After watching the latest Attenborough series,"Madagascar" on BBC2, I was wondering if Indri have ever been kept in any UK collections at all?
In his book “The Management of Wild Mammals in Captivity” (1964) Lee Crandall mentions that “eight or ten specimens were received at the Paris Menagerie in 1939, all of which died within one month”. I cannot recall ever reading any other references to indri in European zoos.
Very few indri have ever been maintained in captivity. There are a few - and breeding - in semi captivity on Madagascar .. (off-topic) Baldur pm me ... on these + sifaks.
Richard Weigl's book "Longevity of Mammals in Captivity" gives 7 DAYS as the longevity record for an Indri in captivity [San Diego; Sept. 1965]. Either he was unaware of the Paris Menagerie animals, or else Crandall was wrong about (implying) some of them lived for almost a month. Can anyone shed more light on the Paris specimens?
Not Indris, but watching the series made me remember seeing the Sifakas at Port Lympne, that was a really special moment, he did two full circuits of the enclosure just for us and then went indoors. How many Sifakas do they have now?
2 males according to ISIS; when we last went they were in two seperate enclosures, one remaining in the original with the other in the primate rows just beyond the manor, both mixed with ring-tailed lemurs.
KB, I get the message that your inbox is full and you need to clear some of it before you can receive a new message!
Crandall gives the source for his comments about the indri in Paris as:- Hill, W. C. Osman (1953) Primates. 1. Strepsirhini. (Interscience Publishers Inc., New York and University Press Edinburgh.) which might provide further information about the Paris animals.
I wonder if the success rate for keeping Sifakas in zoos in the past was any better than with Indri(s)? As zoos are now keeping Sifakas successfully, does that mean Indri would nowadays survive in European zoos too- if they ever became available?
Maybe it's not the right place to say this, but I really enjoyed the Madagascar series, particularly the last episode where you could imagine that David Attenborough was just sitting on your sofa, chatting about lemurs etc, without the usual unnecessary music and computer wizardry. Fascinating.
I'm not sure about this; several sifaka species are still very difficult to keep successfully in captivity, and even relocated wild indris rarely breed.
As long as acclimatisation of indri outside their habitat on Madagascar has not been fully accomplished, its habitat severely comprimised by human encroachment and their numbers and distribution at low numbers it would make no sense and their husbandry management is not fully understood. The latter also the reason why Duke Uni never attempted to acquire them. Right now ...., what makes sense is to interconnect forest patches containing indri populations and connecting those with available unoccupied habitat. As for sifakas they have been more acclimatised to semi captivity in Madagascar itself. Consequently, more sifakas have been exported overseas and given proper and specialist lemurid husbandry management will do rather well in captivity. For both the P. coquereli and P. verrauxi I would agree to a captive safeguard population. Some of the other spp. might benefit as well in order to increase numbers more prolifically.
Something that I found interesting in watching the series was the reference to both ringtails and Verreaux's sifaka as being the hardiest and adaptable lemur species. Given how successful ringtails are in captivity I can understand this. I do wonder whether if sifakas were more obtainable that the husbandry issues could be worked out. I'm not familiar enough with sifakas (having never seen a live specimen or worked with them), but I would imagine that the more sensitive species of colobus & langur would be a good analogue, for diets anyway. Is it specifically a diet issue in captivity that is the problem with sifakas?
There is a stuffed indri at the jardin des plantes Gran Galerie de L¨Evolution natural history mueseum in the hall of extinct and near extinct species. Is it one of the indris mentioned by Crandall ? Who knows. Well there is a picture of this animal on a blog on paris museums. google indri gran galerie evolution jardin des plantes
Do you know how long they have been in semi-captivity? Is the breeding only a recent thing, or has there been a history of this?
Incidentally, “Handbook of Living Primates” (Napier & Napier, 1967) corroborates Crandall’s comments about indri in Paris in 1939, commenting:- “…has never been exhibited in zoos outside Madagascar except for a very brief period in Paris in 1939..…” unfortunately, though, no further details are given as to how long they actually lived.
Previous discussion: http://www.zoochat.com/2/what-would-you-like-see-17492/ with link (from 2006) to reserve in Madagascar where indri have bred: Rare indri lemur born in forest reserve in Madagascar
On David Attenborough and the Giant Egg he got very close to an indri with the help of a ranger. I think this must have bern in the reserve that's been mentioned.
