Edinburgh Zoo Notes on a visit 6/8/12

Edinburgh still have their pair of aardwolf! The female that went to Berlin in exchange for one of their two males came from the rscc!

 

Very recently-died a week or so ago I believe

 

When i was there on Monday, they were separated, the male (i think he is the one with one eye, was in the main enclosure)

 

Well afaik this is the second unsuccessful birth they've had in the last two (?) years then. Do you know who the mother was?

 

Indeed. I'm not sure if ISIS intends to bring back the 'public' section again or generate yet more secrecy by in future staying entirely 'private' for the zoos only.

 

No, sorry I know little more than it happened.

 

I think it will stay private. It has been/is being fully updated and now contains detailed information on individual animals so unless they go on to create different levels of access to the databases for zoo workers and the public I doubt they will make that amount of information public.

I agree it would be good if they could make at least just the species listings with numbers held public as they did before, but for now at least the focus will be on getting and keeping the databases up to date and making the system work effectively for zoos.

 

The statements on the ISIS website have consistently stated that the plan is for for the public to be able to view which zoos have a species and how many individuals they have. Things can always change, of course, but so far that's always been the stated intention. However, it's also been heavily implied this won't happen until ZIMS is fully up-and-running.

One thing that's not clear is whether the gender breakdown will still be available.

That was always the situation previously.

 

I hope they do make it public again- a very useful tool for those with interests in zoos(note exclusion of word 'fanatic') and the 'public' section , although not always exactly up to date gave a good appraisal of what is where.

 

I hope I'm not breaching any confidences now by saying that the baby chimp was born to an inexperienced mother from the Beekse-Bergen group on 20th July. She wasn't carrying it correctly so there were concerns from the outset.

 

I hope so too. I completely didn't notice there was a difference before in access, so that's promising that it will go back to that system then. It would be nice if the public could have more access to a lot of what's on there now (not medical data etc), as there are individual family trees and histories that are very interesting and the information in them is generally accessable with some thorough searching of the internet anyway.

 

Just to confirm; the maned wolves have indeed left the collection.

 

Do you know where they went? I hope Edinburgh's staff have something special to replace them.

 

Sounds a bit like a 'no' then?.

 

It is a shame they have given up on the species, it was probably the best enclosure ive seen for them too! It's 3 years since i was there so my memory may be playing tricks, but i think it's only place i've been to with indoor viewing for them. I didn't need it there though, unlike other places i saw one outside & active on my first visit to the enclosure mid afternoon.