Well, I've taken photos but I don't know yet if any are any good. At any rate - there's absolutely no shortage of gallery photos from the Singapore collections.
I loved the hog badgers, even though I'd seen them wild in China earlier. The tarsiers were bounding about like hoppy gremlins, and the flying squirrels were very active. Your experience may have been more to do with the time of night perhaps? (As in, too early in the evening - I got there later - obviously different species have different activity periods during the night). I don't think I saw the clouded leopard at all from memory, though (but I didn't really care, I've seen plenty). The slow loris was brilliant! I hadn't realised how intelligent they would seem, probably their teddy-bear appearance over-rode their primate-iness in my mind, and the Night Safari one was the only one I'd seen really active apart for the one at Perth Zoo. Did you see the cloud rats? They were a real highlight for me. I like giant rodents some of the animals are really unsuitable for a night zoo. I saw quite a few species which plainly were just trying to sleep The ride at one point goes through (rather than past) an enclosure which contains Malayan tapirs. That was the best enclosure on the ride. did you see the crab-eating raccoon? I completely forgot about it, so didn't watch the show, and then later Zooish reminded me about it. D'oh. I don't know if they still have it or not though.
The tapir ambled down the hill and passed right in front of the tram when I went through the exhibit. It was a cool 'wild' sort of experience. I do have one question about this exhibit though, are tapirs anti-social? The seem like the type of creatures that would tolerate each other but I've never seen more than a pair in an exhibit.
Malayan tapirs are not social at all Pat. They are usually kept solitary except for mating pairs and female with young. The Night Safari tram ride has "drive-thru" zones for deer (Malayan sambar, Indian hog, barasingha, axis, thamin, muntjac), cattle (Asian water buffalo, banteng) and Malayan tapir.
The crab-eating raccoon is at River Safari! She's geriatric and semi-retired though, so she may not make daily public appearances.
Oh shame. I've seen photos of Brazilian tapirs in 3's and 4's and was really racking my brain for a time I'd seen more than two Malayans. Thanks for the answer though.
On tiger / lion genetics, it is best for you not to comment any further as a body of scientific evidence exists to exactly do that; recognise individual species and subspecies. There are good and discernable genetic and morphological differences in both lion and tiger to make for subspecies (Asiatic / African lions - Malayan / Sumatran tiger). Hence, yes ... it is fair we should separate both into pure-bred (sub-)species breeding programmes for these. It has all to often been in the past of zoo management that we hop-scotch so much in captivity that we can no longer speak of maintaining pure-breds nor something resembling a wild state. If we continue to make those mistakes well into the future, we will have to catch up soon with evolutionary forces that have made species into subspecies or even separate species over hundreds and thousands of years on the geological time scale. It is not at our discretion to make judgements to simply ignore and try to reverse evolutionary development by throwing all gorillas into one pot and all bears into one pot (so to speak). That is ...., if you do not wish to open the sluice gates to an evolutionary hell-hole. We have already made a big mess as it is with biodiversity and the latter exists for a very good reason and is the fabric of the web of life of which we Homo sapiens are just a sorry fairly short branch and an even shorter time-line.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that this is a 'lost in translation' issue as that's a rather incredible statement. Otherwise... Well, who are you, exactly, to tell me what I can and can't comment on? You seem to have completely missed my point. My position isn't based on whether there are discernible genetic differences between tiger subspecies. I'm not disputing that, nor would I claim the sort of expertise to make any statement about it. Though you do seem to have some sort of misplaced reverence for genetic differences that are the result not of exploiting separate niches within the one ecosystem, but of the same population becoming isolated over time. My concern is actually about economics. We have (very) finite resources for captive management of endangered species. We are not and cannot (without a massive change in economic priorities that is simply not going to happen) managing every species that is vulnerable to extinction. My point was simply that the relatively tiny differences between Asian and African lions probably aren't so valuable that we should prioritise them over maintaining species that are otherwise going to become extinct. There is no reasonable prospect of a future in which the same level of biodiversity can be maintained in its wild state, so I would rather approach conservation with the practical question of whether individual species can fill a vacant niche. The alternative, as we are doing now, is to invest millions of dollars in preserving, like museum pieces, a handful of genetic mutations that are an accident of geography and which have no reasonable prospect of being viable again in the wild. We are not living in a vacuum in which we have to decide whether to ignore evolution. We've done that already.
Not to sidetrack this thread too much, and I definitely see your point about conservation and economics, and the harsh reality of a need to prioritise some species over others, but lions and tigers, and a couple of other megafauna taxa, are probably exceptions to the rule. There are enough holders of these species to allow multiple subspecies to be maintained healthily in captivity. It is entirely possible that Asian and one subspecies of African Lion, and Sumatran, Malayan and Amur Tigers could all be maintained on a global scale. This would obviously require very good management, and an emphasis on removing generic animals from the programme (by attrition). Zoos will want to maintain these species, so why not get them to maintain as much genetic diversity as possible in the process? This won't work for maintaining subspecies of most other species, but it can for a few cases.
All very true, but would you then support Malayan tigers being released into India and Indochina, where they would (most likely) be entirely adept and capable of filling the niche being left vacant by the decline of wild tigers? The need for tigers in India isn't any less than it is in Malaya, and yet Bengal tigers are not being managed in any systematic way in captivity (and are almost entirely hybrids anyway). I'm not an advocate of throwing out genetic material unnecessarily. My only point is that we need to be thinking about whether a species can fulfill a useful role in restoring ecosystems, rather than merely maintaining genes for their own sake, at the detriment of others. To perhaps use a more apposite example - why on earth are we obsessing over functionally extinct northern white rhinos, when we could import a viable population of southern whites instead? I struggle to believe that they wouldn't adapt.
You might be right for the 2 white rhino species, but Amur and Sumatran tigers are clealy adopted to their respecive environments and both would struggle more if they would be released in the wrong environment. Plus some species manage to generate funds unavailable for conservation otherwise that can be used to maintain different subspecies. In most of these cases we are dealing with large recognisable mammals who managed to get funds and attention that give conseration organisation the resources to invest more in those then they are able to invest in less "popular" species.
Chlidonias has reminded me that I didn't post anything about my second visit to Jurong. So a few scattered thoughts: I was very unlucky with my choice of days for the Waterfall Aviary, as they had a team of tree loppers in cutting back the vegetation with chainsaws. Not exactly ideal bird-spotting conditions. Thankfully the aviary is large enough that it was still open and there were pockets where the noise was quite some way away, but I feel sure there would have been more activity in the aviary on virtually any other day. I did go to both token feedings and they cut the noise pollution for them, which was considerate. So many superb starlings - they're clearly the predominant species in the aviary. Why do zoos do that, btw? Aquariums do it as well, allowing one species to become a majority of individuals in a mixed-species setting. Jurong has also done it with Lory Loft and it's not clear to me why having 90% of the birds in the aviary be rainbow lorikeets is more advantageous than a more even distribution of rainbows, dusky lories, red and blue lories etc. When I went on the Sunday both birds of paradise aviaries were open, but on the Thursday one of them (can't remember which now - perhaps the one furthest on the right?) was closed to encourage breeding. Cool. On my visit with Zooish I had him keep a tab of the birds WRS was to send to Australia. It was a long list - flamingoes, crowned cranes, crowned pigeons (I like crowns I guess), lots of hornbills, turacoes, hyacinth macaws, Queen of Bavaria conures... but he said I couldn't have any birds of paradise. Maybe if they have chicks you might reconsider, mate? The Jewels of Asia aviary is fantastic but I confess to being slightly frustrated that, even only a few weeks after opening, the signage for the side aviaries bore very little resemblance to the actual inhabitants. This is a bugbear of mine at zoos everywhere - if you're going to change what species is in an exhibit, change the signage. I know there's a cost involved but misleading signage is a missed opportunity for education, and isn't that one of the reasons we give for keeping animals in captivity? Again I was struck by how quiet the entire place was. It's not a massive site but often I felt like I was the only one there (though I did pop my head into both bird shows at various times and there was perhaps 100 people at the generic one and about 50 at the birds of prey at 4PM). Hopefully the move to Mandai increases attendance because one of the world's top two bird collections deserves it. Between Bali Bird Park and Jurong I've ticked off the vast, vast majority of bucket list bird species now. A couple still to go include kiwi and kea (kakapo being well beyond my means), hummingbirds and emperor penguins. I expect to tick two of those four off later this year.
I suppose it was the Red BoP aviary that was closed? Perhaps WRS could offer some King BoP, they've been breeding well Your choice of visit date was truly well-timed, Parrot Paradise is now closed for maintenance works till April.
no mention of cocks-of-the-rock? Are they still in the bird of paradise aviaries?? kakapo could be possible. You just need to time a NZ visit for a Sirocco showing (Hix managed it!), or maybe if they open that chick-rearing facility at Invercargill which was talked about. I still haven't seen a hummingbird.
I did see that a page back and thought I'd replied. Slow loris aren't even the cutest lorisidae member. Have you had the chance to see a potto?
I've realised there are various posts here that I should have replied too. So here goes. No shows, unfortunately. Nice big enclosure for them though. I can't remember now whether it was a crab-eating or common raccoon now, but there was definitely one in the show. Absolutely agree in both cases. I wouldn't advocate needless mixing of sub-species, and certainly not where there are obvious environmental adaptations separating them like Sumatran and Amur tigers. ! That was close. It's hard to see what they're doing that would require closing the entire area for a couple of months though. Again can't remember what species was in the closed-off aviary but it was the one furthest on the right as you face the aviaries from the hornbill/toucan side. Ready to take delivery of the Kings as soon as you can get them here. Saw the cocks-of-the-rock, though not nearly as close up as the Greater bird-of-paradise, unfortunately. How far in advance do they announce Sirocco's appearances? Slow loris are my only member of the loris family. I would love a couple of Australian zoos to commit to re-establishing them here. They tick all the boxes - on the live import list, an IRA for primates is in place (I think?), they're small and easily provided for, they're south-east Asian so fit into typical geographic theming requirements for our zoos and they're conservation dependent. They're also charismatic. Let's get it done. When I left Singapore I didn't really have a concept of when I might be back. I still don't, but less than four weeks later I already want to return! I don't think I'd bother with River Safari or Night Safari without significant changes to check out, but Jurong, the Zoo and Aquarium would be on the list. Having said that, in the days after getting home I struggled so much with the thought of not having another trip booked that... I booked one. This one's going to be a bit longer, more logistically complicated and certainly more expensive.
no actual date set yet, but this year he will be at Zealandia (in Wellington) in winter/spring. Zealandia is where Hix saw him too.
