How to get hold of these rare/very rare species and keep them successfully?

Perhaps golden-crowned? Duke had a small group, but they actually bred. I believe that they're trying to get some more from Madagascar, as the species is highly endangered in the wild.

~ Thaumatibis

 

Has anyone heard of captive taiwan macaques? According to Wikipedia, they're used in medical research, but I don't seem to find any in zoos or labs. I'd like some info.

~ Thaumatibis

 

http://www.palmarium.biz/index.php?lang=en

 

Should have phrased it better... I knew Taipei had them, but I meant outside Taiwan.
This https://books.google.com/books?id=B...I5cGJzMbjxgIVx3-SCh00RwNc#v=onepage&q&f=false site mentions them at New England Regional Primate Research center at 2012. Don't know if they're still there.

~ Thaumatibis

 

Thanks for the clarification temp. Should have checked Zootierliste to confirm, as I get those two species mixed up in my head.

The husbandry for sifakas has greatly improved in the last several years and the Coquerel's population in the States is growing and getting closer to being well-established. In terms of total population and holding institutions, it looks like the crowned population may have some more time before it reaches that point. In any case, for the near future, all species from the sifaka group will be hard to obtain.

I would suggest ruffed lemurs as a more readily available replacement but... it's hard to call that a replacement when you've actually seen a group of sifakas bounding around an enclosure like wallabies on a wild tear!

 

Chlidonias' post has the link. They've bred there too. It's a smallish fenced-in wooded preserve where they put out a few indris. It's a outside the native range and quite unlike the tall primary rainforest where they're seen in the wild. Although I'm sure they eat some of the plants that grow there all their lemurs are fed too. I visited and quite enjoyed it, as their indris aren't shy at all and you can get fairly close looks. Nevertheless I did feel a bit stupid looking at a species in semi-captivity when I had seen it in the wild a few days before.

The 1-year-survivor at Ivoloina that has been reported about in the literature was some 40 years ago (I wouldn't really call that relatively recent). Based on what I've heard it was substandard if compared to good North Hemisphere zoos in the same period and in a totally different league if compared to good zoos today. Ivoloina appears to have indri again, but this may only be a temporary thing as they are involved in wildlife rehabbing. I've heard that Tsimbazaza also tried indri, but don't have the details. Although improved, at least in part through projects with North Hemisphere zoos, I doubt their resources and knowledge matches that at e.g. Duke or Apenheul.
50+ species from many different families have been registered in their diet, including some plants that are regular in horticulture. Regardless, we're speculating here. I'm just saying that when looking at the indri's diet and comparing it to e.g. crowned sifaka's, I really can't see why it should be that much harder and certainly not impossible today for a top place like Duke or Apenheul.

However, as you say the chance of an indri ever leaving for a zoo outside Madagascar is somewhere between microscopic and zero.

 

Apenheul sent their last proboscis monkey back, and I don't think Singapore will send more to Europe when all but one monkey died in Apenheul. They sent some doucs to Japan for breeding, so I'd say you'd be more likely to get douc langurs from Singapore.

~ Thaumatibis

 

The first ones arrived in 2011, didn't they? Four years and only one still alive... that really doesn't bode well for proboscis monkeys ever being kept outside of Southeast Asia again.

Do other zoos in the region keep them besides Singapore?

 

They are kept in Japan which isn't technically in South East Asia...

There are also quite a few knocking about in Indonesia and Malaysia too, not sure how many but they aren't uncommon over there.

 

Is the main problem with keeping proboscis monkeys in Europe their diet? If so, why is it so difficult to keep them? In temperate and cold climates, trees do not have leaves on them the entire year. But a sollution can be to grow trees in a greenhouse, why do you need to freeze leaves then? I can see the problem, if it is due to air pressures and/or a climate that is not suited to them, but cant you just build an indoor rainforest dome for the proboscis monkeys to live in if thats a problem? But I really cant see what the problem conserning their diet is, when you can grow plants in greenhouses. And the proboscis monkeys in Japan lives in Eastern Asia, and not in South-East Asia. But large parts of Japan has a temperate climate. So if one can keep and even breed proboscis monkeys in Asia, why cant one keep them alive, well and breed them in Europe as well?

 

Norwegian moose,
Yes, diet is the main issue. The southern islands of Japan are subtropical and warm enough to allow several of the plant species preferred by the proboscis monkey to grow with little protection. Indeed, some of them grow naturally in Japan's Okinawa islands (which also are warm enough to support coral reefs). Because it is a single country and the distances are relatively limited, transport is easy. When you try to cross borders with plants there are a whole range of issues that have to be resolved (customs), making it more problematic and time consuming. This combined with the much longer distance prevents easy transport of fresh (not frozen) leaves year-round to Europe.

Yes, you could grow the plants in a greenhouse, but here you have to consider the economy. The proboscis monkey is a large monkey and like other folivores it eats a lot. Several kilos per day. It also has a preference for quite fresh shoots. To cover the year-round feeding of a proboscis monkey group (even a smaller one) would require a very large greenhouse. It would be very expensive.

If you wanted natural foraging on the plants in a rainforest hall, as it seems you suggest, it would require a huge hall. I guess a place like Leipzig's Gondwanaland (the worlds largest) would be big enough, but then most of it would have to be reserved for a single species, the proboscis monkey.

Here it is important to keep in mind that the proboscis monkey has a much higher "wow" factor for zoochat users than average zoo visitors. I'm sure most average zoo visitors would love to see the species, but if they were given the following list and had to choose, I strongly suspect the proboscis monkey would get the lowest score: Polar bear, gorilla, proboscis monkey, elephant and rhino. This alone limits the amount of money a zoo realistically could spend on keeping them.

I might add that the climate of Florida is suitable for several of the plants preferred by the proboscis monkey. Zoos in this region would have a clear advantage compared to zoos elsewhere in USA or in Europe. The Florida zoo would have to start a good sized area with suitable plants some time before the first proboscis monkey arrived, but it would still be much cheaper than trying to do it in large greenhouses in colder regions.

 

Proboscis monkeys apparently are fed mulberry both in Singapore and previously at Bronx. Mullberry is a temperate plant, so it shouldn't be too hard to grow some.

~ Thaumatibis

 

Thank you for this information @temp, this was interesting and helpfull. However what I meant with the suggestion of keeping proboscis monkeys in a rainforest hall, is that this would create a very natural recreation of their habitat, in adition you could create a suitable climate in a rainforest hall, if that was a problem with keeping them. The reasoning was not that you could grow plants for them to eat inside their habitat. Because then you would as you wrote probably need an extremely large hall, and also much of the vegetation would perhaps be nibbled away before even a year had passed. That vegetation would have needed to be replaced, if not it would not look very pretty in the eyes of the visitors. So if one was going to make an indoor rainforest dome with proboscis monkeys, one would need to incorporate very few plants, and or move plants in and out of the exhibit perhaps?

 

Thaumatibis,
Singapore uses a whole range of plants for their proboscis monkeys. I don't remember the exact number, but it's 10s of different species. Mulberry is only one of these and secondary. Yes, this species also featured in the diet at Bronx when they kept it. Although this may help covering part of the diet, it still doesn't resolve the full issues: Getting fresh leaves in the winter (in southernmost Europe I guess mulberry shoots year-round, but in central and northern regions growth stagnates in the winter) and getting a varied diet of several different suitable plant species. Perhaps testing could be done to find more cold-resistent plants that proboscis monkeys like, but importing some to Europe for this would be rather risky and I'm not convinced Singapore (or other zoos with the species) would be ready for that.

 

Older UK members of Zoochat like me probably remember the group of proboscis monkeys that were kept at Twycross Zoo for quite a few years ( zootierliste says from 1969 to 1985 ) . They started off with 1.2 and , I think , bred 2 males before the breeding male died . I am not certain if any more were bred after that . The housing was very basic and typical of early Twycross - basically a heated shed with a grassed outside cage . I do not know what their diet was , but the husbandry of Molly Badham must have been first rate .

 

In earlier decades, proboscis monkeys were kept quite a lot of places in Europe and North Ameica with several groups that bred (even a hybrid proboscis X douc at Erfurt!). The problem wasn't getting them to breed. The problem was that the mortality rate always surpassed the breeding rate. Unless the mortality rate can be brought down, the species won't become established outside Asia.

 

Many aquariums in Japan keep false killer whales.