@Hyak_II, yes. Older sister Carrie was born in late January. Over the last few years they have only let Claire and Dolce have a single pregnancy, or perhaps infants were lost at birth just giving that impression. The infant mortality rate for the tamarins and marmosets is pretty high at roughly 50% in the first year. More babies will come. Claire is the number 2 female. Dolce is near the bottom of the pile but her ranking will see more babies over the next 5 years when she reaches the point where she will be too old to breed. But fear not her babies are all extremely highly ranked so even if she is retired we could swap out Dolce and get one of the girls breeding.
Another big year for Vancouver Island Marmots at the zoo. 13 have been born since May. This ties last years record and all of those babies have been released into the wild. Hopefully this years group is as successful.
Are any young born kept in captivity in order to further the breeding program or are all young released? ~Thylo
I think all this year will be released based on the post. It mentions they will be sent to hibernate at the Tony Barrett Mount Washington Marmot Recovery Centre. Things could change naturally if any of the current captive population passes.
Three new Ostriches to keep Eunice company... The male is (tentatively?) named Omelette, and the females are Princess and Zednick. Eunice spent the first solid week chasing them around the place. Liz the Llama and Scooter the Alpaca are back in the unicorn field, near Eurasia. Winnie and Winona the P-horses are off breeding with Dudley, so only 5 are on display now. Mstari is due late April 2020.
Oh, this is fun... About a dozen or so West Caucasian Turs were introduced to the Eurasia wilds. They went bonkers, and every single Eurasia keeper was having a field day (no pun intended) trying to maintain order. Nice to have new animals, assuming they don't go 10-98
Their populations in general could do with a boost! Hence absolutely infuriating this vision- and ambitionless phase-out policies!
Oh, this is so misleading! I knew the info must be wrong, so today asked a Eurasia keeper about it. 6.0 were moved from the exhibit to the Wilds leaving 1.0 castrated with the females. All available keepers were there to observe. There are no new turs. There are currently no plans to breed them again.
TZ acquired 2.5 Mouflon from and 1.2 Barbary Sheep from Zoo St-Edouard in Quebec, which was a private zoo closed by the SPCA. They are in quarantine and will be merged with the present group. They also are holding 0.2 "tigers" from St-Edouard in tjhe Health Centre which will be transferred to the U.S. eventually. Caribou - one was euthanized due to a tumour, leaving 0.11 Cheetahs - Patonga was ill and in the Health Centre, but was getting better and returned to the holdings. However he deteriorated and was euthanized in July. Ring-tailed Lemurs - there is a new one who will be part of Outreach.
West African Dwarf Crocodile Monty has passed away - I heard because of age-related issues. Monty was one of the few remaining original animals at TZ from 1974. Born in the wild, he was originally estimated at 4 but in the last few years some newer tests indicated he was much older. Instead of about 50 when he died he was about 80. This happened in early August, but I don't think the zoo has said a word anywhere. As one of over 30,000 members among many others who are interested in the zoo goings on, not to mention as a City of Toronto taxpayer (the city owns the zoo), we should be better informed about such things. My favourite of my own pics of Monty: West African Dwarf Crocodiles - ZooChat
No idea. I did remember another thing I knew about him. He was only the second of this species to breed in captivity. Although some did not survive he had quite a few offspring. No idea where they are.
It's not available online but if you have a nearby university library or know someone with the series, then the International Zoo Yearbook for 1978 has an article titled "Breeding the west African dwarf crocodile at Metro Toronto Zoo" which might give an origin (although I'd suspect they wouldn't actually know where he was captured).
Well the fact that Toronto picked up animals from Zoo St - Edouard makes a lot of sense as to why we picked up more mouflon and Barbary sheep which are on phase out. They need a good home and the rest of those herds still has time before they pass away. We can provide them with a good home. That also answers questions I had about rumors of new tigers. Didnt make sense less than a year after providing us with sibling Amurs that the AZA would suddenly give us different tigers. The zoo is already probably working hard to send the new tigers to a sanctuary in the US or a smaller zoo. Holding them for long in the health center isnt a good plan. But then again if the two are social with each other they could be rotated with the Amurs. The exhibit is set up to house two adults and grown cubs for a limited time. Do you know which caribou died? Do you know the name of the new lemur or where he or she is from? I could see them picking it up from St - Edouard too.
The posted info. about the tigers came from a couple of reliable sources. Also heard third-hand that the tigers are going to "Texas". Presumably it is an AZA facility because it was AZA and CAZA who were asked to help with homes for the confiscated animals. I doubt they would move to the Amur exhibit,disturbing the Amurs routines, and probably needing quarantine again when their documentation and permits are obtained. Also do not know their health status. In May I read through several news reports about the zoo and it was very sad and disturbing - not posting links for that reason. Caribou/Lemur- no, I will ask when there is an opportunity.
TZFan would be better able to answer that. I do know that in some/maybe most cases it is not TZ but the AZA who puts species on phaseout.
