Their natural mountain enviroment would be very hard to copy. They also live in a very damp enviroment, so they probably need some extra "skincare". It has allready been proven that orangs benefit from having rubbed vaseline into their fur.
@Toddy: Have You ever seen a zoo copying 1:1 the exact native environment, including humidity, of Western Lowland Gorillas? No? And when it comes to "damp enviroments": there are plenty of primates from the same or very similar environments (colobus monkeys, managabies, chimps...) as well as various other animals (Okapis, Gaboon vipers, duikers...) that are doing fine in zoos. And I'd like to see how the zookeepers rub vaseline all over a pissed-off silverback Mountain gorilla!
Exactly Besides, it's just my theory. We dont' know the propper way to keep mountain gorillas, because it hasn't been done before.
Oh, mountain gorillas have been kept in zoos in the past (and as far as I understood, maybe today in the form of the one female in Antwerp-which doesn't get a vaseline treatment btw. ): -Antwerp -Cologne -Chester -New York Bronx Zoo -Oklahoma -Philadelphia -Rome -Tel Aviv -Hannover -San Diego ...and I remember snowleopard mentioning a Canadian zoo. There are different possible reasons why just the Western Lowland Gorilla could establish itself in zoos on a larger scale; one could be the larger population numbers in the wild, another political reasons (think Dian Fossey!) and trade regulations/availabilty.
I know that they have been kept before, but did they actually breed? If so, i will just shut up then... But did they?
At one time there was a pair of mountain gorillas at the Polar Park Zoo in Edmonton, Canada. I remember seeing them a few times when I was a kid, and I still have the glossy-coloured and quite informative guide to that particular wildlife park. There is a shot of the mountain gorillas walking through a path in their enclosure, and they are completely surrounded by snow. They were quite famous at the time because of the fact that they weren't lowlands, and the zoo had a number of rare and endangered species. However, they never bred and the zoo eventually closed in the early nineties.
Snowleopard, is there any chance of you scanning that image of the mountain gorillas and then uploading it here?
@Toddy: The "Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale" at Bukavu in 1958 and Antwerp Zoo in 1969 (although in the case of Antwerp "just" the other subspecies-graueri). @snowleopard: Where & when exactly in Edmonton was that zoo? Couldn't find anything about it and would also enjoy taking a look at said photo.
"More than 70 clouded leopards have been born at CRC in the past 30 years." Clouded Leopards - National Zoo| FONZ From the National Zoo website in Washington... Wow...
I know that there is absolutely nothing on the Polar Park Zoo in Edmonton, but it really did exist. It's too bad that it didn't close down after the "internet age", when a lot more data would be readily available. As I said earlier I visited a number of times in the late seventies and early eighties (I was just an animal-crazy kid), but left Edmonton in 1986 and never moved back. It was originally called the Alberta Game Farm, and then the Polar Park when a massive enclosure was built for a large group of polar bears...but I have no definitive idea of when it closed. It was run by a man named Al Oeming (an ex-boxer) and was known for being the first North American zoo to breed a number of endangered animals. My wife and I are in the process of moving this week, but I promise that by Xmas I'll post a thorough, information-packed review of the zoo. It was ahead of its time in the seventies, and exhibited a number of rare species. There were a lot of successful births, but the extreme cold weather and the lack of government funding forced the place to close. I have the magazine in front of me as I type this, and it brings back many fond memories of my childhood. CZ Jimmy: I don't have a scanner and haven't uploaded any photos since I joined this site a few weeks ago...but perhaps one day in the future I'll look into that.
The 70 clouded leopards born at the CRC is amazing!! The National Zoo has an offshoot collection that is called the CRC (Conservation and Research Center) and so the clouded leopard births haven't necessarily been at the main attraction but rather in the next U.S. State. Still hugely impressive.
I've never heard of a drive-thru polar bear exhibit. News to me... Any zoological collection that is tiny or has now been closed is difficult to locate on any websites. There was the Alberta Wildlife Park in Edmonton, which was separate from the Polar Park (formerly Alberta Game Farm) and there is also nothing anywhere on that place. It also closed in the late eighties/early nineties, and I still have brochures from when I was a child.
If difficulty breeding is expressed as a ratio of how often bred/how often kept in captivity then pelicans would probably come near the top as most zoos have them and hardly anyone breeds them. A few years ago a pair of wild Australian pelicans landed in Perth Zoo's pelican enclosure and reared a clutch - the zoo then had the cheek of including the babies in its end of year breeding results!
Walruses breed very poorly. Could possibly better, but most captive walruses need to have tusks removed due to concrete pools. King penguins breed poorly. They seem to breed best in large indoor halls with filtered air. Many large birds breed poorly - flamingos, esp. lesser, andean and james; pelicans; marabou; shoebill, large hornbills etc. Few zoos keep them in big aviaries and few zoos really care to breed them. Marabou in a zoo is still a sort of live decoration on hoofstock paddock. Worst of all are possibly some primates - indris, lepilemurs (mongoose lemurs); avahis, red colobus (Procolobus genus), uakaris, bearded sakis, most holwers simply don't survive in captivity at all.
I believe they breed quite well at Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium here in NZ, in the exact conditions you've described...
Jurek7 is correct when it comes to King Penguins-at least in regard to the European zoo population of this species. In the last couple of years, the number of losses (usually due to old age) outweighs the number of births; the general King Penguin population in European zoos is therefore shrinking, even when counting institutions like the Loro Parque.
The blue lorikeets of the Vini genus (Vini ultramarina and Vini peruviana) are really difficult to breed and so far, no zoo has achieved anything with them (maybe Walsrode next year...). Amongst the hornbills, I think one of the most difficult species to breed is the rufous hornbill (Buceros hydrocorax). Quetzals seem also to be very difficult to breed in captivity (I don't know if any zoo achieved something so far, with any quetzal specie). Same goes with fruit-crows, especially bare-necked fruit-crow (Gymnoderus foetidus), Wattled umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger) and capuchinbird (Perissocephalus tricolor).
