Dreamworld Dreamworlds Tiger cubs

im glad were concentrating on sumatrans, i personally think theyre the most beautiful of the remaining sub-species.

 

And relatively speaking, we are very short of big cat spaces in the region (see multiple discussions elsewhere). There is no way the zoos should be considering taking on another big cat species, and I'm almost certain that no one would suggest it. (Well.... OK, I can think of few, but sensible people wouldn't suggest it)

 

no way! i want pumas, and clouded leopards, and african leopards, and jaguars too, and maybe bob cats and ocelots as well. we can fit them all in.and white lions, i love white lions

 

just to clarify im joking

 

Now what did I just say about sensible people???? LOL

 

I know i am a bad boy, i just want to save everything, hehehe

 

So does everyone, but we can either try to save some things and likely succeed, or try to save everything, and surely fail. Common sense has to prevail sometimes. (Now I'm not suggesting that all zoos show common sense all of the time, so don't start shouting me down about that one!)

 

i dnt no zoopro, ill argue you

nah jks lol

its a hard thing to do, but i think we are getting places, the sumatran program along with the white rhino program, thay are getting places slowly, and have recently picked up, and most zoos can accomodate them and are sarting to focus on the 1 species, melbourne should hopefully phase out its variety, and focus on 2 or 3 species, same as atronga, no more clouded leopards.

and it doesnt really affetc the gen public either, all they want to see is lions and tigers.

 

what about the revised decision to keep black-capped capuchins in the regional collection plan. on the one hand its a good decision, as they are already in plenty of zoos, theres lots of them etc, compared to recently listed deb-brazza guenons as phase outs, but i just think south american monkeys are too well represente dnow and we need to keep some of the old world monkeys too.

 

i love de-brazzas, many of hours have wittled away talking to spg at mogo, he is so kool, i loved it, i would go in hide food, and hand him enrichment, it is so much fun, its a shame more zoos dont put resources into enrichment, the keepers loved me when iw as at mogo, cause i manged to get a far few animals enrichment.

 

i would have rather seen this species maintained over capuchins, even if more resources had to be invested in importing new animals into the region.
i would love to attend an ARAZPA conference and listen in on the regional management forum, as coordinators tried to find placements etc for new/exisitng species. it would be interesting

 

As a complete contrast to Dreamworld deliberately removing their Sumatran tiger cubs for handraising- here's a tiger tale from the UK- I just read it in a Zookeeper's journal- Chessington 'Zoo', which is also really a giant Adventure park with an animal collection attatched to it, have a fine young pair of Sumatran tigers( both born in other UK zoos). Last autumn they produced 3 cubs but the mother suddenly became very sick when the cubs were a month old- she was so ill she couldn't stand, had no co-ordination etc, yet still appeared to want to care for her cubs. So they were allowed limited access to her(for their own safety in case she lay on them etc) and continued to suckle her etc despite her severe 'mystery' illness. Gradually she made a slow but full recovery again.

Tests later showed she had barbiturate poisoning from being fed infected horsemeat(a horse which had been euthenased by injection, not shot.) Now they have new feed procedures to stop such an incident happening again, but I give them full marks for not removing these cubs during the mother's illness. A story with a happy ending....

 

on chessington

in south australia's monarto zoo a female cheetah with a large litter became extremely sick and the cubs were pulled for handrearing, some of them went to australia zoo. the zoo knew what was wrong with the cheetah at the time, so took the best action for the welfare of both cubs and mother.
chessington zoo, witha female tiger suffering a mystery illness, could have removed the cubs completely and isolated them from the mother as a precaution. its good this story has a happy ending, if she had some sort of pathogen it could have turned out very badly. the fact that the tiger was allowed to be fed contaminate dmeat tells me chessignton adventure world could already be a little sloppy in regards to its husbandry protocol.

 

I agree handraising in such a situation as the Cheetah you mention,would be safer and yes, I guess it was risky at Chessington allowing the tiger cubs to carry on feeding from a very sick female. Maybe it was a very difficult choice for them.

Regarding the feeding of the poisoned meat- there was no record at the slaughterhouse that the horse had been euthanased with drugs- now Chessington say in future they will only accept animals slaughtered at the abbatoir, not elsewhere, nor will they feed meat from the neck, the site where injections are usually made. I guess they've learned a sharp lesson from this.

Did you know that nearly all the original White Tigers kept at Bristol Zoo in UK during the 1960's/1970's died from being fed Beef infected with BSE? This was long before BSE became widely known about. A number of antelope species in various other zoos have also died from being fed cocentrates containing infected meat meal.

 

Non compliance with ASMP guidelines

Should any zoo that fails to manage its collection in such a way as to ignore or have the potential to significantly prevent implementation of the recommendations of the TAGs be stripped of their ARAZPA membership.

Although handraising of cubs for human recreation and entertainment is probably not stipulated as a prohibited act for managed species, surely it is likely to reduce the opportunities for the animals to successfully breed with other anaimals in the future. (I maybe wrong and I would be interested in any research that either confirms or repudiates this contention).

This is but one example and there are many zoos that have flouted ASMP recommendations.

Surely failure to support the goals and objectives of the ASMP and ARAZPA given our small regional collection spaces should be dealt with harshly. (Stripped of membership or accreditation)

If ARAZPA continues to allow zoos to ignore its recommendation simply because they provide member fees means that the ARAZPA code of ethics is a hollow script of garbage.

The ARAZPA board has to get serious as do all the players.

 

The two Sumatran Tiger cubs born at Dreamworld are both females so that real good news for our region.

 

great news. regarding small cats a north ameican study in the 1990s found that species like fishing cat, african golden cat, serval, bob cat and lynx actually bred more succesfully in a situation where there was lots of keeper/cat interaction.
the report did not stipulate whether this interaction involved hand-rearing, but it does make sense that animals comfortable with their caretakers are more likely to breed.
conditioning wild animals in captivity is probably the most effective husbandry tool available to the industry.

 

I think the happy medium here is probably those zoos which routinely remove kittens and cubs for short periods during their formative months, for handling and socialiation purposes only. This allows them to lose some of their fear,while living with mother allows normal development and socialisation to continue, without the humanisation which handraising brings.

 

Australia zoos three Sumatran Tigers have just turned three years old, dont know at this point who they will be paired with?.

 

Australia Zoos Tigers

From what I remember, in the evry short time I was at Taronga Steve visited mogo to pick up these cubs and the keepers on the Carnivores division were not at all happy about the cubs being bred in the first place. They were apparently never supposed to be. I was not quite sure and please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe their bloodlines are well represented.