Can anyone clarify the situation with retics/baringos in US zoos? Am I correct in understanding that they ALL were determined to be hybrids? Or is it the case that there are few enough pure bred that they decided to merge their PMP's?
Most are hybrids. There was a big problem determing bloodlines and too many could not be traced back to wild caught individuals, therefore the subspecies were combined into one program. I know SDWAP, the Wilds, Santa Barbara, and Dickerson Park Zoo (Springfield, MO) exhibit the Baringo subspecies, but I am unsure if they contain hybrids. The PMP is now supposed to contain animals of unknown origin and continue to breed animals of a known pedigree of which there are 90 founders of reticulated and baringo subspecies. However the Masai Giraffe population is still pure.
So does that mean that they are still maintaining pure lines from pure retics/baringos of known origin? Or are they breeding them with hybrids now too?
If pure lines are still maintain, it will be up to the individual zoos that keep them. PMPs are not as strict as SSPs so zoos have more individual flexibility and control of the population. As captive breeding programs go, PMPs dont really do anything but analyze the captive population - maintain a studbook and make breeding reccommendations based on population data. Zoo's dont have to follow the reccommendations is they dont want to...but most do to maintain the population. I dont have a studbook of this population, so I cant elaborate too much on the population's makeup. When it does get published, I'll fill you in.
DNA sampling of wild populations has shown the two groups (Reticulated and Rothschild's / Baringo) to be distinct and identifiable. However, when researchers tried to compare these markers in the North American captive populations, they found overwhelming evidence of hybridization. Very few animals are of "known" origin - to the extent that all of their ancestors can be traced back to specific points of capture from the wild to ensure they really are the subspecies they are supposed to be. So even though a giraffe may appear to be fully "reticulated", there is a high likelihood of having some Rothschild's genetics mixed in (and vice versa). Because of a number of unknowns in the studbook and this concrete evidence to show hybridization in the majority of the population, ALL of the retic/rothschilds are managed by AZA as one generic hybrid population, no matter what the institution records or reports to ISIS. As OkapiKpr wrote, a PMP is much less strict - they make recommendations only. If a zoo "thinks" they have, say, reticulated giraffes, they do not need to follow the recommendation to bring in a "Rothschilds" and opt for an available "Retic". But the hard evidence is that there is really no difference - they are probably all hybrids to some extent, and any 'pure' animals would probably be fully related to other 'pure' ones, making breeding undesirable anyway. Captive Masai giraffes are still closely comparable with their wild cousins genetically, and are thus managed separately.
When I asked a keeper during my first trip to San Diego Zoo for a behind-the-scenes tour, I asked why zoos no longer house reticulated giraffes or maintain an SSP on them and the keeper said that any remaining reticulated giraffes were sent out to breeding programs in their native range since their numbers are so low (I'm thinking maybe that's the reason why San Diego Zoo doesn't have reticulates in their collection anymore). I read somewhere that Binder Park, Busch Gardens Tampa, Cheyenne Mountain, Louisville, Maryland, and Omaha's Henry Doorly all have solely reticulated populations. White Oaks website says they maintain only reticulated giraffes. I know that San Diego Safari Park has both Reticulated and Rothschild's (Baringo) giraffes, as one of their reticulates had a calf. I think going forward whenever I do a full species list for certain zoos, I will say "Giraffe hybrid" and use the scientific nomenclature (Giraffa reticulata x camelopardis) if I see or hear that they aren't pure. From what I've learned, reticulated giraffes look like they have brown with thin white lines breaking it up and looking more uniformed (I've noticed that white spots can show up in the middle of the large, polygonal patterns), whereas the Rothschild's has brown with either yellow-white or orange-white lines, with the lines looking thicker and the spots more irregularly shaped than that in the reticulates.
Reticulated giraffes are like bengal tigers and african leopards in US zoos - a lot of places sign their species as it, but none of them are. There might be a few around, unlike the big cat examples - Audubon maybe? Some other members will know that better than myself.
@TinoPup is correct. Any giraffe that you see at a zoo in North America that is not a Masai giraffe is going to be a hybrid to some degree (there are potentially a few purebred animals of the other two species knocking around but there are very, very few of them) due to historical interbreeding before different species/subspecies were more formally recognized. This is a topic that comes on ZooChat quite regularly as we get new members because most zoos still label their animals as "reticulated" giraffe (or sometimes less frequently, "Rothschild's"), essentially to keep face to the public. All of the giraffe in North America that are not Masai giraffe are managed as a single population, where they are commonly referred to on ZooChat and in the field as "generic" giraffe, hence the program is known as the Generic Giraffe SSP. These hybrid animals are managed as ambassadors for their species in the wild. More zoos are wanting to switch over to supporting the purebred Masai giraffe population as animals are available; however, zoos still want to have giraffe, which is why the generic animals are still bred. The information that was given to you on your behind-the-scenes tour is just simply not true. A lot of zoos employ people that are not directly involved in Animal Care or Animal Management to serve as tour guides and guest experience ambassadors, and more often than not they do not know the full story or all of the facts. It sounds to me as though your guide did not know how to answer your question and just decided to make something up. The San Diego Zoo has been managing Masai giraffe for many, many years, and no giraffe have ever been returned to Africa for any sort of in-situ management, and this is likely to never occur. The San Diego Zoo Safari Park manages a generic giraffe herd as well as a Masai giraffe herd in their two largest field habitats (East Africa and South Africa, respectively). For what it's worth, of the other zoos you listed, Louisville also manages Masai giraffe. The rest do all manage generic giraffe.
