Worst Mixed-Species Combinations?

Obviously I don't know how well it works but that looks like a really cool mix and a very nice habitat from that photo! (minus the bear obviously)

~Thylo

 

Love the photo with African animals. Especially that so few zoos give larger animals access to natural ponds or lakes.

The German book 'Zootierhaltung' writes that white rhinos were mixed with dwarf goats in Schwerin. The rhinos 'were not only used as climbing and riding animals, but let themselves be guided to places, where the pygmy goats standing on the rhinos could access tree leaves'.

 

What’s surprising about the mix is Rhinos with Hippos. White rhinos do well in mixed species exhibits but Hippos? With other big animals?

 

Still ongoing.

Has been practised for several years in Parco viva natura in Italym

 

In Frankfurt the orang utan now share their enclosure with a Binturong. I hadn't seen the Binturong out of its sleeping den, but last week it was out a bit and got harassed by a younger orang utan and it swiftly (for a Binturong...) retreated backstage. It didn't seem a smart mix and I would be surprised if it will be a long-term success...

 

Karachi zoo does not have moated enclosures for their big cats, you might be referring to Lahore, where there's a sizable population of small Indian mongoose found throughout the zoo but most visible in the vicinity of the lion/tiger enclosures

 

Laughing Kookaburra in a mixdd-species Rainforest with other birds. Visitors don't especially like it when the kookaburra presents them with a dead red-crested cardinal or madagascar fody.

 

Seems like a total disaster , poor binturong.

 

I don't think it wil lfail, not only are geladas, unlike baboons herbevores. But other zoos keept them together with waterfowl succesfull together, like Zürich.

 

Dreadful. 'Birds as wallpaper' with no regard to their welfare.

 

I suppose if you have enough aggressive animals, it disperses well enough... That has been the (admittedly questionable) philosophy of some aquarium keepers anyway.

Lemme just add a failed combo from Rotterdam: Arctic foxes and snowy owls. Yeah, that was short lived.

Rotterdam also saw a fight between hyraxes and a klipspringer which resulted in extensive medical treatment for the klipspringer.

There also was this idea to mix meerkats with warty pigs, Lion King style. Eventually it got cancelled over budget reasons (and probably fears for agression). Earlier ideas were even worse, mixing meerkats with Guineafowl and weavers.

 

There also was this idea to mix meerkats with warty pigs, Lion King style. Eventually it got cancelled over budget reasons (and probably fears for agression). Earlier ideas were even worse, mixing meerkats with Guineafowl and weavers.[/QUOTE]

Rhenen keeps there warhogs with meerkats, while chester keeps there banded mongooses with them. So I don't thing that this specific mix is that problematic. But why would you put weavers with a smal carnivore ? One of my favourite experiences in a zoo, was when I saw a Meerkat catch a sparrow, and how the group reacted to it. I can't belive how anybody would even think about that.

 

Not criticizing it , but a totally bizarre and aesthetically / thematically weird mix in my opinion , glad it has been successful though.

 

Very novel mixed species exhibit to say the least . I'm not at all suprised that it didn't last that long.

 

I read through to make sure I'm not repeating any. I go to way more aquariums than zoos so chances are everything I think of is aquatic.

- Marineland Florida attempted to mix Tucuxi dolphins with Amazon river dolphins. The river dolphins eventually killed a Tucuxi calf, and I believe all of the Tucuxi died by the end of the year of the attempt (sometime in the 60s).
- Vancouver Aquarium had an incident in which an orca crushed a Pacific white-sided dolphin to death, though they continued to hold them together until the last orca was moved to SeaWorld in 2001. I'm not aware of any issues at Miami Seaquarium with the same mix.
- EPCOT attempted to hold bottlenose dolphins in the main tank when they first opened The Living Seas in 1985, but the dolphins apparently harassed sea turtles and stingrays, forcing them to separate the dolphins into their own corner. Some reef fish occasionally find themselves in that corner (as they didn't use a solid wall), and often those fish end up becoming snacks. There were also particular problems with an adult male towards all other animals within the exhibit. That male killed a number of the animals in the exhibit when it opened, including two of the other dolphins. He was eventually moved to National Aquarium in Baltimore.
- I don't know if it ended poorly for some reason, but ZooTampa at Lowry Park was not holding their Reeve's muntjacs with their gharials the last time I went.
- Disney's Animal Kingdom supposedly had an issue with their adult male okapi and some Yellow-backed duikers. According to someone else on ZooChat, the male "stomped" on one of the duikers, resulting in his transfer to his own enclosure in Kilimanjaro Safari.
- SeaWorld San Diego had issues when attempting to introduce their last Commerson's dolphins to their belugas, apparently a couple of the belugas began to block their paths obsessively. The Commerson's dolphins have since moved to Aquatica in Orlando. Duisburg Zoo had no issue with this combination between 1975 and 2004 (and one of the belugas from that mix was actually present for this).

 

Not so much bad as just strange, but at the Saginaw Children's Zoo the cotton top tamarins, a sulcata tortoise, and a bantam rooster live together.

 

didn't see it myself, but I heard from my acquaintance, a Korean zoo book writer that Samjung The Park in Busan, which opened in 2014 and closed on April 25, 2020, had mixed red foxes and mouflons same exhibit at the beginning of its opening.

He said that ridiculous mixing was done to stall time because animals were not imported on time. That exhibit the foxes and the mouflons mixed together was later used as exhibit for black leopards.


Private zoos built by people who just like to collect animals are exhibit more bizarre mixing. Some private indoor zoos in Korea, which I saw in a report about Korean zoos published by the Korean animal rights group "Aware", were doing more ridiculous mix as follows:

Capybara, Dog, Rabbit, Sika deer


Mini pig, Goat, Tortoise, Rabbit, Silky chicken


Capybara, Sulcata tortoise, Aldabra tortoise, Sika deer


Squirrel monkey, Prairie dog
​

...I hope these zoos, which are not like zoos, disappear quickly.

 

Bumping this thread to say that today I went to the Oschner Park Zoo. One exhibit has two black bears and an arctic fox. Apparently the fox was found running around a park in Illinois (probably an escaped pet), was taken to the Henry Vilas Zoo, and when they had no room for it officials put it there. They didn't have an exhibit built, so they put the fox with the bears. This was three years ago. They apparently get along just fine and having seen direct interactions between the species I am shocked to say that I believe it.

 

It's not "worst" then, is it? This enclosure has been brought up here before though - before zoo got the fox this exhibit was actually a mix of bear, Chukar, and Great Horned Owl!