Port Lympne Wild Animal Park drills

does anyone have any information about the drills at port lympne zoo. like name,sex,age,date of birth,parents,offspring.
thanks

 

?

I think that most of them came from Stuttgart Zoo in Germany a couple of years ago.

 

I hope to visit there soon, so I'll try to photograph the name boards (as well as the drills of course ).

Alan

 

thanks that would be great.

 

Here are the details from the cage labels:-
Gorbi, male, 4th November 1991
Bibundi, female, 23rd December 1997
Kassalo, male, 16th November 2001 (I think he has been castrated)
Kaduna, female, 1st October 2004
Afi, female, 22nd January 2006
I think there are two infants which have not yet got their own name boards - presumably one from each of the adult females.
Photos to follow, when I get a chance to sort and process them.

Alan

 

thank you for the information gentle lemur.

 

Am sure Gorbi is the breeding male, so I would persume that Kassalo has been castrated.

 

I would have thought they'd avoid castrating such a rare animal.

 

There are a lot of surplus males around , such as the group at Woburn , I think most are fairly closely related . By castrating the young male I suppose it means he will be able to stay in the family group without aggression from his father .

 

The unrelated breeding pair are Gorbi & Bibundi. They came in a group of 5 from Stuttgart which included two daughters and the young castrated male Kassala (already castrated by Stuttgart) who has a different mother. So he is a halfbrother of the young females.

The two daughters that came were Kaduna and another that was sent back to Europe more recently.
Afi, born 2006 was the first Drill born at Port Lympne(and the first in Uk for nearly forty years).
Bibundi had another(female?) baby 2007/8. If there are currently two babies either she has had yet another or Gorbi is also breeding with his eldest daughter Kaduna.

 

I have a feeling that he may be breeding with his daughter, I remember seeing on ROAR to young babies in the group.

 

One time I went the eldest daughter had a swelling(oestrus) so I thought it would not be long. They don't have too much choice as unrelated females are hard to come by and even more difficult to integrate into a family group. (As senior female 'Bibundi' will accept her own daughters' offspring in the group but she could well attack, even kill, those of any females unrelated to her.)

 

What about an unrelated male? Couldn't they form two groups, one of the daughters with a new male and one of Gorbi and the original females?

 

An import from America would be nice.

 

I heard they were seeking advice from the Studbook keeper as to whether they should start a 2nd group. I don't know the outcome. If they brought in a 2nd male they would effectively have 2 breeding pairs (plus the other younger relatives) as against the larger single group. Gorbi has only one female unrelated to him- Bibundi.

The few Drills left in America are mostly from European stock originally also so they likely to be related in some way.

 

edinburgh has two males and one female they received from a spanish zoo in 2006

they have just received two further females that are in quarantine just now and then they will be mixed in however were looking to move one of the males out of the collection however were struggling to find another collection to take him

 

Barcelona's(where Edinburgh's original 2.1 came from) are also nowdays interrelated to the other two main European 'drill' centres- Stuttgart & Hanover- nearly all the drills born in Europe come from these three sources which have exchanged animals a number of times so genetically they already have a lot in common with each other (as do the American animals too).

Perhaps Edinburgh's surplus male could go to the 'bachelor' group at Woburn- unless he is(genetically) useful to Port Lympne.

 

There is a possible source for new bloodlines Pandrillus Foundation
Although this is an in situ program, it might be possible to arrange a deal in which zoos provide support in some way in exchange for the import of a few surplus animals from their breeding program.

Alan

 

Great minds? I've mentioned this once before as a possible source for new bloodlines for the European population. Drills are increasing in Europe now but badly need a fresh infusion of unrelated animals. The only 'new blood' I know of in recent years was the new male 'Sumbo' at Hanover some years ago- he came from Rabat Zoo, Morocco. Since when Hanover have had about nine male offspring fathered by him- some of them will be the new group at Woburn.

 

I probably remembered the idea, but not that you suggested it
Sorry.

Alan