Interesting article from 1994 about incidences in New Zealand Zoos. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/new-zooland/ The death of the Sumatran tigress, Toba, at Wellington Zoo in 1993 is discussed and the reason for her death is revealed. She was indeed killed by the male, Jambi, as people have previously speculated. The orangutan mentioned in the incident at Auckland Zoo in March 1994 is Indra. She was pregnant with Isim, who was born in June. Shocking revelations regarding the hippopotamus at Auckland Zoo. The female who gave birth to a stillborn calf, due to genetic problems from inbreeding would be Faith. Faith had a total of 14 calves, all sired by her father, Kabete. Several calves died, having been killed by other hippos. Keepers killed a newborn calf in 1992 after birth control measures failed to prevent the same fate. Her son Fudge was neutered in 1993, which as mentioned, carries high risks and lead to the death of another male hippo.
I remember when this article came out - it was widely criticised for its bias and factual inaccuracies. Just saying. What do you mean by "shocking revelations" about the hippos?
Do you know which facts they were disputing? I agree with you, it seems quite anti-zoo but many parts of the article are black and white facts. Toba was either killed by Jambi or she wasn't etc. Given a lot of the information comes from keepers/ex keepers, it has more credibility since they were actually there when it happened and could be liable for damages if they were blantantly lying or making up stories in a public domain. With regards to the hippos, I mean the discovery of information not previously shared on ZooChat regarding the deaths, many of which appear avoidable. It's not rocket science to predict a baby hippo would be killed by an adult hippo, with adult males being the highest risk to it's safety. Even if the death of the first baby was through ignorance of this fact, to lose a further five in the same, predictable way is bordering on negligence in my opinion.
I hadn't seen this article before, but I do have (back in NZ) an article from Metro magazine in ~1994 (maybe 96?) that focused on Auckland Zoo and was also negative and biased against zoos. Perhaps it was the mood of the time.
actually it was the Metro article zooboy28 mentions which I was thinking of. But it was twenty years ago so I don't remember the specifics of the criticism. I have a feeling the NZ Geographic article was probably based on/influenced by/an extension of the Metro article though.
