Animals you miss from your hometown zoo

Bisonblake

Bisonblake

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
The title is pretty straight forward, but are there any animals at your hometown zoo that you miss?

I’ll start with my hometown zoo the Detroit Zoo (a lot of these animals I didn’t know were at the zoo until recently):
  1. Brazilian Tapir- Tapirs are one of those animals that I always wanted to see in a zoo. Unfortunately when I was little, like every other kid in the zoo, I wanted to see the lions, Giraffes, seals, penguins, polar bears, and a lot of other common zoo animals. When I found out these were once at my hometown zoo, I was mad I never looked at them.
  2. African Slender-snouted crocodile- they had these for a very short time after the hippo passed away
  3. Hippopotamus- the hippo didn’t move much whenever I would visit, but who doesn’t like hippos.
  4. Lesser Kudu- I don’t know 100% for sure if they are gone, but can someone confirm this for me.
  5. Sichuan Takin- I have seen these, but I only focused on the Bactrian camels, which is why I forgot about them.
  6. Pudu- another animal I had no idea about
  7. Asian Elephants- I know that Michigan isn’t a good place to have captive elephants, but they were so cool. I only have a slight memory of them though.
  8. Lion-Tailed Macaque- these were always my favorite animals to see at the zoo. I was a little upset when I saw the lemurs took their spot.
  9. Siamese Crocodiles- It’s kind of sad that they no longer have a successful breeding program with these animals.
  10. Scimitar Horned Oryx- I think these might have left before I could actually remember stuff, but I love seeing rare endangered animals.
  11. Mongolian Wild Horse- a rare animal with a name I always struggled to pronounce.
I’m going to keep this list short for other people with the same hometown zoo. I’d love to see what other animals used to be at you hometown zoo.
 
My memory kind of sucks for this sort of thing, but I really miss the gerenuk at Smithsonian! Along with their giant anteaters and caracal.
 
TheGerenuk said:
I miss the mandrills, scimitar-horned oryx, Chinese giant salamander, giant pandas and elephants at the Toronto Zoo.
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Same with me. I miss the maras, all three macaques, and the dholes. I may have saw the Barbary macaques, dholes, and maras when I was really young, but I can't remember them very well now.
 
Beardsley Zoo:
-Andean Bear (planned to return eventually)
-Canada Lynx
-Pronghorn
-White-Lined Tanager
-Yellow-Thighed Caique
-Yellow Anaconda
-Broad-Snouted Caiman
-giant tortoise
-All the native herps (the herp house was destroyed during the ongoing renovation of the farmyard)

~Thylo
 
London Zoo - so much! But some notable ones include sloth bear, great hornbill, owl-faced monkey, Leadbeater’s possum, greater slow loris, red river hog, Chinese alligator, black mamba, Mississippi paddlefish, Panay bushy-tailed cloud rat, jewel wasp, aardvark, sand cat, maned wolf and rockhopper penguin...
 
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ShonenJake13 said:
London Zoo - so much! But some notable ones include sloth bear, great hornbill, owl-faced monkey, Leadbeater’s possum, greater slow loris, red river hog, Chinese alligator, black mamba, Mississippi paddlefish, jewel wasp, aardvark, sand cat, maned wolf and rockhopper penguin...
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Cloud rats!

I don't even know where to start with Bronx..

~Thylo
 
Well, my hometown facility is pretty small... I miss the turacos and Burrowing Owl for one. Also Steller's Jay... He was a clever little fellow.
 
I have two Zoos I treat as my hometown zoo, Brookfield and Milwaukee, I'll start with Brookfield
Hippo- I feel the old hippo exhibit at this zoo is a lot better than the one at Milwaukee
Congo Buffalo- I don't think I ever was able to see this
Milwaukee Zoo
Asiatic Black Bear- I didn't really get a chance to appreciate this animal
Moose- Less didn't get to appreciate it, more of one of my favorite animals
Tree Kangaroo- Very hard for me to find without going farther than an hour, plus I really like this animal
Koala- Probably one of the animals I want to see again the most
Also one small animal for Lincoln Park Zoo
Drill- Never got a chance to appreciate it
 
I know I've told this story before, but NZP used to have a big halfmoon of bear grottos right where the giant anteaters recently lived, and one held a polar bear with a pool deep enough to view him from the bottom of the cliff across from the two bear grottoes there. A forum member named Andrew once found me an old picture of my beloved bear with an article that described how the military trained scuba divers in it--it was that deep! Great bear, great underwater viewing, great joy of my elementary years.... Then came something called "rainforest conservation," and my bear departed for parts unknown, only to be replaced with a building called Amazonia which seemed to have no animals at all. I've missed my bear ever since and can't even say the name Amazonia without a twinge of bitterness.:(
 
ShonenJake13 said:
London Zoo - so much! But some notable ones include sloth bear, great hornbill, owl-faced monkey, Leadbeater’s possum, greater slow loris, red river hog, Chinese alligator, black mamba, Mississippi paddlefish, Panay bushy-tailed cloud rat, jewel wasp, aardvark, sand cat, maned wolf and rockhopper penguin...
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As you say, so many ex-London Zoo species to choose from but a few more:-
northern white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, Indian rhinoceros, manatee, common hippopotamus, gaur, saiga antelope, Temminck's golden cat, crab-eating fox, red uakari, giant armadillo, Barton's echidna, monkey-eating eagle......
 
I miss some of the London Zoo species listed by Tim May and ShonenJake13. I'll add the hoolock gibbon, douc langur, plumbeous redstart, New Guinea bandicoot, hog badger, hellbender, peripatus, Timor deer, Campbell's and mona monkeys, markhor, casiragua, garden eels, crown of thorns starfish and paddlefish.
 
Dassie rat said:
I miss some of the London Zoo species listed by Tim May and ShonenJake13. I'll add the hoolock gibbon, douc langur, plumbeous redstart, New Guinea bandicoot, hog badger, hellbender, peripatus, Timor deer, Campbell's and mona monkeys, markhor, casiragua, garden eels, crown of thorns starfish and paddlefish.
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Already wrote paddlefish :)
 
St Louis used to have a world class collection of waterfowl but now its barely -meh.
I have absolutely no explanation of why that happened, though one (but not even major)
explanation is the 1904 worlds fair birdcage was converted from exotics to a cypress swamp.

Over the years they have had numerous species they no longer have but I don't necessarily think that is bad. One complaint I have is that there really isn't enough diversity anymore in zoos that there formerly was. That is a plus and a minus, depending on how you look at it.

Most of all the species I wish they still had: Malayan tapir , pygmy hippo, any gibbon

Species they once had but I never saw there: giant panda phillipine eagle saiga
 
From Colchester Zoo, the animals I miss the most are mostly made up of smaller animals, especially birds. Dalmatian pelican, feathertail glider, Von der Decken's hornbill, kea, tailless tenrec, keel-billed toucan, Desmarest's hutia, white-cheeked turaco, Cape porcupine, marsh mongoose, Northern bald ibis, Eurasian curlew, yellow-billed stork, Montserrat oriole, Home's hingeback tortoise and lesser chevrotain are a starter list.

Of the bigger animals around when I was younger, there are only a few that I truly regret no longer being there - the dhole, striped hyaena, babirusa and mountain goat.

As for animals that were before my time - fanaloka and greater grison top that particular list.
 
Blue duiker from Virginia Zoo and Albino Northern cardinal from Virginia Living Museum.
 
An exhibit that I miss at the Detroit Zoo was the Rainforest. It was located in the National Amphibian Conservation Center. I remember they had small lizards, small turtles and tortoises, freshwater stingrays, and a sloth. Two years ago it was closed and turned it a new Japanese Giant salamander exhibit. They still kept the sloth and moved him behind the White Rhinos and Japanese Macaques.
 
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