Dose anyone know the history of colchester zoo chimps and their encoulrse ? » Colchester Zoo

Dose anyone know the history of colchester zoo chimps and their encoulrse ?
22-10-2008

any help would be much appericated

many thnx

22-10-2008

i know that the house was opened in 1992 by radio 1 dj Simon Mayo.
as for the history of the chimps, check out da gallery under colchester zoo, there is a pic of da poster in the house about all the chimps and their historys.

22-10-2008

At least one of the Chimps is related to Coco from Twycross because they have a chocalate coloured youngster at Colchester.

23-10-2008

'chimp world' was a big investment for Colchester back then, and it cost £750,000 to build, and was constructed on the site of the lion/indian tiger paddocks. This was pre hotwire and pre monkey world, so I think at the time it was looked upon as progressive, much as the new chimp exhibit at the Welsh Mountain zoo was. That awful twycross-type walled children's playground had just been completed for the chimpanzee group at Windsor safari park, so Colchester's enclosure must have looked amazing in comparison.

Previous to this, the chimps were in the old giraffe house (where 'dragons of komodo' is now, then tapir/babirusa enclosures for a while), which gave them the strange but not entirely undesirable situation of having more indoor than outdoor space. The house was split into narrow, but very tall, interconnecting cages that were about three-quarters the width of the house, with a tall, glass viewing instead of a safety barrier. There were no direct windows into the enclosure. There were 2 outdoor cages, maybe the same height as the sobell monkey cages at london, only with far less opportunity for climbing. After the 1987 hurricane, some of the zoos carnivores were housed here, leaving the chimps with only one outdoor cage as far as I can remember (jaguars/ spotted hyenas). The amur tigers were housed permanently in what had been the outdoor giraffe yard and I think their dens might have been adjacent to the chimpanzees indoor quarters, but not inside the building itself.

I don't think that new chimps have arrived at Colchester for a couple of decades at least (but I'm not 100%), and with contraceptives the group has shrunk a bit. I think the contraceptives failed a couple of years ago resulting in that last baby. The outdoor area is looking particularly dated these days, and I would expect that it won't be long before they give the chimpanzees an improved exhibit.

23-10-2008

I heard they received at least one chimp from Twycross in recent years but the chocolate youngster produced at Colchester is interesting as you would expect both normal- coloured parents(not just one) would have to be carriers of the recessive gene for 'chocolate' in order to produce it. Did they receive two recessive 'carriers' from Twycross, or an already pregnant female perhaps? Does Anyone know the exact details of its parentage?

I looked at the chimpanzee family tree photo in the Gallery. The last baby shown is Tumba born 2004. Is that the chocolate baby(its difficult to tell from the photo)?

23-10-2008

Just out of interest does anyone have any photos of the enclosure?
Also, does anyone have any of the chimp enclosure at Colwyn Bay?
Thanks

24-10-2008

Yep i believe thats the one.

24-10-2008

The male Pippin , son of Coco and male Bimbo , born in 1986 at Twycross , went to Colchester in 1992 . I am not aware of any other Twycross chimps going to Colchester .

Twycross produced another chocolate chimp by breeding Coco with her normal-coloured son Bobby , this was jambo , the 'bald' chimp .

24-10-2008

Yes, I thought Pippin was the one from Twycross. I'm surprised he could father a chocolate baby with an unrelated female- unless the Colchester female he bred with quite by chance carried the same gene? Otherwise the normal procedure is what they did at Twycross, e.g. breeding Coco with her normal son(who also had the chocolate gene) to produce another Chocolate one.

29-10-2008

many thnaks for everyones info ... has been very helpfull have found a few names of old chimps;

Hannah female died 05

Mandy female

Bobby male

if anyone knows a bit about them please reply ..... or any other chimps there please say

thnx again for the info ..... keep it up

01-11-2008

mandy died in 2001 i think.
didn't there used to be american alligators where the slender snouted crocs are now in chimp world?

01-11-2008

yes, there were previously 2 American Alligators in that pool.

'Chimp World' in actual fact cost £250,000 , not £750,000 as I said before.