Animals that have gotten easier to take care of in captivity

Colobines!

 

Thats an interesting one and I know you said not counting availability but I just don't think there is any getting around the fact that the Malagasy government would be very unlikely to allow indris to be captured and exported to zoos or even to ex-situ facilities within Madagascar.

 

And Uakaris?

 

Thats an interesting one, because of the many obstacles to achieving this I'm inclined to think that it isn't a very likely scenario that they are going to become common within zoos in the future though I could be wrong.

 

As far as i know, Only LA zoo displays them outside their natural range, Which in the whole scheme of things, Insanely low

 

Maybe they already can be? None was tried since decades.

Zoos went a long way since then. Precise food trees of indris, red colobus and other primates are known. Supply chain exist to import tropical vegetation for animals which need it, like eucalyptus for koalas or ficus for doucs. Animals can be kept in semi-freedom in the wild and weaned to new food.

Consider how Chinese keep black snub-nosed monkeys. A whole troop is herded to a large forested corral, and fed there branches freshly cut from the forest. BSNM eat lichens, which are even more difficult to source than tree leaves. Then animals can be slowly tried other food, or let to go back outside the fence. Similar thing could be tried with indris.

The knowledge and methods exist, there is however no interest or no need. Zoos are no longer interested in showcasing full diversity of the animal world. Most are happy to keep the same few species. Only a few individuals change the status quo, like the director of little Zlin zoo which started breeding doucs at the time when big zoos were content to let them die out.

Indris in some reserves in Madagascar are almost fearless and can be seen as reliably as in a zoo. I even heard that some take their favorite leaves from guides' hands.

 

Maybe they can but I think the pertinent moral / ethical question is should they ?

With the Indri and considering how low the population density of this primate is would it ever be worth the steep risks of bringing individuals into captivity and seeing many of these die while the adequate nutritional requirements are figured out through trial and error ?

Or is it not better to continue to conserve these in-situ and encourage ecotourism to Madagascar which also benefits local communities and provides an economic incentive for community based conservation / both species and ecosystem conservation ?

 

I agree that they shouldn’t be kept in zoos at the moment, particularly zoos which wouldn’t be focused on breeding them, though I think that if there was a zoo that acquired indri somehow and put the money and effort in, indri could be kept adequately and possibly breed.

 

Yes, I agree, I genuinely think that given the right conditions and research put into mastering the husbandry any species can effectively kept and bred in captivity.

However, consider the tarsier and just how specific the conditions required are for these primates and how ill suited the conventional zoo environment is for them.

Let me clarify, I don't think the indri shares that same particular set of requirements as the tarsier or is as highly strung because as other commenters have already mentioned they do adapt well to the presence / proximity of people due to all of ecotourism.

I just draw comparison to the tarsier to point out how counter-productive keeping some species within conventional zoo environments can be but of course in the case of the indri it would invariably come down to diet / nutrition rather than stress induced illness or injury due to presence of people etc.

Anyway, rather than the indri which I think is best conserved in-situ the lemur species that I would hope to be kept by more zoos and to experience an improvement in husbandry is the Sclater's / blue eyed black lemur.

 

I think the bald uakari is best conserved in-situ really but the difficulty is obviously the whole ongoing situation in Amazonia with deforestation.

Unless there are drastic changes to the current environmental policy within that region of Brazil the future does not look bright for these primates.

 

The question is whether indris technically could live in zoos, From the start I said there are no plans to actually bring them in.

 

Yes , I know you did and the answer is that like with most species with sufficient research into husbandry, funding, logistics and initially at the cost of high rates of attrition that they probably could live within zoos.

I know that there are no plans to bring them into captivity either.

However, what I was getting at with my comment was more why this would be necessary or whether this would be morally / ethically sound to do so if it was to be pursued as an ex-situ conservation management strategy.

 

This is what I was thinking of. Given that pangolins are pretty unique, I think they would especially benefit from a captive population. They're still quite obscure, but I think they're interesting enough that if a lot of people were exposed to them in zoos, it would do a lot for awareness of their wild counterparts.

 

I’ve also read that a low nutrition environment favours the production of female calves. If the female’s body believes it’s producing a calf in a low nutrition environment. Since the objective is to pass on one’s genes, then it makes more sense to produce a female calf that can breed regardless of her size/condition vs a male calf, which won’t develop into a strong enough bull to displace his rivals/breed.

 

In the case of the pangolin I actually really wish it wasn't the case about ex-situ but what is happening with their populations in the wild due to overexploitation is wrenching.

I think being realistic with regards to the wild populations means recognising that even with policy changes leading to better legislation against wildlife crime and improvements in law enforcement, environmental education programes and more effective in-situ etc China's inevitable rising growing geopolitical influence in the world is just not going to be kind to the pangolin.

 

We still have about 5 or so pangolin species that aren't really being kept anywhere, with increasing awareness and interest in the species, will they start to become present ex-situ?

I'd love to see a Giant Pangolin one day, but given their elusive fossorial behavior, I'd say without ex-situ conservation the prospects aren't high

 

Given the pressures on wild populations it would be prudent (IMO) if this did begin to happen.

 

Chinese Pangolins have been kept and are being kept in Captivity, Sunda Pangolins are kept in Sanctuaries and Zoos all across Asia and giant Pangolins use to be kept in captivity with minimal Success. And there are quite a view Public collections with Tree Pangolins in the U.S

 

I am not very familiar with the specifics of what pangolin species are in captivity other than that in general it is steadily improving in terms of husbandry and successful breeding which is great IMO.

 

Definitely new world monkeys. According to Josef Lindholm III. on the "Zookeeping An Introduction to the Science and Technology", In the early 1960s "te best public zoo record for a squirrel monkey was six years, no captive howler monkey had lived more than 5 years, and no titi for more than four years. By 2005, five tits have lived at least 24 years, four howler monkeys had reached at least 22 years,; and four squirrel monkeys had lived for at least thirty years."