Short news from European Zoos

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When I went to London about 4 weeks ago the Gorilla exhibit had not been opened. But You could peer through the fence. We saw the male gorilla on the Island running around. It looked excellent
 
I've found plenty of photos of the London gorillas posed on internet since the new 'Kingdom' opened last week. The female Zaire is still heavily plucked-she has phases of this, when she has been stressed e.g. by the death of her silverback, perhaps living in the quarantine cages in the hospital for many months during the construcion phase has made her do this again. Now they have a splendid new environment, it will be interesting to see if she lets her hair grow again.... (zoo check got on her case a few years ago because of her hair plucking and 'rocking' which was a direct consquence of the silverback's death and having no male in the group. At the same time Zaire also became the dominant female in the leaderless group)

For all the readers in Oz, 'Zaire' at London Zoo is the older full sister of Melbourne's silverback Motaba. She has only one offspring but genetically her line is well represented through other siblings in other zoos.

Gorilla Kingdom looks good. They hope the male will breed with the new female Effie. She came from Leipzig where she was disruptive in their group. She has had two offspring previously at Berlin, but doesn't mother-raise them. London's male is wildcaught, no offspring, a bit suspect in the mating department.
 
London Zoo and Howletts are not good friends.. it goes back a long way but John Aspinall never liked the London Zoo set-up. They don't trade animals either, London go to other zoos for new stock, but usually not to Kent. It seems odd when there are seventy gorillas down there, but London's new female had to come from Germany....

London last bred Gorillas back in the 1980's. The main problem is they've never had enough animals to make a decent breeding group and some of them haven't been any good for breeding anyway so things just haven't worked out well.

Maye now it will change, but they may need to add additional animls at some stage.
 
I get Fed up of London zoo. When Chester got their Komodos they weren't metioned but years after when london got their it was national news.
 
Type in 'Flickr Photos tagged with Gorilla' and up will come hundreds of Gorilla photos taken by different people.. Then type in the search box 'London Zoo Gorilla(s)' and the most recent London pix will come up- the newest ones are from the new openair Kingdom exhibit. If you put in the plural(Gorillas), a few different pix may come up too.

You can do it for any animal species, any zoo anywhere.:)
 
Baby asian elefant at Hamburg Zoo (germany), she is healthy and appears to be female. Born last Friday 13 April.

Baby asian elefant at Cologne Zoo (germany), he is healthy and appears to be male. Born last Monday 16 April. Mother was imported pregnant a few months ago together with 4 other females of which 1 other is still pregnant...

If ur bored go and watch the Cologne Zoo elefant cam here:
Die WDR.de-Elefantencam im Kölner Zoo - WDR.de - Freizeit

A few weeks ago a very young mother asian elefant killed her first baby right after birth at Amersfoort Zoo (Netherlands). The grandmother, who was with her for comfort also attacked the child after it's mother panicked.

The mother was the first and only elephant ever born at Amersfoort after her mother was sent on breeding loan to Rotterdam Zoo. Since then the Zoo build it's own Bull-penn and now holds bull Sammy who was the father of the now killed baby...
 
There are babies komado dragons at chester zoo. They went on show a week or so ago. Their mum became famous after a Virgin birth.
 
jwer said:
a very young mother asian elefant killed her first baby right after birth at Amersfoort Zoo (Netherlands). The grandmother, who was with her for comfort also attacked the child after it's mother panicked.

This is very unfortunate- it does seem to happen sometimes with first time mother elephants in captivity- particularly when they haven't seen other calves in the group before...

At Twycross Zoo about eight years ago, two young female elephants were pregnant for the first time, both from mating with Chester's male elephant. With no other mothers or calves(or older elephants) in the small group, the staff were anxious about how they'd react when giving birth. So during the birth,the female was chained as a precaution. Staff were present throughout and immediately after delivery, the calf was put within her reach so she could smell, inspect and clean it,- but not trample it if she panicked. Fortunately she showed good maternal instinct so didn't have to remain chained long. The same procedure was carried out with the 2nd female a few weeks later- again with complete success. Both females rearered their calves perfectly.

I think that was a wise procedure given these were first time mothers.
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it seems like european zoos are starting to reverse the trend of this species dying out in captivity. theres a long way to go but it s positive news. even if a few babies get trampled along the way!
 
grantsmb said:
jwer said:
I think that was a wise procedure given these were first time mothers.
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The consensus among the dutch zoo-followers is that chaining the mother up is cruel and does not belong in a good zoo, specially not with such an intelligent species.

My personal opinion would be that chaining the mother might sometimes make sense, but if an "experienced" mother who could aid it's better to try that (Amsterdam did so two years back and that went fine...). In the end, it was a good experience for both mother and grandmother and let's hope that the next time, they'll know a bit better...

And the EEP-Keeper (Rotterdam-Zoo director) is telling every Zoo to either contribute by keeping at least 1.3 or holding elderly females or bulls. Lately, this seems to be paying off more and more with a lot of new Elephant enclosures having been built, being built, or are going to be built on short notice.
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between all of us lets begin a list of european zoos who have either a-bred elephants recently or b-have adequate or new elephant facilities in which breeding could be anticipated.
ill get the ball rolling by nominating...
whipsnade as category A and B
and artis zoo in Amsterdam as a category A zoo
 
jwer said:
grantsmb said:
My personal opinion would be that chaining the mother might sometimes make sense, but if an "experienced" mother who could aid it's better to try that...

And the EEP-Keeper (Rotterdam-Zoo director) is telling every Zoo to either contribute by keeping at least 1.3 or holding elderly females or bulls.

Yes, I agree but in Twycross' case, the two young pregnant females had no 'aunties' or older companions at all. In that case I think this temporary chaining was warranted- it was only used during the births and could have made the difference between successful birth and disaster.

Interesting Twycross still have no bull of their own, nor have the two females which bred (Tonzi and Mimbu), been sent elsewhere for breeding again. A third younger female (Noorjahan) hasn't been bred. One of the two female calves, now eight years old(Karishma) was sent to Whipsnade last summer as she was throwing her weight about at Twycross.

I'm not clear what Twycross's future plans are for their elephants- they are in an unusual situation of having four young females, two of which have bred successfully once- yet still have never had a bull of their own... . So they are in Glyn's Category A, but not really category B.
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