Just had a riveting little read through of this thread. So as of January 2020, what is the current Golden Cat population and age layout of the remaining animals in Europe? It's been mentioned there might have been kittens in 2018/2019, but nothing followed up on that?
I'm interested about this subject. will golden cats disappear from european zoos? In le parc des felins, they have no couple anymore.
Unfortunatelly, it looks like they will dissappear from Europe indeed. Generally, exotic small cats are much rarer to see in zoos than 3 decades ago, mostly due to change of exhibitry. It ´s no longer accepted by visitors to see a cat in 2x2 m cage.
I see. I'm a little sad about that. I mean, it's a good thing that peaple want to see animals in large exhibits, but not seing this beautiful feline anymore is a sad thing. Is it not possible to make an exchange with asian zoo ? or is it too hard to organize maybe?
I’ve noticed a similar trend in Australasia with Temminck’s golden cat one of many species phased out in the past 15 years. They weren’t suitable to captivity. Breeding was only achieved at two of the five zoos that tried to breed them and this was only when the breeding pairs were kept off display. Even with relatively small exhibits, it was amazing how adept at hiding they were and being a species the visitors never got to see meant they weren’t considered enabling by zoo management. Personally, they’re one of my favourite species and one I greatly miss seeing, but I can understand the reasons for their phasing out. Curiously one of our last golden cats (Saigon) will also be one of Europe’s last golden cats. He was born at Auckland Zoo in 2005.
