Just had a riveting little read through of this thread. So as of January 2020, what is the current Golden Cat population and age layout of the remaining animals in Europe? It's been mentioned there might have been kittens in 2018/2019, but nothing followed up on that?
Asian Golden Cats
- Thread starter SumatrIan
- Start date
Unfortunatelly, it looks like they will dissappear from Europe indeed.
Generally, exotic small cats are much rarer to see in zoos than 3 decades ago, mostly due to change of exhibitry. It ´s no longer accepted by visitors to see a cat in 2x2 m cage.
Nate-san
Member
I see. I'm a little sad about that. I mean, it's a good thing that peaple want to see animals in large exhibits, but not seing this beautiful feline anymore is a sad thing. Is it not possible to make an exchange with asian zoo ? or is it too hard to organize maybe?
I’ve noticed a similar trend in Australasia with Temminck’s golden cat one of many species phased out in the past 15 years. They weren’t suitable to captivity. Breeding was only achieved at two of the five zoos that tried to breed them and this was only when the breeding pairs were kept off display.
Even with relatively small exhibits, it was amazing how adept at hiding they were and being a species the visitors never got to see meant they weren’t considered enabling by zoo management.
Personally, they’re one of my favourite species and one I greatly miss seeing, but I can understand the reasons for their phasing out.
Curiously one of our last golden cats (Saigon) will also be one of Europe’s last golden cats. He was born at Auckland Zoo in 2005.
Zoo Wuppertal no longer has Asian golden cats. On May 29, their last two females moved to Tierpark Berlin.
They are:
Cat Ba (07-04-2013, Allwetterzoo Münster) (C. t. temminckii)
Tila (08-03-2022, Zoo Wuppertal) (C. temminckii)
Source: Facebook Zoo Wuppertal
They are:
Cat Ba (07-04-2013, Allwetterzoo Münster) (C. t. temminckii)
Tila (08-03-2022, Zoo Wuppertal) (C. temminckii)
Source: Facebook Zoo Wuppertal
from the States: Back in the 80's I was able to see a pair of Asian Golden Cats in a really large indoor nocturnal ( under red lights ) exhibit at the then Washington Park Zoo (Portland,oregon). The one adult cat was sitting on a rock in middle of enclosure very visible, course I was only cat (person) in the building at the time. This pair at time of my visit also had a trio of 3 kittens they produced! The Cheyenne Mountian Zoo again in the middle 80's had a lone specimen. I remember and have photo of resting high on back shelf of exhibit. It was totally out in the open, but you could readily see it. The Cincinnati Zoo ( which had the most awesome collection of cats species), had a lone speciemen whom was resting on top of rock lying down at back on exhibit so one had to really look for it. Of the one's seen in zoo's here then specimens really weren't one's that would be at front and center of exhibits. The last specimen in North America was at the Mountian view Conservation Farm Center in Vancouver, British Columbia. I wanted to go there to see it but never was able to get there. Love this species. The 70's and 80's were great time to seeing these type of animals. Ya they might not be favored in zoo's today, but they are important to me in my book!