Taronga has a new maby Francis Langur!!!!!!!!!!! it being handrased after it was rejected by its mother here is a video and ill post the news article when i find it Video - Baby monkey rejected by parents - The Sydney Morning Herald
I was at the zoo yesterday. I was going to post my usual whinging post about the lack of babies. Lucky zoochat was playing up this morning and I couldn't get on. I would have had to eat my words. Now for the silvery gibbons.
This is great news! Finally! We have been waiting a long time for the Francois' langurs to breed. Saw the bub on the news tonight. In contrast to its parents, its bright orange. Hope its the first of many.
Hey, good stuff mstickmanp! Thanks for that! An interesting site. Acually, kiang, primates are among the exotic animals which can be imported by Aussie zoos without too much restriction; and the region has a commitment to Francois' langurs, so hopefully the species will expand here.
I would hope the ARAZPA region will look not only at the Indochinese Francois' langurs (which are in their 2-3's) but also at an SE Asian mainland langur species, preferably dusky langur. Since, you are writing there are less of any Biosecurity restrictions on primates, it is imperative that ARAZPA diversify its primate collection and practice some population management for its SE Asian leaf-eating monkeys. The current sit is: Javan silver leaf monkey (Melbourne: 1.1), Francois langur (Taronga: 1.1.1) and dusky leaf monkey (Adelaide: 3.2). As for SE Asian macaques ... crested macaque (Perth: 3.1), lion-tailed macaque (Adelaide: 1.3 and Melbourne: 0.2) and Tonkean macaque (Perth: 2.0) + 3.4. bonnet macaque in Auckland. If one wishes to improve upon this sit ... it is a wonder wonderland!
I understand Melbourne zoo used to have a large breeding group of Javan Langurs, but I think the idea was to delete them to make way for more Francois Langurs, it will be interesting to see how things pan out in the next few years with the Langurs, maybe there could be a few more imports of them
I too would love to see a diverse collection of monkeys in Australian zoos; however the only cercopithecine and colobine monkeys in favour with the primate TAG seem to be Hamadryas baboons, mandrills, Francois' leaf monkeys and Eastern black and white colobus. There are of course other species currently in the country such as De Brazza's guenons, dusky leaf monkeys and various macaques, but no-one except the smaller zoos seem to care whether these survive or die out. The hard truth is that there are not many zoos in the region, and places for monkeys are strictly limited. Added to this is the tendency for zoos to concentrate on apes instead of monkeys (presumably thought to be more "box-office") and of course the more ignorant members of the public call apes "monkeys" anyway.
i think this TAG is, through a tradition of settng goals and sticking to them and of course quarantine probably the most robust one in the region. in saying that not all the decisions i have agreed with or seen sense in; for example the decision to phase out de'brazzas guenon (pure) in favour of hybrid colobus monkeys when both species were in relatively low numbers anyway..... the decision to go with Francois Langurs seemed a great idea at the time but given Adelaide's success with Dusky Langur and a small but viable breeding group i think Australia's zoos would have been wise to continue working with this species, particularly given that importing more Francois seems far from straightforward as outlined previously and also, as happy as this birth is.....its taken 3 years to get to this point. at this rate, without radical changes in terms of other zoo interest and more imports and breeding it will take a long time for this species to reach 'viable'. ironically, it could be seen that Adelaide's success with Dusky Langur may be a barrier to establishing Francois unless someone knows if Adelaide would be prepared to hold both species during a phase in/phase out period?
Would it take much space to hold both species? I realise that for many of the zoo going public, a monkey is a monkey, and these two languars would look alike. People like us would be delighted to have both species however amnd would it really be time, space or money consuming for a zoo to have both species? The main problem that I have with the tags is that the Australian zoos are becoming rather bland with the 'one reprasentative' of a genre of animals. As so many species cannot be imported wouldn't it be great if the Australasian region become a 'hotbed' for those that can be imported, especially the primates, cats and dogs. We already have a great reprasentative of the apes.
by ARAZPA planning standards, yes, i would guess that maintaining two breeding groups of langurs would be seen as 'unsustainable'. thats based on previous planning decisions. on the other hand, across all TAGS species previously dropped or listed as phase-outs are subject to renewed interest, so there may yet be cause for optimism.
