Wildebeest

are there any is australia and with the monarto and werribee expansions do any zoos want them?

 

No, there are none in Australia, and none of the larger zoos want them. It's also, pretty well impossible to import them any anyway.

 

the last wildebeest died in australia in february 1977

 

That was about 25 years before I was even born. And I've never seen one in real life, along with duikers, okapis, bonobos, any wild pigs except peccaries and many, many more.

 

Who held them last? and what species was it.

 

I'm pretty sure it was Taronga. They were the common Brindled Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus), and when I was a young guy there were still four of them, unfortunately all cows. They were housed in a paddock opposite the Barbary Sheep, an area which is now part of the Chimpanzee enclosure.

They were known as gnus, rather than wildebeest. It's funny how the common names of some animals have changed in the past forty years or so. For instance, no-one referred to Sun Bears when I was a kid. They were commonly called Malayan Bears. Asiatic Black Bears were known as Himalayan Bears and Asian Elephants were universally called Indian Elephants, despite the fact that most of those in Australian zoos and circuses probably came from Asian countries other than India.

 

I can still remember asian elephants being called indian elephants and little penguins being called fairy penguins.

 

And Barbary Sheep called Aoudad.



Hix

 

You knwo you are getting old when you can rememver fairy penguins !! lol

I still like teh name Aoudad, because even when they are called Barbary Sheep people still call them goats!

 

Understandable that no zoo would want them as they couldn't get them anyway. I imagine that Wilderbeest would look great at Werribee though, mixed in with the rhino, giraffe and zebra.

 

Which is why the name Aoudad is so good - they are neither sheep nor goat!

Especially a herd of two dozen or so.



Hix

 

And put some Nile crocadiles in Werribee River.

 

I've searched in the old Taronga guidebooks for the gnus,I've found them in the 1972 edition. Taronga has kept White Bearded gnus, the east african subspecies of the Blue Gnu.

 

I remember seeing only one Gnu at Taronga in 1977

 

Yep, she would have been the last of them.

Don't know if Taronga ever had black wildebeest, but I have an old book which stated that Adelaide zoo had a pair in the early days and even bred them on one occasion. After that the bull was increasingly vicious towards the cow and so they had to be kept separate.