Toronto Zoo Toronto Zoo Births, Deaths and Transfers 2021

Baby Golden Lion Tamarin has been spotted! Dolf DeJong has posted a video of the new baby clinging to mom.
 
Hate to follow good news with bad. The zoo's oldest cheetah, Emma, has been put down. At 14 and a half she well exceeded the norm for a cheetah and her genes live on in her children and grandchildren. She is the last of Luke and Mya's cubs (though Mya has 3 others still alive with Rafiki). She had been the cheetah on display the last couple of years. Now the question is who will be the exhibit cheetah if Laini doesn't have cubs this spring which I doubt she will. My guess is Emarah while they desperately try to breed Laini before she becomes too old to breed which she will later this year.
 
The zoo has successfully hatched two Madagascar spider tortoises in March. Interestingly they were laid about a month an a half apart yet they hatched a day apart. A third egg is currently being watched for signs of development but it was laid much more recently in January so its probably still a long way off hatching. This is their third time hatching the species since 2007. I really like how the zoo has begun touting is less showy successes with the turtles. Sure we all love the mammal births and some of the bird hatchings but the zoo should have been announcing all of its great work with reproduction for a long time now. Every department deserves recognition even if guests aren't as excited about the success.
 
The zoo has bred the crocodile newts. They have lots of eggs and larva. There is a video of them on Facebook.
 
Happy Monday everyone :)
Great news from Toronto Zoo to start off the week.
Mazy gave birth to 3 cubs on Friday night! This marks the first Amur tiger cubs at TZ since 2007. How exciting is that?
Sounds like Mazy is being a great mum; grooming and nursing the cubs regularly.
Of course, the first few weeks are critical, but I hope all goes well!
I'm excited to see these cubs grow up. I wonder if any will be staying, as Mazy is from Granby and Vasili is from Calgary.
 
What great news! Triplets will definitely help the zoo if and when the zoo opens this summer. It's a shame things haven't gone better with covid because the zoo did a stellar job of timing these cubs pretty much perfectly. Being born Apr 30 they would be ready for display for the Canada Day long weekend. They could have set off summer with a bang. The zoo might be open then but guests will definitely be restricted still and I am sure you wont be able to get nearly as close to the outdoor exhibit to protect the vulnerable cubs from possible covid exposure.

These are historic cubs for us. They represent the 5th generation of their line at the zoo. Their great great grandparents were Tonghua and Pam who arrived as adults and had great grandma Kita at the zoo. Kita moved to Calgary and had grandma Katja. While Katja never came here her brother Vitali came for about a year after the death of Tonghua thus representing the 3rd generation. Katja has Vasili and Kira (and their brother Samkah) in Calgary and the pair ended up in Toronto. Now Vasili has fathered the 5th generation. It's one of the longest bloodlines to be represented at the zoo.

As for if any of them staying on thats an interesting question. Even though Mazy is 14 and one of the oldest moms she could live well into her 20s, but she could also go at any time. We need to house her until she passes so thats a luck of the draw situation. We also have Vasili, who I do believe we own but I could be mistaken, and he is only 8 so we could have him around another 12 or more years. That would normally make you think cool we could still keep Mazy as a retiree and get a new mate for Vasili. Not quite. Mazy is the valuable tiger. Vasili would never be allowed to breed if dumb luck hadn't provided us with a stellar female like Mazy. He is one of the lowest ranking males genetically. Its why despite being mature enough Vasili and his siblings Samkah and Kira hadn't been bred until now. Getting Vasili a good enough mate to make cubs worth having will be hard and quite honestly may be unlikely. Could be part of why Toronto wants to expand the tiger habitat. That way we could keep a second pair while retiring Mazy and Vasili. Now we could keep one of the cubs for that purpose. They would be mid level ranking due to Vasili being so low and Mazy being so high. There is another reason we probably wouldnt keep them though. They will be related to every single tiger in Canada. There will be no good mate choices born here. If Calgary is successful the cubs will be their nieces and nephews from brother Youri (and more distantly related to the female). If Winnipeg breeds those cubs will also be their nieces and nephews from sister Olga but also their cousins from Samkah. If Granby breeds those cubs will be their least related option with Jack being their great great uncle and an unrelated female. Still would be better to bring up fresh bloodlines from the US which the SSP has been rather indifferent about doing for a very long time. Every tiger in Canada except Mazy, Granby's female and Hana at Vancouver (not sure why she is never considered as she was an import and should be the number 1 female) are descendants of Toronto's Tonghua and either Pam or Tatiana. The future of breeding Amur tigers in Canada would be stronger if we got rid of all of the triplets and brought in two brand new bloodlines from the US. Then those cubs could infuse new genetics into Tonghua's lines.

I wonder what else might arrive for the spring/summer baby season. With none of us able to go we have virtually no idea what is or might be pregnant. This could truly be a year where births are actually surprising to us zoo chatters.
 
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@Hyak_II both! She would be #1 in Canada with the Granby female, Simsa, right behind her. In North America she is #7 again with the Simsa right behind at #8. I need to reverse my position on Hana in Vancouver. I have figured out why she's not considered the for breeding at all. They thought at the time of her import that she was pure Amur. They did a genetic analysis and realized she was mixed with Bengal. As a hybrid they have no interest in her at all for good reason.
 
Ugh that's so frustrating, as this exact thing seems to be happening multiple times at Toronto right now. They have one animal of extreme genetic value, and the relevant SSP sends off some random low value animal as a mate. It makes no sense :/
 
@Hyak_II its not always the case. Sometimes we get two stellar animals, for example red pandas Ila and Suva. We had probably the best pair in North America with the number 2 male and the number 3 female. I could spend the time to thing of a few other examples but you get the point.

The biggest problem we and all Canadian zoos have is that pesky border. Most SSPs try to manage the animals in Canada as one group and let them breed with each other until they are about to inbreed or inbreeding then send up some new genetics. Never enough though. It also limits the species we can keep. No one is going to send Toronto an okapi. There are just too few to stick two in Canada and then have to fight to get the calves south. I wish for accredited zoo animals the paperwork wasnt as tedious and time consuming as it is.
 
TZFan said:
@Hyak_II its not always the case. Sometimes we get two stellar animals, for example red pandas Ila and Suva. We had probably the best pair in North America with the number 2 male and the number 3 female. I could spend the time to thing of a few other examples but you get the point.

The biggest problem we and all Canadian zoos have is that pesky border. Most SSPs try to manage the animals in Canada as one group and let them breed with each other until they are about to inbreed or inbreeding then send up some new genetics. Never enough though. It also limits the species we can keep. No one is going to send Toronto an okapi. There are just too few to stick two in Canada and then have to fight to get the calves south. I wish for accredited zoo animals the paperwork wasnt as tedious and time consuming as it is.
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The border and import / export restrictions for exotic species need to be constructively dealt with. The entire legislation is now counterproductive and preventing conservation of species - a travesty - and heavily favouring cattle ranching and all ill effects in terms of vet health and animal welfare this entails - the bigger travesty -. Much like anywhere elsewhere.
 
After the high of tiger cubs yesterday to the low of a loss. Female jaguar, Zambucca, was put down at the age of 17 due to degenerative joint disease in her right elbow. They tired adjusting medications to give her more time but in the end she was just too far gone and the right thing to do was to let her go in peace. Brother Luca is adjusting to his loss. This could mark the zoo's last black jaguar for some time. Who knows if we will be lucky enough when a replacement pair are sourced to get another black one. The odds aren't with us.
 
I feel that for recent months, the news of Trt Zoo is fulfilled by "it is with heavy hearts that we said goodbye to XXXXX ". And the Zoo will keep losing its animals within the coming year, due to the Covid 19. The lockdown and the tremendous debt owed by the society will bring more hardships to the Trt Zoo, I don't expect to see any import of exotic species within the next several years, just hope the current residence animals can live somewhat longer. Since if the Zoo keeps losing species, that definitively makes the Zoo less attractive. The problem is there are no many "big zoos" in Canada so the inbreed resource within Canada is very limited.
P.S. I don't really like the exhibit of jaguar in Trt Zoo, I would say it can be a great exhibit for medium-size cat species like clouded leopard, but not jaguar, especially since two jaguars are put into one exhibit.
 
Yes there have been a lot of death announcements in the last year but many of them are elderly animals. The zoo is just going through a cycle where a bunch of old animals are dying. It happens every so many years that you see a flurry of bigger ticket animal deaths. Usually though the announcements of deaths are tempered with lots of birth announcements. Covid I think has put the breaks on some of that breeding. They may have been less likely to breed for a 2020 or 2021 baby if the animals could wait a year. With the tigers it was a now or never because next fall Mazy would be deemed too old to breed. But can they wait on breeding a young cheetah like Emarah... yeah probably. Get a bigger bang for their effort if they can hold off until 2022 when hopefully we can visit without restrictions. Also impacting that is the fact the zoo simply cannot do the transfers needed to bring in new mates or send out offspring. The zoo could have had snow leopard cubs this spring if Pemba could have been brought in from Calgary but it couldn't happen. They also needed to at least send Kita to Winnipeg to free up space for him. Mylo was going nowhere since he's supposed to cross the border. Ena might be done for us now unfortunately. Just might be too old for a snow leopard female to get pregnant again. Transfers though are continuing to be recommended by all of the SSP's so once transfers become possible again there will be a flurry of new animals and then babies.

The jaguar exhibit is due for an expansion. It's been on the books for awhile but as long as they had Luca and Zambucca there was no rush. They could live into their early 20's and there was no need to stress out elderly animals with a reno. But the zoo is already making moves to position themselves to take on the project when Luca goes. They have already asked the spider monkey SSP for help placing Poppy, Eve and Lucas and were told they would look but they could also be placed outside the SSP because they are surplus. So my guess is the zoo has reached out to CAZA zoos to see if anyone might be interested and might be looking to place them overseas as well like brother Toque. The plan last I had heard was to take over the spider monkey exhibit thus doubling the space but they could also bump out if needed. They know the SSP will not give them a breeding pair without sufficient space to house both parents and possibly sub adult cubs. There is a very large empty field they could utilize to the north of the temple and to the west of the caribou. A second exhibit with a possible overhead transfer chute would be possible in that space. I don't know how much more they need to satisfy the AZA requirements but at least the exhibit has space around it that it could be extended into. If the zoo balks at the price tag to expand they could just switch to ocelots. I think it would be a mistake to give up jaguars for ocelots but kind of just depends on what their future vision for that area might be.
 
StellarChaser said:
the news of Trt Zoo is fulfilled by "it is with heavy hearts that we said goodbye to XXXXX ". And the Zoo will keep losing its animals within the coming year, due to the Covid 19.
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The Trt Zoo?
As TZFan elaborated on the reason for the losses, it needs to be made clear that the passing of several marquee animals recently at the Toronto Zoo has nothing at all to do with Covid-19.

StellarChaser said:
Since if the Zoo keeps losing species, that definitively makes the Zoo less attractive.
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Putting aside the normative judgements at the end there, while there have been several individuals lost, the Toronto Zoo has lost very few species (somewhere around one percent of it's collection at most).
 
m30t said:
ds to be made clear that the passing of several marquee animals recently at the Toronto Zoo has nothing at all to do with Covid-19.
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Well, what I mean is due to the Covid 19, the Zoo may not able to import a new individual after the current resident is deceased, so the Zoo has a decreased number of that species.
 
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