South-american-bush-dog exhibit - Brasilia zoo

@David Matos Mendes do you know how common bush dogs are in Brazilian zoos?

@Coelacanth18
Sure, well, although they are relatively common animals in the wild around here, it's not that easy to see them in zoos as other brazilian animals like amazons, macaws, grisons, rheas, jaguars, anteaters, etc. I have actually only seen the bush dogs in two zoos I have visited here (Belo Horizonte zoo and Brasilia zoo) while these other animals I quoted here were present in all the zoos I have been... Don't know why this, but I guess bush dogs don't reproduce very well in captivity (just a hypothesis)

@David Matos Mendes There are some bush dog (a pair I think) also kept at São Paulo zoo but these seem to be very elderly animals and once they are gone I doubt that they will obtain anymore.

I would really like to see this species being kept at more Brazilian zoos and especially considering its conservation status in this country.

Yes, that's true... and a few days ago I received the information that the last bush dog from BH zoo has died of old age... That's sad... I think they reproduced just once in the past.

@David Matos Mendes That is very sad to hear , do you think BH zoo will obtain more of these in the future?

@Onychorhynchus coronatus I hope they do, but BH's species population plan is being very restricted lately. I mean, they are not replacing the species they lose, like happened to mandrills, siberian tigers, coatis and giraffes, to focus more on the programmes they already have. The zoo has programmes for most of the animals, so it's not very frequent for a species to die until disappear from their plantel, but when it happens, they rarely obtain more individuals.

In some cases, when the zoo had a good breeding program in the past, and now they don't hold the species anymore, they try to replace them to start the programmes again, and they even plan to do that with the giraffes, bringing female "Ayana" from zooparque Itatiba and a male from the Fundação Parque zoológico de São Paulo. Besides the bush dogs haven't reproduced in BH as much as the giraffes did in the past, I hope they bring them again; after all they represent a native species, and the zoo already has a decent strucure to keep them...

@David Matos Mendes I hope so too as bushdogs would cost a lot less to maintain and bring in than exotics like giraffes or gorillas but I suppose we will have to wait and see.

@Onychorhynchus coronatus Yes... I hope so... gonna ask my friends from the zoo next time I contact them, I'm curious about it...

@David Matos Mendes That would be an awesome idea and it would be definitely be interesting to find out more about the history of this species in BH zoo and zoos in general in Brazil.

@Onychorhynchus coronatus Yeah, definitely. I've been researching about some species they kept in the past. I know they housed penguins and amazon river dolphins in the 70s. Gonna look for more information and probably make a post here.