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Animals that belong to zoos

Discussion in 'General Zoo Discussion' started by Jurek7, 31 Dec 2017.

  1. Jurek7

    Jurek7 Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    People often discuss animals difficult and rarely kept in zoos, but strangely there is no thread on animals which really 'belong to zoos'. For me, they are species which best fulfill zoos' mission. I realized there are at least 3 categories of such animals:

    1. Animals which will never be safe in the wild anymore

    These are relatively big animals endemic to moderately or densely settled countries, which will be immediately hunted to extinction when their active conservation stops, even temporarily in a timeline of few years.

    For example, European bison for about 150 years has been living only in actively protected reserves and zoos. It became extinct in the wild during civil unrests, then almost wiped out again during World War 1, then again during World War 2. Any war, unrest or political or economic crisis causes shooting of all European Bison in the area. The long time survival requires spreading herds across possibly many countries and regions. Then some herds would be in places not affected by any future political crisis. Every herd additionally requires contstant protection from hunting, poaching, diseases, and political pressure by foresters to shoot the herd down.

    Other examples are: black rhinoceros, indian rhinoceros, tiger, Chinese alligator and Pere David's deer.

    2. Animals which natural habitat is already largely irreplaceably lost

    For example habitat is already converted to habitations and farmland. There is so little space left that populations in reserves will be always vulnerable to chance events. Examples are many endemics of small islands, Philippines, Brazilian Atlantic rainforests and East Australia. Also e.g. Iberian lynx, Indian gharial, Javan leopard, Sumatran elephant, Javan gibbon and Philippine eagle.

    3. ABC animals which are both easily maintained and popular

    For them, space exist in zoos and could be filled by self-sustaining populations of animals which need conservation, or sub-optimally by common animals.

    Example are lions and tigers. They are eternally popular, easily bred and several thousands of zoo spaces exist worldwide. Most hold well established hybrid 'cage lions' and 'white tigers'. Alternatively the same zoo spaces can preserve self-sustaining populations of all surviving forms of lions and tigers, with hardly any additional cost. Of these, western and Central African lions exist in no zoos. Both are under immediate danger, decreasing fast and with no space for population to recover. South african, southwestern, east african lions and bengal, indochinese and south chinese tigers occur either as very small populations or only in their country of origin. Lack of all these in zoos is not fault of zoos, but of unwillingness of countries to part with founder base. There is well documented case how the same approach ended with extinction of javan tiger.

    Other examples are spotted big cats. There are zoo spaces available to preserve sri lankan, javan, arabian and african leopards and pure subspecies of snow leopards. In addition to existing in zoos: amur, chinese, persian and generic snow leopards and jaguars.

    Giraffe:
    west african, purebred baringo and Thornicroft's giraffe. In addition to currently existing: rotschildts, reticulated and masai giraffe and very small groups of kordofan, nubian, angolan and south african giraffe.
    Zebras: potential to preserve cape mountain zebra, in addition to existing zebras.
    Otters: smooth-coated, hairy-nosed, conglo small clawed, neotropical, la Plata, marine otter.-Macaques: 15 species of macaques are vulnerable to endangered, of which zoos commonly keep only Celebes Crested, Lion-tailed and Barbary Macaques.
    Wild sheep: potential to preserve Arabian and nilgiri tahr, 5 purebred subspecies of aoudad, purebred at least 11 vulnerable or endangered froms of wild sheep or argali. Currently tens of institutions keep feral Mouflon.
    Hippo: purebred subspecies of common hipopotamus.
    Crocodile: zoos keep most commonly Nile crocodile, while other forms are less or not represented
    Geese and ducks: 31 species listed on the Red List. Six of these: Andaman teal, Southern pintail, blue duck, brazilian merganser, salvadori's teal and white-headed steamerduck are not present in collections outside their native range.

    It is interesting, that zoo efforts go often a bit across actual needs. For example, zoos try to keep subspecies of big cats separately, but not subspecies of hippopotamus. Zoos which have crocodile exhibit often go for Nile crocodiles, although other crocodiles would fit equally well.