taronga's elephants pregnant already » Taronga Zoo

27-01-2007

what? is pat going to live at monarto? lol. sorry pat

27-01-2007

28 glyn, twenty %#@!&*$ eight!

27-01-2007

jeez glyn, i was excitied about the elephants, screw u lol

27-01-2007

and i hreard from benny monarto was getting smaantha and charlie, i will call mogo, i have known about monartos plans for a while, i jst havnt got around to calling mogo, i mainly need to talk about going to bullens animal world----ITS GONNA BE SO GOOD!!!!!!

27-01-2007

lol i was really bored tonight. needed something to do

27-01-2007

melbourne used to display all three great apes. but the chimps left in early 90's so they could better focus on gorillas. i don't think they have any plans to ever house the species again.

Chimpanzees
28-01-2007

Auckland no longer has breeding chimps -- the only one that they have is an ex Tea Party chimp that couldnt be reintegrated , and is basically in retirement .
Hamilton Zoo has taken over from Auckland as a chimp breeding centre .

but wait , theres Wellington Zoo ......
for some (unknown ?) reason there has been prolofic breeding of chimps and baboons at Wellington zoo , to the point where two troops of each have to share the same enclosure with the same species
There is approx 20 chimpanzees in Wellington zoo -- the zoo doesnt update its website that often , and I hope to visit the zoo again when school resumes in another week .

chimps in the region
29-01-2007

first of all, lets establish that the chimps in the region are a bit of a mixed bag...??? is this true? to what extent are the regions chimps 'hybridised'? if anybody knows?
the degree to which taronga and wellingotns animals are related i would estimate to be quite high. particularly considering not only the consistently high nukber of births both institutions have had over a number of decades but also the relatively small number of founders (relative to the number of births and regional population as a whole) and the exchange of Snowy in the 1980s to taronga from wellingotn, where he became the dominant animal.
pat where did melbourne display its chimpanzees in the past? does there enclosure still exist? the chimp enclosure at perth was demolished fairly recently for the expansion of the second elephant paddock. i am unsure if perth aims to hold chimpanzee's long-term but they have highlighted projected involvement with gorilla (proposed) and orang only.
i would also like to know what mogo's future involvement will be, as well as hamiltons long range 'forecast' for their collection.
so far weve got a fair bit of info, please keep digging.

29-01-2007

a group of about 4 chimps used to be housed in the great ape grottoes along with orangutans and gorillas.

fortunately the gorillas and more recently orangs have now moved on.

unfortunately rigo hasn't

29-01-2007

oh and i'm just guessing here but i would say that most of our chimp population is a hybrid one of the different subspecies like you suggest glyn. i doubt its even totally known who's what and where from.

30-01-2007

i beleive hearing soething about tarongas, or someones records where lost in a small fire, so the regions chimps have little background information left

30-01-2007

I haven't heard that zoo boy, but the chimp studbook is pretty complete for the region, as are the zoo's records. With species like chimps, where individuals are well-recognised, and well managed,there are so many copies of records and studbooks around, that even if a zoo's records were destroyed, collecting the basic pedigree data is pretty easy for them.

30-01-2007

zoopro do you know if they are they of mixed origins then? a few japanese zoos recently collaboratively DNA tested all their chimps so as to recognise and develop a program for the pure-breds.

of course that wouldn't be particuarly practical in our case, but i would be interested to know where most of them originate from.

30-01-2007

i agree with you pat, it would be extremely 'un-do-able'. i guess the chimps in our region are just like our lions, best kept as a mixed bag for education, advocacy and research purposes. that would be the most effective outcome from any CBP for the species.
could you imagine trying to phase the hybrid chimps out and trying to start again with pure-bred chimps. it would be a nightmare. 48 chimps, many young or middle-aged, long lived, socially complex and difficult to integrate strangers together. it would be a nightmare.
chimps will probably have to be split internationally into several sub-management groups (if this hasnt already happened). there will be b\hybrids and purebreds and seperate studbooks for each viable sub-species. and of these groups there will probably have to be a high level of regional management, for example, im sure there would be more than just one hybrid sub-group and one sub-species group in US zoos. i imagine there would be mulitple management groups.

30-01-2007

how are we going with our program for sumatran orangs. what percentage of our regional population is pure and hybrid, and demographically and genetically how viable is the pure-bred group???