what you said zuki-pah is true, but even if heman was known to be fertile at the time taronga designed its exhibit burma would probably still needed to be taken out west because she is so aggressive. and splitting heman and burma would probably have been another example of 'cruelty' for the anti-zoo brigade to latch on to. additionally, if you consider that taronga was originally going to use AI as a breeding tool, why is having heman, a difficult to manage animal who cannot be exercised outisde of his enclosure, any more effective at taronga than at dubbo, where he can live out his days with plenty of room to exercise and still provide a sample of his semen??? zoos use assisted reproduction all the time. heman is best off out west and if the zoos decide to try and incorporate his genetic line into the program than AI could be an option.
and patrick,you should go to western plains zoo. its a great zoo and i think its nice when we can visit places that we always talk about
behavioural isues is a fair argument. though there is a compelling argument that it was unfair for taronga to have never even attempted to intgrate burma with the new herd (which the zoo for many years stated on their website was to be the case, whilst trying to drum up public support), i am looking at it purely from a breeding program point of view. all bull elephants are potentially highly unpredicatble and agressive and a good elephant exhibit should cater to this. melbourne certainly never exercises bong-su outside his enclosure like they do with the females, in fact he has no unprotected contact whatsover (and for the most part he is considered a preetty docile bull). hypothetically, if mek kappah never integrates into the new herd, melbournes exhibit is designed in sucha way that she could be managed seperately, never having direct contact with her companions. two barns and three rotation paddocks makes for a pretty flexable design. so essentially, whilst i understand that heman and burma are happier at dubbo (indeed i'm sure their enclosure is much more spacious that that of the zoos city counterpart), i think its a testament to the awkward, contardictory and often changing decision making and planning at taronga, that they are now in a situation with a fertile bull in one of their zoos with an infetrile cow and the fertile cows in another zoo accompanied by an immature bull...
From a founder point of view it is nessecary for Hema to breed. Three bull founders isn't sufficiant to create a viable sustainable herd. It would take only three generations for inbreeding to start. Hopefully ny that time new bulls and cows could be imported without all the fuss.
and i'm sure they will be! but so long as heman is not from sri lanka (i'm not too keen on a hybridised program) i thnk taronga should put a big priority in breeding their currently reproductive cows with their current reproductive bull.
Lets hope Australia zoo will import more elephants to join the national herd, the more animals and bloodlines the better, their new Elephantasia is now open and said to be the biggest in OZ.
Well, it would be really silly to build such a huge elephant facility for just three old cows now, wouldn't it?
you know, despite everything i've said here, sometimes i have to sit back and remind myself that elephants are long-lived creatures and that this is gonna be a very slow breeding program. we talk about the need to import more elephants, but ultimately the ones we have just imported are gonna (hopefully) stay with us for a very long time. in fact, they might just out-live me!
good points by all i think. actually, to conclude, i think taronga has been pretty flexible when you consider it didnt even want a bull to begin with. as i said earlier, AI was going to be the way. its lucky taronga has a bit more money then the other zoos so i could put its hand up and say yes to Gung. the fact that he can socialise with the girls and is still immature will give taronga the chance to recoup its funds and build a second enclosure for him in the next couple of years...and its obvious that Australia Zoo wouldnt spend that ammount of money on 3 old elephants
well i think all elephants old, or young breeding or not, all deserve a nice home,. to swim and well jsut be elephants. hay everyones agrees don't you! i know siam, bimbo, sabu, heman, burma, chere, yum yum, cuddles, gung, pak boon, tong dee, tang mo, pornthip, num oi, dokkoon, kulab, mek kapah , bong su, and Perth’s Trish and there other 3 elephants all do, and now only if we can help Arna and Gigi, we will have the perfect elephant world in australia
Zoo Boy, I wouldn't have thought that elephant exhibits such as Melbourne's, Perths or Taronga's, not matter how appealing they may or may not be, would be rate as a perfect elephant world in Australia, would you?
well think in comparrison to the usa, and europe, they have really quite, s hit exhibits, i think in austrlaia we have a high zoo standards for exhibiting elephnats, as of now. lets not argue, ther best scenarios would be fencing of huge proportions of the daintree, but i think zoo have a high standard for there eles, i mean everything could be better, but when we look at whole pic, abr 2, the whole elephant population of australia is housed very well, where as in usa and europe, maybe only 25 % are housed to this standard
so now were advocating fencing off threatened eco-systems in australia and destroying habitat here in order to keep a threatened foreign species??? this confuses me as much as wantng to jeapordise quarantine rules and keeping exotic pets with pest potential
i was saying the BEST scenario for ELEPHANTS, by no means would anyone do this, it was a simple comment, as the rainforest closely represents the natural habitat, and THAT would be BEST for the ELEPHANTS
Who said the elephant exhibits in the US and Europe are **** on what bases was that Statement made, hmmm interesting!. Also lets not forget that the US has Hundreds of Elephants there not just a few as we have here.
i no, but thst why we can create good ones, as we do have a small population, and they are s hit, on my judgemnt, im saying from wht i have seen, some us and europe zoos are appauling, thou i will say they are trying to fix em
I not really following here, you say they are **** exhibits from what you have seen?, so what have you seen of them?, how can you judge them?, with so many places keeping them of course there going to be some that could be better, while some are outstanding.
i understand mark, some are amazing, but some are quite horrible, much like atrongas old exhibit, go to this site, Zoo Elephant - Asian Elephants at the Zoological Gardens of the World and view some of the zoos, some are great, some are really bad
