The sun bears are a species that have long struggled within the region and long term, I believe they’ll be phased out from the region. It’s a great shame, but it could be an opportunity to consider another species e.g. Sloth bear, which I believe we’d have more success with as a region. They’d also compliment the Indian rhinoceros (also being considered by Perth Zoo), being from the same geographic range. Hamadryas baboon are held in large numbers across several zoos. It’d be easy to acquire more if Perth wanted, but sadly they want to discontinue with this species. It’s regrettable considering a small to medium sized troop takes up minimal space.
Puteri recovering following health scare: Puteri fainted last month and underwent surgery to remove uterine polyps. She’s since been receiving medication to aid her anaemia and replenish red blood cells. Puteri was born 1970 and is the oldest orangutan in the region. She’s given birth to a total of six offspring. Saving an orangutan during a health emergency
@Zoofan15 Glad to hear Puteri is recovering well, she's a very special Orang', fingers crossed she reaches the same longevity as Puan her mother did with almost another decade for Puteri hopefully. Just realised after reading your news post that Puteri would possibly have lived at Perth Zoo longer than any other Orang' having been born there and lived all her 52 years of life there. Since Tricia has passed away could Puteri possibly be the zoo's longest resident (would say oldest except think some of the tortoises and turtles may be, but Puteri could have lived at PZ longer).
Puteri’s definitely lived longer than Puan who only lived at Perth for 50 years. I believe she’s Perth’s current oldest female resident too; the Cerro the Giant tortoise is currently 56 (born 1956 at San Diego Zoo).
Puteri is a much loved orangutan by staff and visitors alike. She is indeed Perth Zoo’s longest resident orangutan. Her mother, Puan, arrived in December 1968 and died 49.5 years later in June 2018. Puteri was of course born at Perth Zoo and turned 52 in June. Puteri is the region’s eldest orangutan, but I hope she reaches her mother’s record breaking 65 years and has many years ahead of her. Following Tricia’s passing, I believe Puteri is the zoo’s eldest resident. Phillip (gibbon) was born 1973 in the wild, so is one of the next eldest after Puteri.
@Zoofan15 Yeah Phillip was born and wild-caught technically while the Vietnam War (that affected Laos & Cambodia too) was still raging, and was basically not much more than a year old in '74 when he came to Perth Zoo with female Racquel. Considering they were removed from their parents at such young ages it is quite impressive that they managed to parent their own offspring so well.
That is indeed interesting they were competent parents. In their case, I suppose they were peer raised given they had each other. From what I’ve observed with the region’s chimpanzees, we’ve had several founders who’ve arrived as two or three year olds, but that brief exposure to life in a troop (combined with being raised alongside peers) was sufficient to socialise them.
@Zoofan15 You're so right, the peer raising would be the most vital socialisation (vital in itself) skills needed for primates (and many other mammals) in terms of developing those skills to parent or even be positive adults with newborns, infants etc with conspecifics when belonging to a species which lives in groups (even with gibbons when the 'group' is simply a parenting female-male pair and their sub-adult offspring).
There was a Siamang at Auckland Zoo named Iwani, who was rejected by his mother and raised by keepers for the first year of his life. He was successfully reintroduced to his family - starting with his brother, who was two years older; then his father; and then his mother, who was the most unpredictable. Although he was tolerated, he couldn’t read Siamang body language and this in turn would antagonise the adults, when he didn’t respond to signals they wanted space. He was eventually euthanised as an adult as he his mental health deteriorated and his welfare was compromised. The saddest thing of all was that he was a twin (she was euthanised because when their mother rejected them, she put her leg so badly it’d have to be amputated). Had she survived, he would have been peer raised.
If I had one wish in the our regions zoo world it would not be to see Okapi in our zoos as much as I would love to really see this happen but for the Perth zoo to open its own open range zoo as we see in the 3 other states, that would really make a big difference in the holding stakes with the larger species of animals held here.
@Zoofan15 Poor Iwani and his twin sister that's really sad but appreciate hearing about it from you as a very insightful example (the Siamang body signals was really interesting to hear about, sad for Iwani that a result of not being parent or peer raised was an inability to understand them). On the subject of Siamangs specifically, was wondering if perhaps the late Armstrong at Mogo may have been the male Siamang who went to Mogo from Perth in 1995?
Armstrong was born at Brookfield Zoo in 1982. He was sent to Edinburgh Zoo and paired with Fern (born 1981 at Twycross Zoo). They had two offspring at Edinburgh Zoo (0.1 Suli - 2000 and 1.0 Jambi - 2002), who were imported along with them as a family group by Mogo Zoo. They went on to produce a further six surviving offspring at Mogo.
Every now and then there’s mention of an open range zoo for Perth in the news. I think their best chance comes from private funding/sponsorship as the government doesn’t appear to be interested in funding it. The open range sister zoos of Adelaide, Melbourne and Taronga are such an asset to them as they allow the transfer of animals to and from the sister zoos according to the needs of their breeding programmes. They also allow them to retain species within their zoological societies that are no longer able to be accommodated at the city zoos.
That would be useful in getting the project off the ground with sponsorship sourced to support projects at the zoo long term, as we’ve seen at Monarto. Currently, Perth Zoo are progressing with their masterplan which is based around the concept of efficient use of space. The redevelopment of the orangutan exhibits is one of their next projects and will hopefully begin 2023. As I mentioned earlier in the news thread, their breeding plans are on hold until this is completed.
Personally, I believe the ship has sailed on Perth's chances of ever getting an open-range zoo up and running, same for Auckland. If a billionaire funded it why would they bother giving it back to the state government (who runs Perth Zoo) to manage? Open range zoos located near either of those cities would be competitors and would probably have the opposite effect we would want, i.e. Perth and Auckland retaining more of their megafauna to remain competitive with a new open range zoo. Zoos nowadays are also a more politicized topic and anything of that nature is radioactive to governments. There wasn't really a major debate around them in the 70s-90s so governments were more conducive to opening them.
All good points and sponsorship alone would neither fully fund it nor guarantee it’s financial security for years to come. Perth Zoo has been greatly limited in recent years by their lack of space and have cited it as the reason for not breeding species like sun bears. Their species diversity hasn’t taken the hit Taronga and Melbourne’s has though, which is good to see; with innovation in the masterplan looking at efficiency in exhibit design (rotational exhibits etc). I look forward to seeing what they come up with - particularly with regards to Sumatran tiger, a species the zoo has held for nearly 30 years; and their world renowned Sumatran orangutan colony.
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@Patrick Keegan @Zoofan15 Oh my god sorry super embarrassing, I was trying to post a rough map of PZ's 'Lesser Primates' precinct but the way it lined up whilst aligning it all whilst putting it together is clearly not how it ended up looking when posted lol. Thought having a rough map and giving each of the 13 (formerly 17) exhibits in the area a letter from A-L (except Walk-In exhibit, just labelled as Walk-In) might be useful if ever we wanted to identify a certain individual exhibit in the area (I was asking Tetrapod to confirm a recollection of mine from 25 years ago and it was the longest description I used to try single out a particular exhibit using geography references and pathway perspective from when visitors walk through lol, so it was what prompted me to attempt the map).
