Diffrent Seals

Five diffrent species of pinnipeds has lived together in the present sealion pool : Elephant seals ( three of them ! ). african and south american fur seals, californian and patagonian sealions !

Picture taken from an old guidebook.

What a wonderful picture from an era that will not be repeated with so many species in one enclosure.
And any old pic with an elephant seal in it is a winner for me.

Sure, it was cool to see that, but i can't remember, I was too young when i've visited Duisburg Zoo for the first time, but I can't imagine that one of the species have bred sucessfully in this combination.

Yeah, its a little bid sad, elephants seals are not anymore in zoos, but on the other side, its better, because its not possible to create optimal livining conditions for them in captivity.

An why is that?

I hardly see any big "problem" in keeping Elephant seals in captivity.

Any decen enclosure, with a little more decent homework would be make a great elephant seal.

And I sure hope that in the near future, some Zoos start keeping them.
Them and some not-so-common-in-zoo seals species.

Zoos can't offer an enclosure with is big enough for a social group of elephant seals, they don't live in pairs or trios, tehy live in lareg colonies.

Elephant seals spend most the time of their live sin the ocean and dive up to several hundreds meters. Only for mating, giving birth and changing fur, tehy came for a few weeks to the land.

The bulls live only a short time together with the females, the rest of the year, they live in male groups, fighting for the best places at the ebaches or for females,

these are all things, you can't do in captivity. Thats why zoos has stopped keeping them, a realyl wise decision. Elephants elas have never really bred in zoos, there were many births, but most of the calves were dead born or died shortly aftzer the birth, just a handfull survived and could be raised. I just know one, whcih reached the adult aga, the male"Eric", born at Antwerp Zoo and later send to Berlin Zoo.

Most elephnat seals have not reached a high age in zoos, they all died a few years above the ten, many died younger.

I'm sure, no european zoo will keep them anymore ever in the future, but you can see rescued young elephant seals at San Francisco zoo, but they are just a short time there and will released back to the wild.

This is a shame, I saw a stuffed southern elephant seal at Tring and the size of them is truly breath-taking, it was so big that it wouldn't fit in the display cases and instead had to sit on top of them!

Zebraduiker

While I believe that your points may be valid under certain circunstances, they're are not, by any means, complelty true.

Lets see:

Space - they should indeed require a quite massive enclosure. Possibly hard to get and expensive to built and mantain but not impossible.
I think that they have been kept away from Zoos mainly because of this fact -» they do not call enough public to justify their cost (built/mantain)
Especially because, let's be honest : there are animals that would need (even in proportion) need more space in captivity and are kept and bred.

Social group - do you really think that they would need a huge colony? I don't (and yes, I'm not an expert by any means), based on the fact there are - again as above - severall spp that in the wild live in huge colonies (and we dont even have to go very far - just look at common seals or sea lions or to common african hoofstock) are kept in zoo very sucessfully. Especially based on the fact that ES doesnt trully bond to each other or have a social relation. They mainly just live together because they have to.


Deaths- Well, untill decent husbandry is put to practice it's normal to have high rates of mortality and low rates of breeding. This happen in all spp. I dont necessary relate those deaths and low breeding rates to the hardness of the Spp to be kept in captivity but more to the low standards of husbandry of those times.

So, I dont really see what the whole "fuss" of keeping ES in Zoos as long it's under good and apropriate conditions.
And we could even call "walrus" to this conversation, as they're also very rare in Zoos.

Happy 2010
-n