Twycross Zoo Twycross Zoo Chimpanzees

Pertinax said:
Kibale was obviously brought in with the hope he might breed with some of the (then five) identified Western females they have but hasn't for the reasons you state(plus the two others died) I imagine they may try and redress this with new females as Sharon Redrobe mentioned in the interview I saw.
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Looking at the life age tables, I guess the 2 older verus females Coco and Noddy will probably not have many years left in them anyway.

Twycross Zoo obviously has a challenge on their hands with so many hybrid individuals in their late and mid thirties and the odd ones out at 28, 25 and 13 which are likely to live for another odd on 20+-25+ years with good husbandry management.

Ilustrative: The 2014 EEP listed the longevity for the entire population and the results show that chimpanzees in captivity attain great ages. At the top end there are: F at 60, F at 58, F at 54, F at 52 and 2 M and 2 F at 50. With ages 47-49 in M in each year 1 and females in 2-3's.
 
Pertinax said:
Have they been trying to integrate the 4 ex Colony ones with the main group yet?
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They’ve been trying but it’s slow going. Samantha, the sole female in the group of four, is very fiery, and has an almost unhealthily close relationship with her son Peter. The two together prove very difficult to introduce.....but I think there’s been some progress with Tommy and William, the other two males in the small group...
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
Looking at the life age tables, I guess the 2 older verus females Coco and Noddy will probably not have many years left in them anyway.

Twycross Zoo obviously has a challenge on their hands with so many hybrid individuals in their late and mid thirties and the odd ones out at 28, 25 and 13 which are likely to live for another odd on 20+-25+ years with good husbandry management.
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Yes Coco( who is the original 'brown' chimp there) is jointly with one other, the UK's oldest I believe.

I think longerterm they can probably do what Edinburgh did in their 'Badongo' exhibit,- combine their existing group of hybrids with a newer group of pure Western chimps (In Edinburgh's case, the ones that came from a dutch lab,) thus allowing the original hybrids to gradually phase out naturally, even if some of them go on living for many years yet..
 
Pertinax said:
Yes Coco( who is the original 'brown' chimp there) is jointly with one other, the UK's oldest I believe.

I think longerterm they can probably do what Edinburgh did in their 'Badongo' exhibit,- combine their existing group of hybrids with a newer group of pure Western chimps (In Edinburgh's case, the ones that came from a dutch lab,) thus allowing the original hybrids to gradually phase out naturally, even if some of them go on living for many years yet..
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Yes, joint oldest female and overall with Mabel at Welsh Mountain. Oldest male in the UK is Boris at Chester.
 
Pertinax said:
Have they been trying to integrate the 4 ex Colony ones with the main group yet?
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Would think they are also struggling at the min with jambo’s group as they are currently in an alpha power struggle for a while now and are expecting him to be replace sone given his age asumming the other group has an alpha also putting in effect three in the same room would be troublesome I would think
 
J C said:
Would think they are also struggling at the min with jambo’s group as they are currently in an alpha power struggle for a while now and are expecting him to be replace sone given his age asumming the other group has an alpha also putting in effect three in the same room would be troublesome I would think
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I believe the struggle is a longstanding one between Jambo and Kibale- I saw the result of a fight some time go where Jambo had a badly bitten wrist. Kibale sometimes moves around with his hair slightly raised, which is a sign of dominance in males, but then poor Jambo has no hair so you can't see how he would hold it! I'm not sure there are any other non-castrated males there now apart from those two?

Regarding the smaller group, either two or even all three males in it are castrated- these would not pose a serious dominance problem I don't think.
 
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ShonenJake13 said:
The two groups were kept in separate enclosures but they now have both been moved to the new enclosure, which is only one outdoors but an indoors that can be split in two. Each group has one half of the indoors and (I think) alternate access outdoors.



No. Not only is Jambo a subspecies hybrid, which the European breeding programme specifically can’t breed off of, but he also probably has bad genetics if he’s managed to contract alopecia.
Kibale is not the perfect breeding male with the current group - he certainly is genetically, both because he’s unrelated to everyone and because he is a western chimpanzee, but the only three females he’d be able to breed with are past breeding age (in two of their cases) and not keen on him (in the third case)...so Twycross’s best bets for breeding is to wait until the old guard die off and then start bringing in younger western females to breed with Kibale.
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I believe his Jambo's parents are Coco and Bobby, who were mother and son? Hence the alopecia?
 
So with the unfortunate passing of both Rosie and Tojo, does anyone know how many chimps remain? And what each name, gender and if they are neutered is?
 
bintarong said:
So with the unfortunate passing of both Rosie and Tojo, does anyone know how many chimps remain? And what each name, gender and if they are neutered is?
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There are now 15 of them. Seven males (Jambo, William, Flynn, Jomar, Peter, Tommy and Kibale), and eight females (Coco, Noddy, Samantha, Holly, Josie, Victoria, Genet and Tuli). I couldn’t tell you which ones have been vasectomised and which ones castrated though.
 
Does anyone know why the smaller group were separated from the large group? I wonder if they will be mixed again, would mean more space and more access to outdoors
 
chimp said:
Does anyone know why the smaller group were separated from the large group? I wonder if they will be mixed again, would mean more space and more access to outdoors
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They were actually never together in the first place, the two groups remaining moved into Eden from two separate buildings, through the years Twycross have had multiple groups and multiple enclosures in the zoo at once and this has now been narrowed down to the two groups which I believe they are still trying to merge if possible.
 
Jude T said:
They were actually never together in the first place, the two groups remaining moved into Eden from two separate buildings, through the years Twycross have had multiple groups and multiple enclosures in the zoo at once and this has now been narrowed down to the two groups which I believe they are still trying to merge if possible.
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Oh I never knew that! I had heard talk that they were once together as one group. It would be interesting if they could be merged, not sure how they could go about it though...
 
Yeah there's a lot of history about where chimps have been kept at Twycross and it's something I was interested in myself for quite a time, I think theres a few threads on here with further info
 
Jude T said:
Yeah there's a lot of history about where chimps have been kept at Twycross and it's something I was interested in myself for quite a time, I think theres a few threads on here with further info
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Do you happen to have a link to the forum? I am new here, can't seem to find it.. interested to read it though! :)
 
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