I'm missing the goral, but have the other two.
Last I heard the goral was offshow however.
Species you could have seen, but didn't
- Thread starter ralph
- Start date
I'm missing the goral, but have the other two.
Last I heard the goral was offshow however.
That's a shame. London Zoo has kept three species over the past few decades, including the first Panay cloud runners kept in a zoo outside the Philippines.
Wingham and Battersea keep Northern Luzon cloud rats. Plzen has the Southern Luzon cloud rat and the Panay cloud runner.
Maybe I'll get lucky at one of those places...
I hope so. If you go to Plzen, you should be able to see several species you've never seen before.
Or Hamerton.
I'd prioritize Plzen if cloud rats are important to you. Recent surveys into Panay have failed to find any living cloud rats and the breeding center in the Philippines suffered a catastrophic loss of animals due to disease which they are unlikely to recover from, if any animals are left alive at all. There is a very real possibility that Plzen's few rats (pretty much all post-breeding age) are the last of their species...
~Thylo
~Thylo
And just think.... London had a rather successful breeding group which they deliberately stopped breeding from, on the basis the species was doing fine in the breeding centre......
In your opinion, what zoo is best for seeing rare and unusual species (particularly mammals) that can't be seen anywhere else? I've got Hamerton in my mind - there's so many species there which I haven't seen yet, not to mention to addition of Echidnas as well!And just think.... London had a rather successful breeding group which they deliberately stopped breeding from, on the basis the species was doing fine in the breeding centre......
And just think.... London had a rather successful breeding group which they deliberately stopped breeding from, on the basis the species was doing fine in the breeding centre......
Didn't they once breed Leadbeater's Possum regularly and then stop on a similar basis..?
~Thylo
The remaining Long-tailed Goral and Armenian Moufflon are off-show, but with some luck visible from the visitor path. It is however also not impossible to get behind the scenes there if you contact the zoo in advance.
A few relatively recent misses for me, all since last summer -
Zorilla - Hoo Farm. Made many attempts to see these and was sorely disappointed. Might have seen a tail, but not enough to really count.
Chacoan Mara - Exmoor. One of several new species, and unfortunately one that had left the collection extremely recently. Still yet to see one.
Indian Muntjac - Chester. One had passed away, the remaining one stayed hidden over the course of my visit.
Black-Backed Jackal - Hamerton. The enclosure isn't viewable from up close and during the summer it's covered in long grass. No-one else saw them on that day either, and there were a lot of enthusiasts there.
Indo-Chinese Binturong - Exmoor. The only other lifer missed on this day, bit of a blow because that would have got me the set for Binturong subspecies in the UK.
Slender Loris - Birmingham. Have seen it before at Shaldon but very fleeting views. Visited Birmingham when they first went onshow, no joy. Didn't get round to visiting before lockdown and on my post lockdown visit the Loris House was closed due to COVID precautions.
Zorilla - Hoo Farm. Made many attempts to see these and was sorely disappointed. Might have seen a tail, but not enough to really count.
Chacoan Mara - Exmoor. One of several new species, and unfortunately one that had left the collection extremely recently. Still yet to see one.
Indian Muntjac - Chester. One had passed away, the remaining one stayed hidden over the course of my visit.
Black-Backed Jackal - Hamerton. The enclosure isn't viewable from up close and during the summer it's covered in long grass. No-one else saw them on that day either, and there were a lot of enthusiasts there.
Indo-Chinese Binturong - Exmoor. The only other lifer missed on this day, bit of a blow because that would have got me the set for Binturong subspecies in the UK.
Slender Loris - Birmingham. Have seen it before at Shaldon but very fleeting views. Visited Birmingham when they first went onshow, no joy. Didn't get round to visiting before lockdown and on my post lockdown visit the Loris House was closed due to COVID precautions.
If you look purely at mammal rarities kept, Plzen is the place to be, especially if you go off-show
See this thread for more of these graphs and the calculations behind the x-axis:
The most comprehensive European zoo collections
I went to Howletts Zoo with a group of zoo volunteers. One of the volunteers went behind the scenes and saw a marbled cat.
Hamerton definitely has a decent number of oddities - however if you are indeed aiming for a visit to Plzen you can't get much better for a comprehensive set of oddities (mammalian and otherwise) than the Plzen/Jihlava/Praha threefer
Sadly so - and under the same manager that later wound down Edinburgh's oddities I believe!
Yeah I remember hearing it was the same guy. He's also the one responsible for the long-beaked echidnas leaving London, too, right? And was briefly at Chester before immediately getting booted to Edinburgh?
~Thylo
I don't know if he was in charge at the time of the echidna decision - but he was at Melbourne for some years immediately prior to arriving at Edinburgh, so he didn't go straight from working at Chester.
No he wasn't working at the ZSL in 1994 when London Zoo's long-beaked were sent away.
I thought he was at Adelaide, not Melbourne?
You are correct, of course
got the two major former golden cat holdings in Australia mixed up in my head!