.
Our colony of Madagascan birds is doing extremely
well, with five chicks from three different pairs of Madagascar crested ibis
fledging in 2002. The crested couas had another good breeding season, though
the survival rate was rather low. For the first time, a pair of sickle-billed
vangas produced a clutch of four eggs, and we were lucky to rear one chick.
This is a rather delicate species, and certainly it is the first vanga which
has ever reproduced in captivity. New acquisitions in our Project Tsimbazaza, a
programme between Parc Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza (PBZT) and
Vogelpark Walsrode were, among others, long-tailed and pitta-like ground
rollers (Uratelornis chimaera and Atelornis pittoides), members
of an endemic family of birds, which seem to be in captivity for the first time
ever. Two chicks of the former were successfully reared at PBZT, an outstanding
event in our cooperation, which also includes the complete renovation of PBZT's
bird centre, the training of staff, and the improvement of local conditions for
the maintenance and breeding of native birds. [See further IZN 50 (2),
p. 125.]
In total, 992 birds of 192 species were reared
successfully in 2002. The total number of birds held at Walsrode on 31 December
2002 was 3,241 individuals representing 599 species and subspecies. This is an
insignificant decrease in all numbers compared to 2001 (1018, 198, 3,260 and
608 respectively).
Dieter Rinke, Martina Müller and Bernd Marcordes
* * *
Amsterdam Zoo (Artis), the Netherlands
A two-year-old female Burmese python (Python
molurus bivittatus) arrived at the zoo in 1995. It appeared that the animal
had never been with a male and there were no males in our collection. However,
two years later, the snake laid eggs for the first time – some with embryos!
She repeated this unusual feat over the next four years, so the suspicion
remained that she had in fact mated with a male at a very young age and had
fertilised her eggs using stored sperm.
It is known that many types of reptile can store sperm
in their bodies for years after mating, but five years seemed unusually long. A
second possibility, `virgin birth' or parthenogenesis, was known in a few snake
species, but never in Boidae. In order to rule out this option and to secure a
record for the longest sperm storage, Tom Groot from the University of
Amsterdam was asked to investigate the situation.
Female snakes have two different sex chromosomes: WZ.
Males have two sex chromosomes of the same type: ZZ. During normal reproduction
the W egg cells and Z egg cells developed in a female fuse with a Z sperm from
a male, producing WZ (female) and/or ZZ (male) offspring. As far as we know,
during parthenogenesis the W and Z cells individually double during meiosis, giving
rise to WW and ZZ cells. Only ZZ cells can grow to become viable (male)
embryos.
Tom Groot examined the DNA from both the mother snake
and her embryos, using the so-called AFLP method, in which 692 different
genetic markers are employed. He demonstrated that the embryos contained
genetic material from the mother only, so that one could indeed talk of
parthenogenesis in this python. The embryos were sexed and it appeared that
they were all female, while normal parthenogenesis in snakes should yield only males.
According to Groot, it seems that in this case the WZ precursor to the egg cell
is doubling itself to WWZZ before meiosis begins, and only then splitting into
WZ egg cells. In other words, this snake is producing daughters identical to
herself – clones! This type of parthenogenetic reproduction in snakes is
completely new.
We have never incubated the python eggs because there
is no demand for Burmese pythons in other zoos. As this might change following
the above-mentioned research, we will attempt to hatch any eggs laid in 2003.
We will then keep a number of hatchlings, in order to establish whether the
offspring are as healthy as their mother – and whether they too in time can
reproduce parthenogenetically.
Eugene Bruins in EAZA News No. 42 (April–June
2003)
Belfast Zoo, Northern Ireland, U.K.
The zoo has been successfully managing and breeding
Malayan tapirs in recent years. Despite being quite large mammals, the tapirs
have proved to be rather shy and reclusive, and they are often difficult to observe
during the day. While closed-circuit TV cameras have been installed in the Ark
Café, with a live link to the tapir dens to give visitors a better chance to
observe the animals, it is rare for visitors to see them `in the flesh'.
However, perhaps the main reason we are doing so well with them is that they
are given free access to their secluded house at all times and are therefore
not necessarily constantly on show to the public.
Our female, Gladys, arrived on breeding loan from
Toronto Zoo in October 1994. Following a global search for a suitable male, and
despite a great scarcity of mature male Malayan tapirs in zoos, in May 1995 a
five-year-old male, Elmer, was generously loaned to us by Mulhouse Zoo, France.
Despite having a reputation for incompatibility, our newly-formed pair mixed
together extremely well. Since their first introduction, our breeding of
Malayan tapirs has been impressive, with three calves successfully bred and
reared in the ensuing years.
Their first surviving calf, called Harley, was born in
December 1996, and developed well, even though a health scare when she was
three weeks old required round-the-clock attention from our staff and vets.
Under the terms of our loan agreements for the adult pair, Harley was actually
owned by Toronto Zoo, so she left Belfast for Toronto in December 1998.
Another female calf, Tumpat, born in June 2001, was
owned by Mulhouse Zoo, and moved to Amsterdam in September last year. Gladys's
third surviving calf, another female, was born in November last year, and has
been called Aya.
With fewer than 50 Malayan tapirs in European zoos and
a global captive population of about 150 animals, Belfast's tapirs represent
one of the zoo's rarest and most valuable species. There are only a handful of
births of this species globally each year; only three were recorded in European
zoos in 2001, one of which was Tumpat, and three again in Europe in 2002, one
of which was Aya. The EEP for Malayan tapirs is co-ordinated by Nuremberg Zoo
in Germany, and the programme is gradually making progress towards developing a
self-sustaining European population of this endangered species. Belfast Zoo
continues to play an active and leading role within this programme.
Abridged from Mark Challis in Zoo Crack No. 53
(Spring 2003)
Breeding Centre for Endangered Arabian Wildlife,
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
The first litter of cheetah cubs ever bred at a
government-funded public institution in the Arabian Peninsula was born at the
Centre on 1 December 2002. The parents of the four (2.2) cubs were wild-caught
in Sudan/Somalia and illegally imported into the UAE as young cubs. The
Breeding Centre has received 36 North African cubs confiscated by officials at
various UAE entry ports between 1998 and 2001. All cheetahs held at the Centre
are included in the Cheetah EEP coordinated by Sean McKeown. They can play an
important role in the future health of the international captive population, as
they are all potentially new founders.
Jane Edmonds in EAZA News No. 42 (April–June
2003)
Bristol Zoo, U.K.
Albino animals occur naturally in most species, though
often very rarely. The chance that both parents in a genetically diverse
population carry the defective gene are small, and then there is just a 25%
chance that any one youngster will inherit the defective gene from both
parents.
Knowing this, imagine the surprise that Nigel Simpson,
overseer of birds at Bristol Zoo, felt when he first saw a white chick, not the
normal black downy lump he was expecting, while inspecting newly-hatched African
penguin chicks in the `Penguin Coasts' exhibit. A few days later it was
confirmed that the chick had red eyes and that it indeed was an albino, its
sibling being normal. Enquiries with colleagues in South Africa indicated that
albino African penguins have been seen in the wild, but very rarely. The
chances are estimated at less than one in every hundred thousand hatched.
Neither the EEP coordinator for African penguins nor the EAZA Penguin TAG chair
had ever heard of an albino penguin in captivity.
Before its hatching we were not aware that the
defective albino gene was present in the European population, let alone at
Bristol. Its parents paired up naturally, selecting each other, and if they
remain paired in future years may well produce further albino chicks. If this
is the case, we may be requested to separate the pair to avoid producing more
abnormal chicks.
Duncan Bolton in EAZA News No. 42 (April–June
2003)
Colchester Zoo, U.K.
On 6 December 2002 a male African elephant was born at
the zoo. Both mother Tanya and her male offspring Kito are doing well. Kito is
now spending regular times with the other female elephants at the zoo's
`Elephant Kingdom' exhibit. He has been steadily putting on weight and weighed
146 kg on 3 April 2003. Tanya is receiving a supplement to her diet which is
especially designed for lactating female elephants. She is also being given
lucerne as well as her usual hay and extra cabbages.
It has been confirmed that Zola and Rosa, two other
African elephants at Colchester, are pregnant. Zola is due to have a calf in
December 2003 and Rosa around Easter 2004. Both females became pregnant after
natural matings with our bull Tembo, unlike Tanya, who was the first elephant
in the world to become pregnant through just one artificial insemination. Tembo
had previously `proved himself' with Sabi, a female at Schönbrunn Zoo, who
successfully gave birth after being artificially inseminated with his sperm
[see IZN 48 (7), 424–429].
Important new arrivals during the last few months of 2002
were a pair of aardvarks, a male from Antwerp and a female from Burgers' Zoo,
Arnhem. This is the last unrelated pair available through the Aardvark ESB, so
we really hope to have breeding success.
Anthony Tropeano in EAZA News No. 42 (April–June 2003)
Denver Zoo, Colorado, U.S.A.
The zoo recently acquired a pair of southern tamanduas
(Tamandua tetradactyla), a species not abundantly found in zoos. One of
the challenges facing us is the ability to feed a nutritionally balanced diet,
since providing a steady supply of ants and termites is impossible. When
feeding, we need to consider the size and type of food offered. Tamanduas'
mouth opening is only the diameter of a pencil, they have no teeth, and
everything they ingest is ground up in a muscular gizzard which is a part of
the stomach. So, we feed a gruel of honey, water, ground-up cat food, and
leafeater biscuits. This is supplemented with live food – waxworms, mealworms,
and crickets. We also try to supply enrichment to keep them mentally stimulated,
and activities that let them use their natural abilities to sniff out insects
and rip things apart. These activities include digging and sniffing through
bark mulch or hay, hollow or rotten logs to sleep in or rip apart, and boxes
with bugs inside to probe and plunder. Living in the dry desert-type climate of
Colorado presents another challenge, that of providing enough humidity so that
their feet and skin do not crack. They need at least 50% humidity, so we are
limited in which buildings or areas we can house them.
Our tamanduas are living in the Emerald Forest
building in Primate Panorama; they share their home with a family of golden
lion tamarins, who are learning to adjust to their new room-mates. We currently
have a parent-raised ten-month-old female who arrived from Sedgwick County Zoo,
Kansas, and a one-and-a-half-year-old, hand-raised male from Dallas World
Aquarium, Texas. We are hopeful that – after a five-month gestation – she will
have a baby sometime this summer. Tamanduas give birth to a single young which
the mother carries on her back. The males have no part in rearing their
offspring. At four to five months of age the young is weaned and feeds and
fends for itself.
Abridged from Ann Zobrist in The Zoo Review
(Spring 2003)
John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Two of Shedd's Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus
obliquidens) are pregnant as a result of artificial insemination (AI)
through a collaborative effort by Shedd Aquarium, the National Zoo's
Conservation and Research Center and SeaWorld. This is one of the first
successful AI procedures with this species, and a first for Shedd. The calves
are due in mid-October.
SeaWorld veterinarians and researchers, led by Dr Todd
Robeck, pioneered this procedure in cetaceans. `Only in the last few years have
we learned enough about marine mammals' reproductive physiology to achieve this
medical milestone,' says Ken Ramirez, Shedd's vice president of marine mammal
programs and animal training. `When SeaWorld wanted to apply its techniques to
Pacific white-sided dolphins, they immediately talked with us. Shedd and
SeaWorld are two of only three facilities in the United States that have this
species, and we have worked together already with the beluga whale breeding
cooperative. It was a natural partnership for this important project.'
Artificial insemination has been successful in many
terrestrial animals. But AI technology for marine mammals, like veterinary
medicine in general for this group, is a new field. Robeck, who is corporate
director of theriogenology (veterinary reproductive medicine) for Busch
Entertainment Corporation, SeaWorld's parent company, is the only veterinarian
in the world who specializes in the reproductive physiology of whales and
dolphins. He has spent 15 years studying reproductive anatomy, endocrinology
and sperm cryobiology in bottle-nosed dolphins, killer whales and Pacific
white-sided dolphins.
Shedd's marine mammal training program contributed to
the success of this procedure. During the dolphins' daily training sessions,
they have learned to participate in a variety of health care activities,
including blood sampling and ultrasound exams, which are critical to monitoring
the animals' ovulation cycles. But to determine the precise time to inseminate,
animal-care and veterinary staff had to collect daily urine samples from all
five females – a cued training process that took some time to perfect. The
semen was collected – also using a cued behavior – from a male at an
international aquarium. It was then cryopreserved, or frozen, and flown to
Shedd in a special shipping container after urinary endocrine analysis and
ultrasound imaging indicated that two of the five females were ready to
ovulate.
The two pregnant dolphins, Tique and Kri, are both
about 18 years old. (Like all of Shedd's dolphins, their names reflect the
languages of Pacific Northwest Indians.) They are about halfway into the
approximately 12-month gestation period. This is the first pregnancy for Kri
and the second for Tique, who had a stillborn calf in 1995.
Only a few Pacific white-sided dolphin calves have
been born in aquariums and zoos, says Dr Marty Greenwell, director of
veterinary services, `and our knowledge of that process is in its infancy. As
with all cetaceans, in the wild and in zoological organizations, these first-
and second-time pregnancies carry risks that the mothers might lose their
calves before or just after birth. So while we are optimistic about the
pregnancies, we have to be realistic about the chances for successful births.'
But so far, regular ultrasound exams show active fetal calves, and both females
are doing well.
Aquarium guests will continue to see the pregnant
dolphins in the daily behavioral presentations. `The best thing for the
moms-to-be is to keep their activity levels consistent,' explains Ramirez. `Our
top priority is the health and safety of these animals, and the presentations
provide physical and mental stimulation for the dolphins. At the same time,
they give our animal-care staff regular opportunities to observe and interact
with them.'
With fewer than 20 Pacific white-sided dolphins in
U.S. aquariums and zoos – and all but two of them females – AI offers new
opportunities for a cooperative breeding program. This successful procedure
represents one of the first pregnancies in any marine mammal using semen
imported from another country, thus increasing the genetic diversity of the
population of this species in U.S. zoos and aquariums.
Abridged from WaterShedd Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring
2003)
Lisbon Zoo, Portugal
Eggs believed to be from toucans and originally
brought from Salvador, Brazil, were confiscated by customs at Lisbon airport in
October 2002. All of the 44 eggs brought to Lisbon Zoo were examined and
appeared to be fertile, but in different stages of development. Of these, 37
were apparently intact, three were cracked and four were totally broken. The
eggs were placed in an incubator set at the relative humidity, temperature
levels and turning frequency recommended by experts for toucan eggs. The
keepers carefully monitored all the incubation parameters, as well as the
temperature of the incubation room at the bird breeding centre. It is worth
mentioning that the police came to the zoo and inspected every discarded egg,
looking for drugs, i.e. cocaine.
The first egg hatched two days after being placed in
the incubator. The chick weighed 16 g, and a few hours later another hatched,
weighing 14 g. In the following three days five more chicks hatched, with
weights between 12 and 16 g; these were the last hatchings. The newly hatched
chicks were placed in brooders, with environmental parameters adjusted
according to the birds' developmental stage. After some research there was no
doubt that all the chicks belonged to the genus Ramphastos.
With the cooperation of specialists from other zoos, a
diet was established and adapted according to the chicks' growth. Quality,
quantity, consistency and frequency of feedings were adjusted according to the
chicks' responses and their development. Weight, various body measurements and
other important developments were recorded on a daily basis during the rearing
period. Five of the seven chicks that hatched died due to infections and
dehydration problems.
In the surviving two chicks, feather eruption in the
wings began after the second week, and in the tail during the third week. They
opened their eyes at the beginning of the fourth week, and during the sixth and
seventh week they were totally covered with feathers. They were removed from
the brooders during the sixth week and placed in small cages with many
enrichment devices for perching and playing. Food was also left in the cages to
encourage the birds to start eating by themselves. The chicks were very active
in the seventh week, jumping and flying. Their appetite was greatly reduced and
they stopped begging. They were allowed open air and sun in their cage from
nine weeks of age.
We learned a lot from this experience and were able to
understand many of the things that went wrong. The transport of the smuggled
eggs probably resulted in excessive vibrations and sudden changes of
temperature that could have been critical, particularly to less-developed eggs.
The zoo was not able to immediately provide ideal conditions, as the eggs were
received after the `normal' breeding season. For example, the incubator was not
tested prior to receipt of the eggs, and it was very inconsistent in its
performance. Cracks and holes found in some eggs when they were candled
probably contributed to the death of the embryos, possibly because of
infectious processes. These eggs have not yet been examined internally because
we still need permission from the authorities that confiscated the eggs.
Margarida Barão da Cunha, Eric Bairrão Ruivo and Sónia
Matias in EAZA News No. 42 (April–June 2003)
Loro Parque, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
The cockatoos are among the first species to start
laying at the beginning of the year. In autumn, the nest boxes of the white
cockatoos are usually taken out of the aviaries to be cleaned, and only when
the new breeding season sets in are they returned into the aviaries. After
that, it is usually only a few days before the first eggs are recorded, the
Major Mitchell's cockatoos (Cacatua leadbeateri) being the first to
breed – by the end of March, five chicks had hatched from two pairs of this
species. Other Cacatua taxa who started reproducing that month were
Moluccan, sulphur-crested, triton, eleonora, lesser sulphur-crested,
citron-crested, Abbott's sulphur-crested and blue-eyed cockatoos, and slender-billed,
long-billed and short-billed corellas.
The whose most settled breeding pair of speckle-faced
parrots (Pionus tumultuosus) laid a clutch in March. Since this species
is rather uncommon in captivity, Loro Parque Foundation is very much interested
in exchanging young ones with other breeders to bring in fresh bloodlines.
Two new taxa were added to the collection in April. We
obtained three pairs of the New Caledonian lorikeet (Trichoglossus
haematodus deplanchii) from a French breeder and three Burmese
blossom-headed parakeets (Psittacula roseata juneae) from a German
breeder.
The amazon species had a very promising start to the
season, with 11 species producing over 30 chicks by the end of April. Among
these were less-common species such as yellow-faced and vinaceous amazons (A.
xanthops and A. vinacea). An unexpected surprise was the hatching of
Salvin's amazons (A. autumnalis salvini) and Roatán amazons (A.
auropalliata caribaea) after a long break.
Two eggs of a pair of blue-crowned lories (Vini
australis) were transferred to an incubator after the parents repeatedly
destroyed their clutches. The chicks hatched with a weight of a mere two grams
and are being looked after by a keepers who feeds them every two hours –
otherwise, they wouldn't have a chance to survive. The chicks are growing
satisfactorily and, after two weeks, had already reached a body weight of 10 g.
Right on time for the Easter season, our latest
attraction was inaugurated – the largest group of Atlantic puffins to be found in
a European zoo. Last year, Loro Parque obtained official permission from the
Icelandic government to remove chicks from the nest holes to use them for a
research and education project in Tenerife. To date, little is known about the
keeping of these animals in captivity. Many months have passed since the
expedition to Iceland, and the chicks have turned into strong subadult birds,
so the time has finally come to transfer them to their new enclosure, which
closely resembles their natural habitat in Iceland. They obviously enjoy their
new home and are proving to be very active swimmers; they may be observed both
in and out of the water – a unique experience which makes everybody's heart
beat faster.
Abridged from the reports for March and April 2003
compiled by Matthias Reinschmidt, Curator, Loro Parque
Melbourne Zoo, Victoria, Australia
After two years of negotiation and planning, a group
of six (3.3) young Philippine crocodiles (Crocodylus mindorensis) were
imported to the zoo from the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Centre
(PWRCC) in the western Philippines in early November 2002. The animals were
transferred under the auspices of a Memorandum of Agreement between Melbourne
Zoo and the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and
were captive-bred at the PWRCC from parents originating in Mindanao island.
Unfortunately, three (2.1) of the crocodiles died from
accumulated stress within ten days of arriving in Melbourne. This species is
known for the intragroup aggression that can occur at almost any age, making it
a potentially problematic species to maintain in urban zoos. Despite this
setback, the remaining animals have now settled in well in individual housing,
and provide the foundation for a regional captive population to support in
situ efforts across the Philippines.
Chris Banks in ARAZPA Newsletter No. 57
(February 2003)
Monkey World, Dorset, U.K.
On 19 February 2003 Jim and Alison Cronin returned to
Monkey World from Spain with the last beach photographer's chimpanzee. His name
is Alberto and we estimate that he was smuggled into Spain as an infant in 1988
or 1989. His first owner was a photographer who used Alberto as a prop to
entice tourists to have their photo taken with the cute baby. As it happened,
however, Monkey World had just started a proactive campaign with the Spanish
authorities and Simon and Peggy Templer, an expatriate couple who had started
rescuing chimps many years earlier. So it was not long before the Guardia Civil
went after Alberto's owner and told him that he would have to stop working the
chimp or be arrested. The man promised not to use the chimp for photography, or
any other financial purpose, but wanted to keep him as a pet. The authorities
agreed, and Alberto lived with the photographer and his wife for another eight
years until the day the photographer died. Not knowing what to do, the wife
took Alberto to a dog and cat shelter outside Barcelona, and here he stayed,
living on his own for six years.
Monkey World first learned about Alberto a few months
ago. Conditions in the animal shelter were not suitable for an adult male
chimpanzee, and he had no companionship of his own kind. Permission had been
granted by the Spanish authorities for him to be moved to a new home. Thus, it
was just a case of organising the correct permits from the British Ministry of
Agriculture for Alberto to come to Britain.
Prior to moving him, Jim and Alison made an initial
trip to Spain to meet Alberto and assess his character. He turned out to be
very friendly, enjoyed playing with people, and appeared to be quite well
adjusted considering his Spartan living conditions. Next, Barcelona Zoo's
veterinarian, Jesus Fernandez, gave Alberto a medical check. Over the years,
Barcelona Zoo has been instrumental in organising all of the paper work and
veterinary expertise to move 29 chimps from Spain to Monkey World. With the
tests all clear and the paper work complete, Alberto was ready to move.
Once at the park, he was settled into several
specially-prepared rooms with extra shelving, hammocks, fire hoses and toys to
keep the newcomer occupied. At 15 years old and having never lived with any
other chimpanzees since he was stolen from his mother in the forests of Africa,
it was unlikely that Alberto would get along with our ten other bachelor chimps
straight away. After trying introductions with several of them through a
dividing mesh, we have decided that Sammy is the best individual to start him
off with. Day after day we have been letting the two males sit alongside each other
for a few hours, and Alberto's behaviour has got calmer. His rehabilitation is
going to take a long time, but this much we expected. We are confident that he
has a very nice character and that soon he will be as friendly to chimps as he
is with humans.
Abridged from Ape Rescue Chronicle No. 23
(Spring 2003)
National Zoological Gardens, Pretoria, South Africa
One of the National Zoo's veterinarians, Dr Leon
Venter, was approached by the University of Pretoria's Veterinary Faculty at
Onderstepoort to assist with the treatment of a sick cheetah. The animal, a
male between one and two years old from De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust,
was suffering from severe abdominal pain and a distended abdomen, and had
collapsed due to circulatory shock. The young cheetah was stabilized with
intravenous fluids and colloids, while veterinary staff at Onderstepoort
performed a clinical examination and diagnostic imaging. Based on these
findings, it was decided that the best option would be to perform an
exploratory laparotomy (surgical opening and evaluation of the abdomen). During
this procedure, a large, ruptured stomach ulcer was detected that required the
resection of the affected part of the stomach. The cheetah then needed plasma
due to a very low blood protein concentration.
Veterinarians at Onderstepoort contacted Dr Venter to
try to obtain some urgently needed blood for the cheetah. The director of the
National Zoo, Willie Labuschagne, gave permission for one of the zoo's cheetahs
to be immobilised and have the blood drawn. A total of 600 ml of blood was
drawn from the animal and rushed to Onderstepoort. From this blood, 200 ml of
plasma was obtained, which was then transfused into the patient. After two
hours of surgery, the cheetah was monitored overnight and then taken back to De
Wildt, where he made a full recovery.
The procedure was a first for the National Zoo as well
as for Dr Venter. `It took about 40 minutes for us to draw the amount of blood
needed,' he says. `The cheetah we drew the blood from recuperated well after
the procedure and was taken back to its enclosure the following day.'
Zoon Edition 3, 2002
Riverbanks Zoological Park, Columbia, South Carolina,
U.S.A.
Births and hatchings during the period January to
March 2003 were as follows: 2 blue-winged motmot, 12 African spurred tortoise,
1 giant leaf-tailed gecko, 3 Henkel's leaf-tailed gecko, 1 yellow-throated day
gecko. The following were acquired during the same period: 2 siamang, 2 fishing
cat, 1 parma wallaby, 3 masked plover, 1 red-vented cockatoo, 2 toco toucan, 2
keel-billed toucan, 1 emerald tree boa, 2 giant leaf-tailed gecko, 1
flat-tailed gecko.
Susan Reno, Registrar
Rotterdam Zoo, the Netherlands
Rotterdam Zoo has a policy of supporting conservation
projects for a cross-section of species or their habitats for which new
exhibits are developed. As a high-profile species with conservation issues, the
king penguin was a good candidate for support in connection with the opening of
our king penguin exhibit in June 2001 [see IZN 49 (7), pp. 434–5]. We
contacted the organisation Falklands Conservation, established by Peter Scott
to help protect Falkland wildlife. They had a valuable project in need of
funding – protection of the largest king penguin colony in the Falklands
Islands (500+ breeding pairs in 2000/2001), at Volunteer Point.
King penguins were exterminated in the Falklands in
the early 1900s through trade in their oil, but now they have made a come-back,
as have other penguin species. Hundreds of Magellanic penguins and gentoo penguins
also now breed at Volunteer Point, and gentoos are resident year-round. A
number of other birds also use the area, which is a private nature reserve,
part of Johnson's Harbour Farm, which runs 15,000 sheep and was established in
1870 by the family which still owns it. Volunteer Point is closed throughout
the southern winter, but is opened to the public during most of the king
penguin breeding season. No control of visitor access and behaviour was in
place prior to 2001, and as the king penguin colony is a popular tourist site,
there was concern about the impact of visitors, especially military personnel
stationed in the area. The landowners were open to the idea of offering the
penguins some protection, so plans were made and funding from Rotterdam Zoo
helped to make it possible to carry these out.
In October 2001, a car-parking area was roped-off 300
metres from the colony and a ring of white rocks was arranged around the king
and gentoo colonies at a distance of six metres from the nearest nests. (Positions
of the rocks were changed as the colony size changed.) A small caravan was
purchased to house a voluntary warden during the tourist season, extending from
November to March. Free pamphlets with information on the site, penguins and
appropriate visitor behaviour, and three interpretation boards with detailed
information on the site, were made. A total of 1,033 people visited the site
during the 2001/2002 tourist season. While many of them (60%) were with guided
tours, the tour leaders provided little information on appropriate visitor
behaviour and respect for control measures. Fortunately visitors responded well
to the restrictions explained by the wardens, giving them time to provide some
information on the environment and to collect and evaluate beach trash. Little
information was then available on the nesting of the three species in Falkland
colonies, and biological data collected by the two wardens (also biologists) is
resulting in several publications. This progress encouraged us to lend support to
continue the project, and an auction held during an evening devoted to the
Rotterdam Zoo `business circle' – a group of companies that financially aid
developments at the zoo – raised 15,070 euros, more than enough money to
finance the second season.
Attractive and informative materials on Falkland
Islands conservation can be viewed at www.falklands-nature.demon.co.uk.
Abridged from Cathy King in EAZA News No. 42
(April–June 2003)
St Louis Zoo, Missouri, U.S.A.
The zoo's new exhibit `Penguin and Puffin Coast'
opened on 23 May 2003. It features two large domed indoor rockscapes with
rugged coastlines, complete with underwater viewing of these oceanic birds,
plus a rocky outdoor enclosure. The innovative open-air design will allow the
public a close-up experience with the birds – only a 40-inch-high [one-meter]
glass barrier separates visitors from residents.
The indoor exhibits have climate-controlled
environments maintained at 45°F [7°C]. A
barrel-vault fabric ceiling is lit indirectly with colored gels, simulating a
polar sunrise and sunset. Direct lighting concealed in the rockwork provides
full-spectrum light important for bird growth and breeding cycles.
Approximately 80 penguins and 30 puffins call this new
habitat home. About 20 Humboldt penguins share an outdoor area, the Jones
Family Humboldt Haven, with two brown pelicans. Here a 22-foot [6.5-m]
waterfall plunges into a pool; above, six nesting chambers are carved into the
face of a craggy rock. Windswept grasses jut out along the stony shore, and
ambient sounds of terns, cormorants, gulls and sea lions add to the visitors'
experience.
The Lichtenstein Penguin Cove, the first walk-through
subantarctic penguin exhibit in North America, allows visitors to watch gentoo,
rockhopper and king penguins both on land and under water in a
climate-controlled indoor habitat. Two species of puffin – horned and tufted –
from the northern Pacific will debut in St Louis for the first time at the
Taylor Family Puffin Bay.
The birds in Penguin and Puffin Coast are on interzoo
loan from SeaWorld Orlando, SeaWorld San Antonio, SeaWorld San Diego, North
Carolina Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo, Six Flags Ohio, Columbus Zoo, Moody Gardens,
Brookfield Zoo and Niagara Falls Aquarium.
Abridged from St Louis Zoo press releases
Twycross Zoo, U.K.
Twycross has been keeping bonobos since March 1992.
The animals arrived on loan from Stuttgart, Cologne, Leipzig and Wuppertal Zoos
with the objective of starting a new breeding group as part of the EEP, and
Twycross is the only zoo in the U.K. currently holding this species.
To date we have had a total of six (4.2) births. Of
these, one young did not survive, two are being hand-reared and the other three
are still within the group. The male Keke was the first born (2 January 1994)
to Diatou, the most dominant female in the group. She has proved to be a very
good parent and has reared (and is rearing) all three of her offspring. Female
Yasa was born on 27 August 1997 and male Lou on 1 December 2002.
We have not been so lucky with two of the other
females. Kichele gave birth to a still-born baby on 14 January 2000. Banya has
given birth to two young, but unfortunately these have had to be hand-reared.
In both cases she looked as though she might rear the baby, but she has a very
low social standing within the group and the dominant female took the baby from
her. Staff intervened on both occasions and subsequently gave her the
youngsters back, but she then ignored them. Female Kaya (born 19 October 2001)
and male Banbo (3 September 2001) are being reared together and are exposed to
the other bonobos on a daily basis so that reintegration to the group should be
possible.
John Ray in EAZA News No. 42 (April–June 2003)
News in brief
There have recently been some changes to the elephant
population at Tierpark Berlin. Two Asian cows, Nova and Cynthia, have arrived
from Halle Zoo. Both are of the Sumatran subspecies, and were born at Taman
Safari Indonesia, Bogor, Java, on 26 November 1993 and 21 January 1995
respectively.
On 28 April 2003, the African bull Tutume, born at the
Tierpark on 9 April 1999 [see IZN 46 (4), 247], went on breeding loan to
Osnabrück Zoo, where he is living with two adult African cows.
Dr Bernhard Blaszkiewitz
* *
* * *
Asian pied hornbills (Anthracoceros a. albirostris)
are breeding again at Vogelpark Heppenheim, Germany [see IZN 48 (2),
89–90, and 49 (5), 270–271]. The female is now sealed in, and images from an
infra-red camera installed in the nest can be viewed on the park's website at www.vogelpark-heppenheim.de.
* *
* * *
Following the publication of the novel Life of Pi
by the Canadian writer Yann Martel [see review, IZN 50 (2), 105–7], city
leaders in Pondicherry, India, are planning to build a zoo. Important early
scenes in the book are set in a fictitious Pondicherry zoo, and officials hope
the creation of a real one would help to bring tourists to the city.
* * *
Agoramoorthy,
G., and Harrison, B.: Ethics and animal welfare evaluations in South East Asian
zoos: a case study of Thailand. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science
Vol. 5, No. 1 (2002), pp. 1–13. [The study of three zoos in Thailand identified
several major and minor welfare problems and provided constructive suggestions
to zoo authorities, which in turn significantly improved the standards of
animal welfare. The data presented could serve as a model for other zoos and
zoo associations to follow when evaluating animal welfare locally, regionally
and globally.]
Baker, W.K.:
What do you prefer and recommend in regards to transportation in a crisis
situation, vehicle or on foot? Animal Keepers' Forum Vol. 29, No. 11
(2002), pp. 444–445.
Bashaw, M.J.,
Bloomsmith, M.A., Marr, M.J., and Maple, T.L.: To hunt or not to hunt? A
feeding enrichment experiment with captive large felids. Zoo Biology
Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp. 189–198. [The authors evaluated the effectiveness of
two different feeding enrichment techniques on 1.2 lions and 1.1 tigers at Zoo
Atlanta, Georgia. The activity budgets of each cat were compared before,
during, and after enrichment, focusing on activity levels, frequency and
variety of feeding behaviors, and occurrence of stereotypic behaviors. The
presentation of live fish increased the variety and frequency of feeding
behaviors, while presentation of horse leg bones increased the frequency of
these behaviors. Fish reduced the tigers' stereotypic behavior by half on the
day of presentation, and this change was maintained for two days following
enrichment. Bone presentation also reduced stereotypic behavior and increased
non-stereotypic activity in both species. Both of these techniques appear to
have sustained effects on behavior lasting at least two days after
presentation, which may indicate their ability to alter the animals' underlying
activity patterns.]
Benesch, A.R.,
and Hilsberg, S.: Infrarot-thermographische Untersuchungen der
Oberflächentemperatur bei Zebras. (An infra-red thermographic study of surface
temperature in zebras.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003),
pp. 74–82. [German, with English summary. Since the coat pattern in zebras is
rich in colour contrasts, surface temperatures of animals standing in the sun
are heterogenous: the black stripes are warmer than the white ones. Using an
infrared camera the authors were able to make these differences visible and
measure them. Their thermograms show that the temperature distribution reflects
the colour pattern of the zebra highly accurately. Although the absolute
surface temperature is influenced by several factors, they show that the
difference between black and white stripes increases with increasing air
temperature. A different picture emerges at night or inside a stable out of the
sunlight: the temperature still differs between black and white stripes, but in
this case the black stripes are cooler than the white ones.]
Blaszkiewitz,
B.: Der Tierkinderzoo im Tierpark Berlin – Umbau und Entwicklung im letzten
Jahrzehnt. (The children's zoo at Tierpark Berlin – alterations and development
in the last ten years.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003),
pp. 83–92. [German, with English summary. Since 1992 additions to the
children's zoo have included a contact enclosure, aviaries for budgerigars,
cockatiels and canaries, two ponds for domestic waterfowl and two enclosures
for domestic pig breeds.]
Bousquet, J.L.:
Behavior-based animal care program. Animal Keepers' Forum Vol. 29, No.
12 (2002), pp. 489–499.
Brandl, P., and
Zdánský, M.: Setting up a breeding group of gorillas in the new pavilion of
Prague Zoo. Gazella Vol. 29 (2002), pp. 22–26. [English summary of
article in Czech.]
Carrier, J.C.,
Murru, F.L., Walsh, M.T., and Pratt, H.L., Jr.: Assessing reproductive
potential and gestation in nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) using
ultrasonography and endoscopy: an example of bridging the gap between field
research and captive studies. Zoo Biology Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp.
179–187. [Although several species of large sharks have successfully mated and
given birth in captivity, few captive studies have systematically studied the
behavioral interactions and reproductive physiology of mating animals.
Similarly, comprehensive field studies of the reproductive behavior and biology
of large sharks are rare. The most complete study to date suggested that
behaviors noted in captive animals often differ significantly from those of
wild populations. Field studies of natural behaviors such as courtship and
mating are usually limited in scope because the sharks cannot be observed
through time; they cannot provide even the most basic information, such as the
duration of gestation, and the physiological changes that accompany pregnancy
are not discernible. For the past 11 years, the reproductive behavior of a wild
population of nurse sharks has been systematically studied, and 189 individuals
are readily recognizable by unique tags and/or scar patterns. Although this
study revealed the mechanics of mating and copulation, and the complex
behaviors associated with mating, it was impossible to directly measure
gestation period or evaluate paternity. So a collaborative project was
initiated with SeaWorld, Orlando, Florida, to capture actively mating females
at the study site and transport them to Orlando, where they were held and
monitored throughout gestation. (They were later returned with their surviving
offspring to the study area.) Gestation was determined to be a minimum of 131
days, multiple paternity was shown for two individual litters, and
ultrasonography and endoscopy were shown to be useful adjuncts for assessing
pregnancy and monitoring gestation in this species.]
Crofoot, M.,
Mace, M., Azua, J., MacDonald, E., and Czekala, N.M.: Reproductive assessment
of the great hornbill (Buceros bicornis) by fecal hormone analysis. Zoo
Biology Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp. 135–145. [The population of great hornbills
in the U.S.A. is rapidly aging, and captive-breeding efforts have not met
population managers' expectations for a sustainable captive group. Little is
known about the reproductive physiology of these birds. This study reports the
first data on the reproductive endocrinology of the species. The hormone
profiles of the only pair that hatched a chick in the 1999–2000 breeding season
(at San Diego Wild Animal Park) are compared to the profiles of six other pairs
of hornbills, from several U.S. institutions, who did not reproduce
successfully that season. The study investigates the estradiol, corticosterone,
and testosterone profiles of these seven pairs, establishing a base of
knowledge from which endocrine data may be used to improve the success of captive-breeding
programs. The estradiol profiles indicate a difference in hormonal patterns
between laying and non-laying females. Egg-laying females had significantly
higher estradiol concentrations during the breeding season than non-laying
females. Testosterone concentrations of the males were not significantly
different between the mates of egg-laying and non-egg-laying females. The
corticosterone concentrations tended to be lower in the females that laid eggs
than in the non-egg-laying group. The males of the egg-laying pairs showed a
significantly lower corticosterone concentration than the males of
non-egg-laying pairs. This, combined with the extremely low corticosterone
levels (compared to the other birds in the study) of the pair that hatched a
chick, suggests that adrenal activity may play a role in the reproductive
failure of some captive great hornbills.]
Culík, L.:
History of breeding of giraffes in Czech and Slovak Republic. Gazella
Vol. 29 (2002), pp. 75–83. [English summary of article in Czech.]
De
Vleeschouwer, K., Leus, K., and Van Elsacker, L.: Stability of breeding and
non-breeding groups of golden-headed lion tamarins (Leontopithecus
chrysomelas). Animal Welfare Vol. 12, No. 2 (2003), pp. 251–268. [In
Callitrichid primates, offspring remain in their natal group beyond the age of
sexual maturity, increasing the group's inclusive fitness by cooperatively
rearing their siblings. Contraception of the dominant female in these groups
may alter the associated costs and benefits of this cooperative rearing in such
a way that offspring themselves attempt to breed when a period longer than the
normal inter-birth interval of one year has elapsed. Contraception of the
dominant female may also induce changes in socio-sexual interactions between
group members, which can lead to increased aggression after a short period. In
this study, the authors investigated the occurrence of aggression in 16 captive
groups of golden-headed lion tamarins under three conditions: (1) no
contraception used; (2) contraception used and offspring younger than one year
present within the group; and (3) contraception used and all offspring in the
group older than one year. They found that aggression was more likely in larger
groups with a high proportion of males or a large number of sons. This effect
was significantly stronger for groups in which all offspring were older than
one year. Absence of dispersal opportunities and differences in male and female
reproductive strategies may explain the observed patterns. The increased instability
of large non-breeding groups presents a problem when using long-term
contraceptive methods and should be taken into account when making decisions on
the most suitable population-control procedures.]
Dorfman, L.:
Interaction with wild animals: good or bad? Animal Keepers' Forum Vol.
29, No. 12 (2002), pp. 514–517.
Finke, M.D.:
Gut loading to enhance the nutrient content of insects as food for reptiles: a
mathematical approach. Zoo Biology Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp. 147–162.
[Insects are an important food source for many animals commonly kept in zoos.
While nutrient requirements for most insectivores have not been quantitatively
determined, in captivity the reliance on only one or two species of insects is
likely to make them more prone to nutritional deficiencies. Two methods are
commonly used to enhance the nutritional value of insects. The first involves
using a powder to coat the insect with the appropriate nutrient – usually
calcium (Ca) – just before it is fed to the animal. While effective, this method
can provide variable results because the amount that adheres to the insect
depends on the characteristics of the powder, the insect species being fed, and
the ability of the insect to groom itself and remove the nutrient supplement.
Other potential problems are the possibility that the dust will change the
palatability of the insect, and that certain nutrients may not be available in
a form suitable for dusting. A more common method is `gut loading' – feeding
the insect a nutrient-dense diet so that the food contained in the
gastrointestinal tract supplements the nutrients contained in the insect's
body, thereby providing a more balanced diet for the animal being fed. To date,
this method has been well researched with regard to Ca, using crickets, mealworms
and waxworms, providing valuable information regarding Ca loading for insects,
but little information as to the level of other nutrients that should be
present in diets designed for gut loading. Recently the complete nutrient
composition of a number of invertebrates was reported, which provides a
baseline nutrient concentration of these species and identifies nutrients that
may be deficient when they are fed as a sole diet. In the present study, the
author presents a series of equations to estimate the gastrointestinal tract
contents of crickets, mealworms and silkworm larvae, by the use of which the
dietary concentration of any nutrient can be calculated, and the insect can be
supplemented such that the desired nutrient composition can be obtained. These
equations might also be used for other purposes, e.g. enabling zoo
nutritionists and veterinarians to use insects to deliver a wide range of other
compounds, such as carotenoids, and medicines, such as anthelmintics, to
captive insectivores.]
Gewalt, W.:
Murmeltier (Marmota) `ging am Stock'. (Marmot walking with a stick.) Der
Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 1 (2003), pp. 59–60. [German, no English
summary. Trained alpine marmots were exhibited by travelling showmen in 18th-
and 19th-century Europe.]
Gregorová, E.,
and Tomková, K.: Hand-rearing of Pallas cat (Otocolobus manul) at
Bojnice Zoo, Slovakia. Gazella Vol. 29 (2002), pp. 90–91. [English
summary of article in Czech.]
Guerrero, D.:
Can you tell me how to structure an ethogram or where to find a good source for
them? Animal Keepers' Forum Vol. 29, No. 12 (2002), pp. 487–488.
Guerrero, D.:
We cannot get our bobcat to cooperate. What do you recommend? Animal
Keepers' Forum Vol. 29, No. 11 (2002), pp. 447–448.
Guerrero, S.M.,
Calderón, M.L., de Pérez, G.R., and Ramírez-Pinilla, M.P.: Annual reproductive
activity of Caiman crocodilus fuscus in captivity. Zoo Biology
Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp. 121–133. [The authors describe the gonadal and
abdominal fat storage cycles for a population of brown caiman at a breeding
farm in Colombia. In spite of the controlled captive conditions, some wild
reproductive characteristics are maintained, including seasonal reproductive
activity, synchronisation in reproductive activity between males and females,
and egg-laying and birth times during the rainy season (April–August). Age at
sexual maturity, reproductive frequency, and fat body cycles appear to be
modified when compared to those of wild populations of C. c. crocodilus;
however, because of the lack of information about reproduction in field
populations of C. c. fuscus, it is difficult to know whether the latter
characteristics are specific for the subspecies or are modified by the
conditions of captivity. Contrary to what has been observed in wild C. c.
crocodilus populations and in other crocodilians, fat storage was not
related to reproductive activity in the study animals, and did not vary over
the seasons or between sexes. These differences may be attributable to the fact
that animals in captivity do not have the environmental (e.g., nutritional)
restrictions they would have in the wild, and suggest that the amount of food
provided in the farm was more than enough to cover the energetic costs of
reproduction in both males and females.]
Hosey, G.R.,
Hughes, J., and Bourne, E.: Observations on some rare infant lemurs. Der
Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 1 (2003), pp. 55–58. [The authors give
details on infant lemurs born at the Bourne private collection near Manchester,
U.K., during 2001. These represent rare taxa (Eulemur rubriventer, E.
fulvus rufus, E. fulvus albocollaris) for which little published
information is available. The infant white-collared lemur is thought to be the
first born in the U.K. In all three taxa interactions occurred between the
infant and its father as well as its mother. This appears to be different from
the pattern seen in ring-tailed lemurs.]
Jansen, W.L.,
Bos, J., Veldhuis Kroeze, E.J.B., Wellen, A., and Beynen, A.C.: Apparent
digestibility of macro-nutrients in captive polar bears (Ursus maritimus).
Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003), pp. 111–115.
Längle, T., and
Jorga, W.: Untersuchungen zur Optimierung der Haltungsbedingungen beim
Eurasischen Fischotter (Lutra lutra). (Investigations into optimal
husbandry conditions for otters.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 1
(2003), pp. 11–32. [German, with English summary. The authors analysed data on
activity of European otters at Hoyerswerda Zoo from 1989 to 2000. Their main
findings are: (1) Feeding time determines the time of highest activity; (2)
Otters prefer underwater entrances, especially in daylight; (3) Otters at
Hoyerswerda seem to have two mating seasons in May and December; and (4) Otters
mainly use the (unheated) pool from June to September.]
Lücker, H.: 4
Jahre Tundra-Volieren-Komplex im Zoo Dresden. (Dresden Zoo's tundra aviary
complex.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1–10.
[German, with English summary. The complex was opened four years ago. The
plants in the walk-through aviary are ones found in the natural habitat of the
bird species housed there. In the enclosure where arctic foxes are kept, tundra
vegetation is replaced by a mixture of grass and shrubs which can survive the
activities of the foxes. Keeping and breeding of waders and small passerine birds
has been successful, especially with redshanks (Tringa totanus) and
black grouse (Tetrao tetrix). Ringed plover (Charadrius hiaticula)
and little grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis) were found to be very
territorial during courtship and nesting. The zoo hopes to begin breeding
waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) again. Visitors are very fond of the
complex, and often spend a long time in the walk-through aviary.]
Manire, C.A.,
Walsh, C.J., Rhinehart, H.L., Colbert, D.E., Noyes, D.R., and Luer, C.A.:
Alterations in blood and urine parameters in two Florida manatees (Trichechus
manatus latirostris) from simulated conditions of release following
rehabilitation. Zoo Biology Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp. 103–120. [Mote
Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, Sarasota, Florida.]
Müller, H.: Clostridium
perfringens-Infektionen beim Auerwild (Tetrao urogallus). (Clostridium
infection in the capercaillie.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 1
(2003), pp. 38–54. [German, with English summary. Capercaillies are in danger
of extinction in central Germany. Many measures are necessary to prevent
complete extinction, such as improvement and protection of habitat combined
with release of captive-reared birds. Heavy losses occurred over several years
due to C. perfringens infection in a combined breeding, rearing and
releasing station in Thuringia. In order to prevent further losses, several
measures had to be carried out. Essential preconditions included taking into
consideration the specialised nutrition of capercaillies due to the specific conditions
of their intestinal flora, as well as the improvement of hygienic conditions
including prophylactic bacteriological and parasitological investigation.]
Nadler, T.:
Wiederentdeckung des Östlichen Schwarzen Gibbons (Nomascus nasutus) in
Vietnam. (Rediscovery of the eastern black gibbon.) Der Zoologische Garten
Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003), pp. 65–73. [German, with English summary. The occurrence
of three gibbon types is known for northern Vietnam: the white-cheeked gibbon,
the black gibbon and the eastern black gibbon. A female eastern black gibbon
was kept at Tierpark Berlin between 1962 and 1986. Only a skin and three skulls
of this species exist as museum material, and these were collected 40 years
ago. Uncertain evidence of the occurrence of this taxon has come from only
three areas, but until now had not been confirmed. At the beginning of 2002, a
population of this taxon was discovered close to the Chinese border, in Trung
Khanh district, Cao Bang province. The systematic position of this taxon – as either
a subspecies of Hylobates (Nomascus) concolor or a valid
species – has not been decisively clarified.]
Öhlinger, D.:
Omega-Wölfe in Zoorudeln – Vergleich zwischen 2 Situationen. (Bottom-ranking
wolves in a zoo pack – two situations compared.) Der Zoologische Garten
Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003), pp. 116–126. [German, with English summary. A pack of
European wolves was observed at Salzburg Zoo from March to November 1999. The
aim of the study was to detect possible alterations in the behaviour of the
wolves elicited by the transfer from their old, small enclosure to a new,
larger one. During the period of observation there were two situations, in
which two low-ranking wolves had to fight for their survival. These two
incidents highlight the importance of an effective and attentive management in
order to deal with similar situations. In addition, the study demonstrates how
a modified environment can influence the status and chances of omega-wolves
within a pack.]
Pasco, J., and
King, B.: The capture and introduction of desert bighorn sheep at the
Arizona-Sorora Desert Museum. Animal Keepers' Forum Vol. 29, No. 11
(2002), pp. 450–455. [Ovis canadensis mexicana.]
Platt, J.A.,
Brown-Palsgrove, M., and Ross, S.R.: Otter enrichment and the benefits of
keeper involvement in behavioral research. Animal Keepers' Forum Vol.
29, No. 11 (2002), pp. 457–460. [Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago; Amblonyx
cinereus.]
Pryor, G.S.:
Protein requirements of three species of parrots with distinct dietary
specializations. Zoo Biology Vol. 22, No. 2 (2003), pp. 163–177.
[Dietary protein deficiency is considered a major obstacle in the evolution of
highly specialized nectarivorous and frugivorous birds. Proposed physiological
mechanisms that enable such specialists to subsist on low-protein diets include
minimized endogenous protein losses, which contribute to reduced protein
requirements. The author compared these traits among nectarivorous red lories,
frugivorous Pesquet's parrots and granivorous budgerigars. His results suggest
that, relative to budgerigars, red lories and Pesquet's parrots have low
endogenous protein losses and reduced crude protein (CP) requirements. Based on
nitrogen balance analyses, diets containing 1.0%, 3.2%, and 8.2% CP (on a dry
matter basis) would meet the minimal protein requirements for maintenance for
red lories, Pesquet's parrots, and budgerigars, respectively.]
Ruch, P., and
Wunderwald, C.: Physiologische Keimflora im Kot von Tüpfelhyänen. (Bacteria in
faeces of spotted hyena.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003),
p. 127. [German, no English summary.]
Ruempler, G.:
Elefant, Nashorn, Flusspferd – die klassischen `Dickhäuter' in der
mittelalterlichen Plastik. (Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus – the classic
`pachyderms' in the plastic art of the Middle Ages.) Der Zoologische Garten
Vol. 73, No. 2 (2003), pp. 93–110. [German, with English summary. Sculptures
and reliefs in stone, wood and bronze on and in churches of 11th- to
16th-century Europe are described (with 17 photos). While representations of
elephants appear fairly frequently, those of rhino and hippo are rather
uncommon. The elephant represents both a positive and a negative symbol and is
therefore ambivalent. The same is true of the rhinoceros, which as a `unicorn'
can have either positive or negative significance. The hippopotamus appears in
the Old Testament book of Job as Behemoth, and has a negative role as a symbol
of the devil.]
Spicka, M.,
Kardová, L., and Karda, J.: Hand-rearing of the foal of Przewalski horse (Equus
przewalskii) in Prague Zoo breeding and rehabilitation centre (CHARSA) at
Dolní Dobrejov. Gazella Vol. 29 (2002), pp. 32–34. [English summary of
article in Czech.]
Virkaitis, V.:
The effects of foraging bins on callitrichid behavior. Animal Keepers' Forum
Vol. 29, No. 12 (2002), pp. 505–509. [Philadelphia Zoo, Pennsylvania; Saguinus
bicolor and Leontopithecus chrysomelas.]
Wiesner, H.,
and Maltzan, J.G.: Hellabrunner Notfallset. (Emergency equipment at Munich
Zoo.) Der Zoologische Garten Vol. 73, No. 1 (2003), pp. 33–37. [German,
with very brief English summary.]
Zharkikh, T.L.,
Yasynetska, N.I., and Zvegintsova, N.S.: Przewalski horse in the zone of
Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Gazella Vol. 29 (2002), pp. 93–109. [In
1998 the Askania Nova Reserve, Ukraine, launched a programme to establish a
free-ranging population of Przewalski horses in the 200,000-hectare exclusion
zone around Chernobyl. It is estimated that the area could support a population
of at least 1,000 horses.]
Publishers of the periodicals listed:
Animal Keepers'
Forum, American Association of Zoo Keepers, 3601 S.W. 29th Street, Suite 133,
Topeka, Kansas 66614, U.S.A.
Animal Welfare, Universities
Federation for Animal Welfare, The Old School, Brewhouse Hill, Wheathampstead,
Herts. AL4 8AN, U.K.
Gazella, Prague Zoo, U
trojského zámku 120/3, 171 00 Praha 7, Czech Republic.
Journal of
Applied Animal Welfare Science, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 10
Industrial Avenue, Mahwah, New Jersey 07430–2262, U.S.A.
Zoo Biology, John Wiley
& Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158, U.S.A.
Der Zoologische
Garten, Urban & Fischer Verlag GmbH, P.O. Box 100537, D-07705 Jena,
Germany.