Mongoose madness: mongoose species and exhibits in zoos
- Thread starter DavidBrown
- Start date
I always wondered why one of the common names is “slender-tailed meerkat?” It implies there’s more than one meerkat species so comparison is required. Could it refer specifically to one of three meerkat subspecies?
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
I get really kind of tired of the meerkat / mongoose thing in zoos and must admit I prefer the Euplerids which IMO have a much greater need for an ex-situ presence in zoos due to their conservation plight (and they are just more interesting to me).
Capron has the nominate subspecies, so that could be the 'slender-tailed'. I'm not really sure though.
Yellow Mongooses are sometimes called Yellow Meerkats.
From what I've seen with our meerkats at Capron, they primarily serve as a popular animal for kids. They also live in a smaller, niche exhibit that likely couldn't accommodate many other species without serious renovations. A euplerid would most certainly not fit in the Exhibit, and I question whether they would have the same appeal as the small, highly social meerkats.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Yes, I know what you mean, they are crowd favourites, resilient / hardy, easy to keep and familiar to people because of "the lion king".
Conversely Euplerids are far more difficult to keep, highly stressed and breeding success is difficult to achieve.
I don't know about the appeal thing as there would have been a time when meerkats also were unknown and would not have rated high in terms of popularity amongst the public.
However, all things considered (and I obviously agree with you about the benefits of meerkats) on a gut level I just don't particularly like the idea of "Least Concern" meerkats / mongoose in zoos and I would much rather see the narrow striped mongoose kept by more zoos (though as I've said I understand why zoos keep them).
There are actually more than 30 species of meerkat, but in Dutch. I always wondered why the species of mongoose is called "meerkat" in English, but seems to be a (for a Dutch person) rather odd version of the African "mierkat" (what means "ant cat", what makes a lot more sense to me for an largely insectivorous mammal).
Numbers are approximate, might be off by a few:
Meerkats - 80 holders
Dwarf mongoose - 13
Banded mongoose - 6
Common cusimanse - 1 (possibly 2, another place with dwarf has animals that appear to be cusimanse but difficult to tell)
Javan mongoose - 1
I believe there's likely several other species in private hands.
Even with the strict import and transfer restrictions?
Yeah. The Javan is a rescue living at a sanctuary, for example.
Over half of AZA doesn't have them.
If you're sick and tired of seeing meerkats, why not just skip past the Exhibit? Noone is forcing you to look at meerkats (I hope), and a lot of other people enjoy seeing their foolish antics. Its perfectly acceptable to skip by an Exhibit for a species that doesn't interest you, no matter what your reasoning is.
Is the sanctuary in a state with ports? Otherwise there could be a chance that the mongoose is a stove away and didn’t had anyone fill papers for it.
I can think of a good handful without them, and that's just within ones I've been to. I agree they're a bit overhyped though. I'd like to see more Dwarfs and Bandeds at least.
Yes, I've been assuming it was an animal someone tried to smuggle in.
that or it could have been a stowaway.
I would love this if we had more mongoose representation and we definitely need it, best example I can think of is having fence foxes or bat-eared foxes for diversity. But if kids start calling all mongoose meerkats I might lose it.
Problem is getting permission to import them. Then too the three main species we have are social, thus making them more attractive than many others that live alone.
And let's be honest, the public messes up IDs all the time. I once heard a bobcat kitten called a tiger, lion, jaguar, and lynx within the space of about 15 minutes. Nobody thought of the cat that was actually local to the area, or the fact the kitten looked nothing like some of the suggestions. Hawks are eagles, wallabies are kangaroos, and every snake is venomous.
