i just checked over isis and had a look at our populations of primates in australasian zoos. i was pleased to see that (for a change) the last 6 months or so have actually seen our population grow significantly. worth noting is that; a young white-cheeked gibbon born at melbourne was moved to adelaide. meanwhile one of the perth pairs produced another offspring. this is looking good as now there are 4 pairs in the region and i assume adelaide will soon source a male to create a fourth. two more female lar gibbons "appeared" on mogos records. i assume they have been moved there join the lone female there. maybe they came from gorge wildlife park, who had been loaned melbournes lar gibbon family? the number of siamangs grew thatks to a couple of births. a male colobus was born at melbourne. a few new de brazza's popped up at mogo. i have no idea where they came from - guessing that they are the melbourne trio and that melb has forgotten to delete them from their records. a vervet was born at perth. a mandrill was born at melbourne. melbourne acquired some more spider monkeys (i think from adelaide). a squirrel monkey was born at taronga. a few brown capuchins where born (even though i thought they where phasing out!!). the cottontop tamarin population exploded and all those irwinphiles will be glad to know australia zoo benefited from the boom, receiving a trio from somewhere. mogo and perth seem to be proving that pygmy marmosets are here to stay - with both zoos recording twin births! 4 male ring-tailed lemurs have moved to monarto. and after perth sending its non-breeding ruffed lemurs to mogo, looks like melbourne has sent its non-breeding pair to perth?!!! in fact its not good news for the regions ruffed lemurs, i think there are no breeding females left in australia at all.
that's a shame regarding the ruffed lemurs. obviously we had a higher male than female birth ratio and the CBP has suffered because of it. i hope they choose to continue to have a CBP for them and import some fresh females. does anyone have any photos of the white-fronted lemurs at dubbo? are they on display?
I'm not sure but I think that another male silvery gibbon was born at Perth Zoo sometime in the last year.
primates dubbo has at least three white fronts on an island in the zoo's centre near the white-handed gibbons and spider monkeys. i think pygmy marmosets are here to stay, auckland has indicated it will keep them soon. the white ruffed lemur scenario is bad, dubbo had alot of success with this species in the 1990s. the tag convenor has recommended fresh importations
ISIS records for the last few years have consistantly shown dubbo to have one male and two female white-fronted lemurs. from memory it was 1.3 before that. i believe they may have originally come from perth or that perth also displayed this species at one time. didn't we have a conversation about the lack of females - that conversation being in regards to ruffed lemurs?!!!
In regards to the Javan Langers held at the Melbourne zoo I am surprized that there is only the one pair in the country (isis), they are rare in most zoos and they are an attractive monkey as well which would go well in an Asain rainforest exhibit like Tarongas wild Asia? or Adelades asian SEARS?. Would anyone know if the Melbourne zoo had more than just the two they have now?.
javan langurs at melbourne. mark, if you read some of the earlier threads on langurs, i mention my confusion at the same thing. until a year or so ago, all our zoos had a different species of langur entirely. i do know this - javan or ebony angurs have been at melbourne for a long time. i certainly remember seeing them as a child. at times their have definately been bright orange babies amongst them and at one stage i remember there where at least 3 or 4 adults. i have sinced assumed that the group represented a breeding pair and their numerous offspring that have since been sent overseas to breed. however, as you mentioned javan langurs are endangered (certainly more so than dusky langurs) so i have never had any understanding why adelaide chose to imporrt dusky langurs and taronga francois'. they all fit well into the "asian rainforest theme".
Thanks Pat, Maybe they could have three or four rare Asian monkeys in each zoo here, from a breeding piont of view that would really be of help to them. Also it would show the public what our zoos are doing with the breeding of captive animals like these. I cant see many reasons why we should limit ourselves to just one or two rare species with so many needing help. I have seen the colonies at the howletts zoos, around 60 javan Langers and many others, they are stunning.
THe way adel has them is great, if anyone else has seen it, (you probably have it opened in 1995), Its a huge moreton bay fig, there a fence on one side and an avairy on the other with an electric fence in front so the langurs cant get to it, they have a solid wood wall under the booardwalk so they cant climb up, and the tree overhangs high enough so they dont jump down, even singapore didnt think they could do it
yes, when after i posted my message i realised that i was unsure whether or not adelaide had had its dusky langurs since before it opened its southeast asia exhibit. they share space with tapir i believe? the situation with our primate collections is just the same as it is with everything else - our zoos need to maximise their capacity for holding species and as a result they want to phase out many so they can do just that. mixing species certainly makes for more space - no doubt in the future all siamang exhibits will be shared with orangutans. i would also like to see trails with; de brazza's guenon and mandrill (works at zoo atlanta with another guenon) colobus and gorilla (used to work in houston zoo) langur sp. and gibbon sp. (could work well as francois and whitecheeks are both from the same region as are silveries and javans and siamang/lar and duskys)..
Langurs are unbelievable jumpers. Singapore used to house Javan red langurs on a moated (10m wide moat with false gharial crocodiles) island but they kept leaping out, so we just let them free-range around the zoo instead and they joined up with a group of silver langurs which had been free-ranged earlier. They like to sit on the trees around the lion exhibit and taunt the cats. As for mixing gibbons and langurs, we tried it with about 10 douc langurs and 3 agile gibbons on a large island, but it didn't work out. I don't know the reason though, but i suspect the gibbons may have stressed out the capricious douc langurs. It may work with a hardier langur species though.
yeah gibbons might be smaller than chimps, orangs and gorillas but they are still apes and i imagine they are pretty tough and dominant over monkey species. douc langurs are, like you said probably the most delicate of all the langurs and not really a good choice for an experiment like that. interestingly in india common langurs dominate macaques who are scared of them. you would have thought it was the other way round but those common (hanuman) langurs are BIG!!!
i believe there where hanuman langurs once at taronga (moved to dubbo?), i remember them once sharing the orang enclosure. i think they have since died out or moved to private zoos. they are of no conservation importance but in the wild have interesting relationships with chital deer - a feature that could have been expoilted by our open range zoos. as common and ordinary looking as they are, rhesus macaques are (along with hanuman langurs) about the only true asian open scrub/savannah monkeys we have in our region and the most common in india. any open range "terai" exhibit is not quite right without them.
Taronga had crab-eating macaques in with there orangs when their the new orang utan exhibit first opened. I think the macaques had to be destroyed because they were carrying a disease that potentially could have been passed to humans. Not 100% about that. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Both species are fiercely territorial, not a good idea i reckon. We tried pig-tailed macaques with siamangs before, didn't work out either.
