At Louisville,USA, their baby female Kindi, also, like Afia, born by C- section (though her mother died), has now been successfully adopted by one of their other females. Kindi is two months younger than Afia. Hopefully Bristol will be able to successfully achieve it with Romina and Afia too- the USA do seem to have more experience of gorilla surrogacy than in European zoos.
The tapirs were no where to be seen today, they still had a sign up but there's not many places to hide so I assume they've been moved. I wonder if this the start of the redevelopment of this area?
Interesting. They were there on Sunday when we visited, but we noticed the Agouti had left and their sign nearest to Zona Brazil had also been removed.
0.0.3 Visayan Tarictic Hornbill have hatched Watch video of these cute Hornbill chicks being born at Bristol Zoo | Bristol Post
A quick visit Saturday - the tapir, capybara and agouti are all still in zona Brazil, though I could only see one male tapir. The soulisks have possibly left the collection, or have been moved. Were these the only ones in Europe? The pudu is now sharing it's enclosure with a pair of Mara. The gentle lemur enclosure is now housing a red panda, presumably on a temporary basis.
No - they're kept in a couple of dozen other zoos, including New Forest Wildlife Park: ZootierlisteHomepage They're also a European native (and indeed regional endemic) species - I'm not at all sure there're any outside Europe!
Baby Gorilla Afia has now been integrated successfully with female Romina as the first stage in assimilating her into the group. Although the bonding process is still only in its early stages, signs appear good that Romina will 'adopt' her fulltime.
I am pretty sure it will be okay, given time. He can presumably already see Afia some of the time and Romina is a longstanding member of his group, not a new or unfamiliar female, so he should still treat her 'wonder baby' as his own. The only problem I can foresee is how he behaves if she (still)comes into oestrus, is he still interested in her despite her not being so in him?- I don't know. I guess they (the staff) will have foreseen such events though its new ground for them too.
Romina and Afia have been outside together and will soon be introduced to the other females in the group. Afia and Romina’s outdoor adventure The video is also available from YouTube
Bristol has hatched 150 medicinal leeches in the only UK breeding program for the species. The medicinal leech was declared extinct in the UK in the early 20th century, but rediscovered in Kent during the 1970s. Congratulations to the zoo for another success with a less-than-sexy species. Breeding success for leeches
New on the Bristol website, a page asking for support for the zoo being allowed to continue using a section of the Downs ('Ladies Mile') as a temporary parking space on busy days. I have used that space occasionally and I enjoy the stroll across the Downs to the Zoo, so I have clicked on the support button
A drill was still born this morning 12/12/16 a month premature, and so they are currently off show. Along with other collections, due to avian influenza; the bird walk throughs are now all off show including penguins, flamingos, and bird forest.
