It would be nice to have some form of a conservation display for sub Antarctic penguins resident in New Zealand waters (if there is not one already). Equally, I wonder whether anyone of us ZC-ers local can comment on or give us an insight into whether strandings and out of place records for the Antarctic taxa in New Zealand waters have become more frequent in recent years (????).
A red panda cub was born 17/12/2017 to Sundar and Khusi: Christmas joy at the Zoo as endangered Red Panda born Christmas joy at the Zoo as endangered Red Panda born Christmas came early for the Zoo, as a Red Panda cub was born on Sunday morning to first-time parents, Khusi and Sundar. The odds of a successful Red Panda conception are low as female Red Pandas are only in season one day a year, so the window of opportunity for them to get pregnant is incredibly small. Zoo visitors will see the newest arrival in the New Year as the cub will spend its first few months inside a nest box with its mother, Khusi. Both mum and cub are doing well so far, and Zoo staff will be keeping their distance from Khusi and the cub, limiting contact time to simple daily checks and monitoring to allow them to bond. This also means the cub’s gender will not be known for a while. Khusi and Sundar are a new breeding pair, and it is exciting that they have successfully bred after joining the international conservation breeding programme in 2015 for this endangered species. The last Red Panda cub born at the Zoo was on Christmas Eve in 2009, so the birth of a Red Panda cub is a fantastic achievement. Sundar arrived at the Zoo from Auckland Zoo in November, 2015 to be a mate for Khusi, who arrived in 2015 from Hamilton Zoo. We had been hopeful for a successful breeding season this year, but it can be challenging to tell if a female Red Panda is pregnant as they can delay implantation of a fertilised egg. We had our suspicions that Khusi was pregnant, so there was a lot of excitement over the weekend when we discovered she had given birth in her nest box! It’s still early days for the five day old cub, but so far Khusi is doing a great job at caring for her baby and we will do everything we can to ensure the cub’s survival; and we are remaining hands off. The cub probably won’t be seen for at least a couple of months, and we’ll let people know when the cub is out and about. Visitors to the Zoo will still be able to see our male Red Pandas Sundar and Manasa. Once we know the gender of the cub, we’ll be asking our conservation partners at the Red Panda Network to help us choose an appropriate Nepalese name for this precious animal.
Probably not the best Christmas news about the zoo, but today there's been a couple of articles about the local pet cats (as opposed to feral cats) being killed by unspecified animals after roaming into the zoo grounds. Fatal attraction as capital's cats wander into Wellington Zoo's animal enclosures Missing neighbourhood cats turning up dead at Wellington Zoo
