Dugongs at Sydney Aquarium? » Sydney Aquarium

02-10-2008

oh thanks, last time I went to singapore aquarium was 6 years ago and I couldn't remember if they were Dugongs or Manatees

02-10-2008

I stand corrected - thanks

03-10-2008

You sure about singapore aquarium? There are at least manatees somewhere in Singapore (as one of their offspring went to portugal), and as far as i know only Toba Aquarium and the one in Australia have dugongs...

03-10-2008

Singapore Underwater World has dugong(s); the Singapore Zoo has manatees

03-10-2008

Worldwide, only five dugongs are held in captivity. Two are the featured attraction of Toba Aquarium in Japan; the third, named Gracie, is at Underwater World, Sentosa Island, Singapore; and the last two are found in Sea World on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

This is from wikipedia so it probably has not been updated:
I believe Seaworld only has Piggy the male?
Also didnt a new Seaworld or something in Indonesia have some?

Indigenous Australians are still premitted to hunt them...

03-10-2008

Has a manatee or a Dugong ever been successfully bred in captivity, all the articles on the net I find are vague in saying whether there has been an actual birth,

03-10-2008

There have been multiple manatee births in europe, in the 70's and 80's in Amsterdam, and other births at Nürnberg, and Berlin in the past. Since then there has been at least one birth at Arnhem, Beauval and Odense and Randers Regnskov has had at least 1 miscarriage.

And Singepore Zoo also had at least one succesfull birth...

03-10-2008

oh, thank you very much jwer,

03-10-2008

There have been several manatee births at facilites in Florida, USA.

04-10-2008

Beijing zoo has bred Caribbean manatees in the past too

06-10-2008

I can confirm that the plan at the moment is to send the seals at sydney aquarium to sea world and send the dugongs down, the renovation on the seal sanctuary was a few years back and was done when sydney aq was still owned by sydney attractions company. Now they've been bought out by village roadshow money ain't a worry and i wouldn't be suprised that they would want the dugongs here as GSO beats sydney's seal exhibit easy so dugongs gives them something no one else has. As for the plans for breeding no one can assume that they will breed them, at taronga we keep the pair of leopard seals without any plans for breeding them.

06-10-2008

hmmm, thanks a lot guess that confirms and clears the main question.

06-10-2008

Hey zooworker, you say " at taronga we keep the pair of leopard seals without any plans for breeding them."
Why?
Why not breed them? It would be a world first and there would be any number of zoos which would love to acquire a young leopard seal.

06-10-2008

As just because we keep two of them doesn't mean we want to see the species in captivity in general. The only reason the leopard seals are there is because under law we can't return them to the wild, so we keep them for education. Making the move to breed the pair just to say oh we've bred them isn't the move we want to make. Leopard seals are great to have, but we don't want to breed them for other zoo's just because it goes against our aims for keeping them

06-10-2008

I think Taronga has every right not to breed them because if another one washes up in Australia where else can it go but there. Maybe if there were a few more institutions that were capable of keeping them then taronga could start thinking about breeding them.