I dont know if there is already a thread on this, but why arent there many darters in captivity? The only zoo i know about keeping darters is burgers zoo.
They are referring to the bird, otherwise known as Anhinga. Burgers does indeed hold the only individual in Europe - a member of the African species - but the American species is not uncommon in collections over in the USA.
Yes i meant the bird species. Why isnt the american species in europe, and why dont the darters in burgers zoo breed? If they would, the species would probally be around more.
Burgerd is down to one individual. A few years ago they received the remaining Darters in Europe in the hope of breeding, but that failed. Burgers was quite successful in breedig them up to about 15 years ago...
There are some places in the U.S. that do have them, but these are rescues and rehabilitated birds, not captive bred. None of the darter species are endangered so there is no real need to keep them for conservation. It’s not worth the time and money to import some from across the Atlantic. Besides, average visitors probably wouldn’t care what they are. For all we know they would be called penguins with snake necks.
Never seen our native Anhinga here in a zoo on the West coast, and not aware of any. Only darter I've seen is a lone African darter in San Diego Zoo.
Emmen kept American darters in the early nineties, in the large South American aviary. In recent years I have only seen the African darter of Burgers in European zoos. I have seen Australian (as well as American) darters in the wild, but I can't recall if I saw darters in the Australian zoos that I visited (maybe Perth?) or in Jurong. An other group of suliforms that I miss in zoos, are the boobies. I think these are quite attractive birds for a zoo, but I only saw them once in a zoo.
