Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
That is correct, harlequin frogs are not under the same restriction as the true Panamanian golden frog is
A Zoo Man's Notebook, 2025
- Thread starter Aardwolf
- Start date
I believe there are still heavy restrictions on the species, as the ones in the UK are a special exception and derive from a direct import from Panama approved as a result of the prior in-situ and ex-situ work undertaken by the University of Manchester
certainly none have spread beyond there despite regular breeding over the past 7 years or so.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Your statement reminds me that I should offer another qualification - there has been some placement of surplus zeteki in American universities for research purposes, with the understanding that no breeding will occur and that the frogs will not leave those collections. Any such transfer of frogs from an AZA facility to a university requires approval from USFWSI believe there are still heavy restrictions on the species, as the ones in the UK are a special exception and derive from a direct import from Panama approved as a result of the prior in-situ and ex-situ work undertaken by the University of Manchester
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
I have also worked with Arabian Gazelle and Patagonian Mara.My experience with the Gazelle was 1 male and 3 females. The females were quite calm, but the male was, a feisty individual, infact, I always made sure that I had a broom or grass rake in my hand to fend him off.
I agree with you about the mara,they just did what ever they wanted. Your comment to the rude woman, was classic, made me smile, the times I have said similar things to people who deserve it.
Lafone
Well-Known Member
Thank you for the insights on Maras (as well as other animals of course); they are such a great animal to watch and at Whipsnade they free roam around the whole zoo so you find the new youngsters emerging from burrows under the big oak trees which never ceases to be a nice surprise. How anyone could find them ugly I can't think. Interesting to hear about how they are handled.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Today, we’ll take a look at a diverse array of North American ducks. Species I’ve worked with are: American black duck, northern pintail, green-winged teal, blue-winged teal, cinnamon teal, American wigeon, gadwall, Canvasback, redhead, lesser scaup, greater scaup, ring-necked duck, American wood duck, North American ruddy duck, bufflehead, Barrow’s goldeneye, hooded merganser, and common eider.
The namesake ring of the ring-necked duck is very hard to see in a live individual, especially one in the field, at a distance. It's always seemed to me that ring-BILLED duck would be a much better name.
Too often, there’s a tendency for both visitors and zoo staff alike to view waterfowl as something of a monolith – duck are ducks. Exhibit and husbandry needs are assumed to be the same, and the birds themselves are often seen as interchangeable. In reality, the many species are very diverse in their needs and behavior, with ramifications for their management. The facility where I gained most of my waterfowl experience essentially had one large duck exhibit, with a few other birds sharing an exhibit elsewhere in the zoo with turtles and beavers.
An opinion that I’ve become increasingly adamant about is that keeping animals in captivity should be informed by study of the animals in their natural state. I never thought that was a controversial opinion until I worked with this duck exhibit, and was shocked to find out that there was a keeper who had worked this section for over 5 years and still couldn’t tell the species of ducks apart (this section of the zoo contained the primates, which she wanted to work with, and the ducks, in her mind, were the undesired add-on that came with having the monkeys). When I vented about this to another keeper – how can you take care of an animal properly if you don’t even know what it is! – the other keeper just shrugged and said, “If the care is the same, does it really matter what it is?”
Yes! Because the care should not be the same!
(You could also make this case across taxa – monkeys, antelope, varanids, etc – each species thrives under slightly different circumstances)
Wood ducks are, as the name might suggest to those who bother to learn the name, ducks associated with woodlands and forests. They are perching birds and benefit from opportunities to use the vertical space in exhibits. I’m glad that our birds were full-winged, as I’ve seen pinioned wood ducks in other zoos, and it’s struck me as a more significant loss of natural behavior for that species than it would for a less-arboreal duck. Being able to fly and get up high also allows these birds, which I’ve found to be some of the shyer, less-assertive ducks, to distance themselves from rowdier exhibit mates.
A wood duck hen with her brood
At the other end of the spectrum, ruddy ducks are very aquatic. As with the black-necked swans I mentioned earlier, having legs set far back on the body is usually a sign that a species of bird is more aquatic, and in truth, ruddy ducks are kinda pitiful on land. An ideal exhibit for this species would let them swim just about anywhere they need to go. And though they are small, they are fierce. I once transported a ruddy across the zoo without even grabbing it – it bit my finger, and didn’t let go until it was in its new home. If ruddy ducks were the size of trumpeter swans, I think we’d have to manage them protected contact.
Plucky and pugnacious, the ruddy duck crams a lot of personality into a little frame
Dabbling ducks work well in exhibits with shallow pools, where you can anchor food to the bottom of the pond and they can up-end for it. Diving ducks do best with deep pools to let them, well, dive. And despite the prevalence of Purina duck chow (fed in feeders) and Mazuri waterfowl (a floating pellet), the natural diets of the birds are different. I enjoyed tossing diced fish into the pools for the mergansers to dive after, giving them a chance to express that behavior, and sometimes provided live fish as well.
(Side note for interested parties: mergansers, more than any other waterfowl, are susceptible to the dangers of ingesting coins tossed by visitors into their pools. Their entire evolutionary history is hardwired with the mindset of “chase the silvery, shiny thing in the water,” and if something is tossed into the pool, they are on it like a flash).
All of the duck species had their various personalities – some more stand-offish, some more serene, some more outgoing. My absolute favorites were the common eiders. These are the largest of the North American ducks, and our drake was a big boy that we nicknamed “Cartman” after the South Park character. The ducks shared their aviary with a yellow-crowned night heron, and when we entered the aviary to take care of the birds, we had a tendency to set down the heron’s diet on the ground as we closed the door. Cartman would haul his big, feathery butt over in a hurry once we did that and try to snatch up the heron diet (ground meat and diced fish) if we weren’t watching him. We’d send him off with a sweep of the rake and some curses, but his confidence and optimism never waned, and he’d be back at it the next day. His mate was much more demure, and she kept a more respectful distance.
Cartman the Common Eider paddling along
Our curator told us that the eiders were a trial bird on our part, since she took it as gospel that the sea ducks – not just the eiders, but the scoters, harlequin, and long-tailed – could never be kept at zoos in our region due to the heat, the humidity, and the asper (these species did occur in our vicinity in the winter). Imagine my surprise, as I went down the waterfowl rabbit-hole, in finding that one of the premier breeders of these species in the US is… in Louisiana.
The most spectacular part of being a northern waterfowl keeper is watching the male birds don their breeding plumage and engage in their courtship displays. Our exhibit had originally been devised as a sort of living waterfowl encyclopedia, with the idea of having a pair of as many species as possible for comparison and study. The inevitable problem with a set-up like that (besides the generalization of habitat and husbandry), is that birds eventually die, and then you wind up with singletons. Maybe these singletons will pair off with other singletons, or try forcing themselves on other pairs as unwanted third wheels. If I was redoing that collection, I’d probably have opted for a smaller number of species with greater numbers (and focusing on species that were more different – maybe not having a pair each of lesser scaup AND greater scaup AND ring-necked, but two or three pairs of one species).
If I was redoing the exhibit, I’d have put more species-specific touches in, as well as, ideally, underwater viewing – watching some of these birds sweep through the water like torpedoes is a very impressive sight. I’d also have wanted benches to encourage visitors to actually sit, stay, and watch the birds. Ducks are always full of drama – lots of chasing, lots of bickering, lots of fighting and mating (when I was a supervisor, I had lots of worried keepers come to be about ducks fighting and bullying each other, and had to explain that much of what they were seeing was just how ducks express themselves). Visitors really do like ducks, despite what we tell ourselves – after all, they’re one of the first groups of birds most people are able to recognize as being a distinct taxon, even if they don’t know the names of all the species. When we stop treating them as filler animals and acknowledge them as the stars and divas that they truly are, they make an excellent exhibit.
The namesake ring of the ring-necked duck is very hard to see in a live individual, especially one in the field, at a distance. It's always seemed to me that ring-BILLED duck would be a much better name.
Too often, there’s a tendency for both visitors and zoo staff alike to view waterfowl as something of a monolith – duck are ducks. Exhibit and husbandry needs are assumed to be the same, and the birds themselves are often seen as interchangeable. In reality, the many species are very diverse in their needs and behavior, with ramifications for their management. The facility where I gained most of my waterfowl experience essentially had one large duck exhibit, with a few other birds sharing an exhibit elsewhere in the zoo with turtles and beavers.
An opinion that I’ve become increasingly adamant about is that keeping animals in captivity should be informed by study of the animals in their natural state. I never thought that was a controversial opinion until I worked with this duck exhibit, and was shocked to find out that there was a keeper who had worked this section for over 5 years and still couldn’t tell the species of ducks apart (this section of the zoo contained the primates, which she wanted to work with, and the ducks, in her mind, were the undesired add-on that came with having the monkeys). When I vented about this to another keeper – how can you take care of an animal properly if you don’t even know what it is! – the other keeper just shrugged and said, “If the care is the same, does it really matter what it is?”
Yes! Because the care should not be the same!
(You could also make this case across taxa – monkeys, antelope, varanids, etc – each species thrives under slightly different circumstances)
Wood ducks are, as the name might suggest to those who bother to learn the name, ducks associated with woodlands and forests. They are perching birds and benefit from opportunities to use the vertical space in exhibits. I’m glad that our birds were full-winged, as I’ve seen pinioned wood ducks in other zoos, and it’s struck me as a more significant loss of natural behavior for that species than it would for a less-arboreal duck. Being able to fly and get up high also allows these birds, which I’ve found to be some of the shyer, less-assertive ducks, to distance themselves from rowdier exhibit mates.
A wood duck hen with her brood
At the other end of the spectrum, ruddy ducks are very aquatic. As with the black-necked swans I mentioned earlier, having legs set far back on the body is usually a sign that a species of bird is more aquatic, and in truth, ruddy ducks are kinda pitiful on land. An ideal exhibit for this species would let them swim just about anywhere they need to go. And though they are small, they are fierce. I once transported a ruddy across the zoo without even grabbing it – it bit my finger, and didn’t let go until it was in its new home. If ruddy ducks were the size of trumpeter swans, I think we’d have to manage them protected contact.
Plucky and pugnacious, the ruddy duck crams a lot of personality into a little frame
Dabbling ducks work well in exhibits with shallow pools, where you can anchor food to the bottom of the pond and they can up-end for it. Diving ducks do best with deep pools to let them, well, dive. And despite the prevalence of Purina duck chow (fed in feeders) and Mazuri waterfowl (a floating pellet), the natural diets of the birds are different. I enjoyed tossing diced fish into the pools for the mergansers to dive after, giving them a chance to express that behavior, and sometimes provided live fish as well.
(Side note for interested parties: mergansers, more than any other waterfowl, are susceptible to the dangers of ingesting coins tossed by visitors into their pools. Their entire evolutionary history is hardwired with the mindset of “chase the silvery, shiny thing in the water,” and if something is tossed into the pool, they are on it like a flash).
All of the duck species had their various personalities – some more stand-offish, some more serene, some more outgoing. My absolute favorites were the common eiders. These are the largest of the North American ducks, and our drake was a big boy that we nicknamed “Cartman” after the South Park character. The ducks shared their aviary with a yellow-crowned night heron, and when we entered the aviary to take care of the birds, we had a tendency to set down the heron’s diet on the ground as we closed the door. Cartman would haul his big, feathery butt over in a hurry once we did that and try to snatch up the heron diet (ground meat and diced fish) if we weren’t watching him. We’d send him off with a sweep of the rake and some curses, but his confidence and optimism never waned, and he’d be back at it the next day. His mate was much more demure, and she kept a more respectful distance.
Cartman the Common Eider paddling along
Our curator told us that the eiders were a trial bird on our part, since she took it as gospel that the sea ducks – not just the eiders, but the scoters, harlequin, and long-tailed – could never be kept at zoos in our region due to the heat, the humidity, and the asper (these species did occur in our vicinity in the winter). Imagine my surprise, as I went down the waterfowl rabbit-hole, in finding that one of the premier breeders of these species in the US is… in Louisiana.
The most spectacular part of being a northern waterfowl keeper is watching the male birds don their breeding plumage and engage in their courtship displays. Our exhibit had originally been devised as a sort of living waterfowl encyclopedia, with the idea of having a pair of as many species as possible for comparison and study. The inevitable problem with a set-up like that (besides the generalization of habitat and husbandry), is that birds eventually die, and then you wind up with singletons. Maybe these singletons will pair off with other singletons, or try forcing themselves on other pairs as unwanted third wheels. If I was redoing that collection, I’d probably have opted for a smaller number of species with greater numbers (and focusing on species that were more different – maybe not having a pair each of lesser scaup AND greater scaup AND ring-necked, but two or three pairs of one species).
If I was redoing the exhibit, I’d have put more species-specific touches in, as well as, ideally, underwater viewing – watching some of these birds sweep through the water like torpedoes is a very impressive sight. I’d also have wanted benches to encourage visitors to actually sit, stay, and watch the birds. Ducks are always full of drama – lots of chasing, lots of bickering, lots of fighting and mating (when I was a supervisor, I had lots of worried keepers come to be about ducks fighting and bullying each other, and had to explain that much of what they were seeing was just how ducks express themselves). Visitors really do like ducks, despite what we tell ourselves – after all, they’re one of the first groups of birds most people are able to recognize as being a distinct taxon, even if they don’t know the names of all the species. When we stop treating them as filler animals and acknowledge them as the stars and divas that they truly are, they make an excellent exhibit.
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Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
You are right about them making an excellent exhibit, they are also complex animals. The diving ducks are very interesting, especially if you could allow them to truly show their natural behaviour. You mentioned Eider and scaup(I have worked with both of those, plus Tufted Ducks) and all three can dive to incredible depths. Unfortunately zoos could never justify the cost of providing such deep pools,although your thought of providing viewing windows would be a great educational tool with measurements on the pool walls. Can you imagine the impact on the visitors faces when they see a Tufted duck diving to depths of over 15 metres . Personally, I would like to see cleaner water in waterfowl pools, because even in shallower pools, as you said, sweeping through the water is a fantastic sight.
I'm a birder who absolutely loves ducks, and has probably spent many thousands of hours observing them in the field at this point. I've seen nearly all of the North American species in the wild at this point (only missing the eiders, Masked Duck, and Stejneger's Scoter, the last of which barely even counts). And one thing I love about ducks is that even though all the species frequently flock together, each very clearly has its own ecology and niche. Every species in that duck flock is doing something slightly different. It's always interesting to see all that niche partitioning going on at once and it's a shame more waterfowl keepers don't recognize that that's a huge part of what makes ducks such fun animals to observe.
I didn't realize I needed diving duck underwater viewing until I saw it at Cincinnati - after that, I wish it was standard for all diving duck displays.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Today, we’ll look at the Columbiformes. I’ve worked with a handful of exotic pigeon and dove species over the years (in addition to domestics of various breeds), with the species that I’ve had the most familiarity and experience with being the speckled pigeon. The experience has largely been limited to one, non-AZA zoo.
This bird, found throughout Africa, is a very close relative of the rock dove, and as such pretty closely resembles our feral pigeons, though a fair bit more attractive, in my opinion. These birds were kept in a large, walk-through aviary, along with flamingos, pheasants, rosellas, and sloths. I feel like most aviaries benefit from having a flock species - a bird which can be managed in a large flock to provide some bulk and action for the exhibit – and the speckled pigeons fit that niche for us. There were about 30-40 birds at any given time, idling on the path, perched on the railings, or flying ack and forth en masse. They showed no fear of visitors, though to my surprise they never showed any inclination to head for the aviary door.
We did get a lot of smug visitors who couldn’t wait to let us know that somehow a bunch of pigeons had gotten into our bird exhibit – and never seemed to believe us when we said that they were supposed to be there.
Their husbandry was very simple. They were fed a few pans of grain, placed up high to keep them from the pheasants and flamingos. We hosed their droppings down periodically and raked under their favorite perches. They were all-weather birds, and while we had a few heat lamps set up, these were more for the other birds to use, and I don’t think I ever saw the pigeons cluster around them, even on the most bitterly cold of days. When it was cold, their preferred method of keeping warm seemed to be to huddle together under the tarped-sections of the aviary, or seek shelter in the hollow, fallen logs which dotted the exhibit floor.
These logs also proved to be the favorite nesting sites of the pigeons, and they bred readily in them. During the winter, when the sloths were indoors, they also showed a strong preference for nesting in the outdoor sloth boxes, and had to be forcibly evicted each spring when we got ready to put the sloths back out. We’d get about two eggs in a clutch – moms sat tight, and you often had to physical life one off the nest to check the eggs. You may notice that you seldom see feral pigeon chicks out and about. That’s a testament both to how inaccessible most pigeon nests are, being on ledges and such, and how fast the birds grow. In less than a month, the pigeon is as big as its parents and joined the flock. Two impressions I always had about nesting pigeons – the first, the beak of the chick, which looks ridiculously large and bulbous for the bird, sort of like a classic Roman nose. The second, how foul the nests were. I always watched the soon-to-fledge chicks with considerable eagerness, because I wanted to be ready to clean up their disgusting nests as fast as I could before another bird immediately started to nest there.
Eventually, we were forced to start pulling eggs, lest the aviary become buried under a swarm of pigeons.
Besides the speckled pigeons, we also had a flock of four lace-necked doves in that exhibit, two pairs. These birds received the same care as the speckled pigeons, with the key difference being that they never bred. I suspect that they would have if the speckled pigeon numbers had been more managed – as it was, I think that the much larger speckled pigeons just monopolized all of the nest sites.
There was also a lone Australian crested dove. This bird was rarely seen by visitors, as it hung out in the supports at the top of the aviary and rarely came out into view. This was a pity, because it was easily the most visually striking the pigeons and doves in the aviary, and the one that I think would have received the most interest from visitors. I would have liked to have built a separate exhibit for that bird and acquired a potential mate, but wasn’t given the chance to. In the end, I wonder why we even had it.
Besides the aviary birds, we also had a pair of bleeding heart doves, the only SSP (not that we participated) doves that I’ve worked with. These birds were kept in perhaps the most ill-suited exhibit that I could have imagined for them, a cube about 4’ x 4’ x 4’ in our reptile house, a cage space that would have worked better for, say, a corn snake than a dove. The cage was floored in wood shavings, and had a few perches, not that there was room to go anywhere. The exhibit was fronted with glass, so the birds spent much of their time warily watching the visitors, only to panic when a keeper would open the panel door at the back of the exhibit, leaving the birds sandwiched between humans (I at least tried to knock gently before opening so that they wouldn’t be caught completely off-guard, and if possible I never serviced their exhibit when the zoo was open and visitors were present, so they wouldn’t feel trapped).
The doves were there when I started at the zoo; if they had stuck around longer, by the time I was given a promotion and at least some decision-making ability (just some… like many privately owned facilities, the owner was the ultimate decision-maker), I would have moved them to one of the smaller outdoor aviaries. As it was, they were shipped out to another facility or dealer a few months after I started, to my relief.
At the time that I worked here, I had fairly little interest in most birds, doves and pigeons included. It was a shabby place overall, but I do wish that I'd been able to look at those animals and their setup again with fresh eyes now that I'm more interested in these taxa. I've been to many AZA facilties - some fairly large - that don't have a single dove or pigeon species, and it didn't occur to me at the time how unique it would be for me to work with four species - four genera, mind you - each day.
This bird, found throughout Africa, is a very close relative of the rock dove, and as such pretty closely resembles our feral pigeons, though a fair bit more attractive, in my opinion. These birds were kept in a large, walk-through aviary, along with flamingos, pheasants, rosellas, and sloths. I feel like most aviaries benefit from having a flock species - a bird which can be managed in a large flock to provide some bulk and action for the exhibit – and the speckled pigeons fit that niche for us. There were about 30-40 birds at any given time, idling on the path, perched on the railings, or flying ack and forth en masse. They showed no fear of visitors, though to my surprise they never showed any inclination to head for the aviary door.
We did get a lot of smug visitors who couldn’t wait to let us know that somehow a bunch of pigeons had gotten into our bird exhibit – and never seemed to believe us when we said that they were supposed to be there.
Their husbandry was very simple. They were fed a few pans of grain, placed up high to keep them from the pheasants and flamingos. We hosed their droppings down periodically and raked under their favorite perches. They were all-weather birds, and while we had a few heat lamps set up, these were more for the other birds to use, and I don’t think I ever saw the pigeons cluster around them, even on the most bitterly cold of days. When it was cold, their preferred method of keeping warm seemed to be to huddle together under the tarped-sections of the aviary, or seek shelter in the hollow, fallen logs which dotted the exhibit floor.
These logs also proved to be the favorite nesting sites of the pigeons, and they bred readily in them. During the winter, when the sloths were indoors, they also showed a strong preference for nesting in the outdoor sloth boxes, and had to be forcibly evicted each spring when we got ready to put the sloths back out. We’d get about two eggs in a clutch – moms sat tight, and you often had to physical life one off the nest to check the eggs. You may notice that you seldom see feral pigeon chicks out and about. That’s a testament both to how inaccessible most pigeon nests are, being on ledges and such, and how fast the birds grow. In less than a month, the pigeon is as big as its parents and joined the flock. Two impressions I always had about nesting pigeons – the first, the beak of the chick, which looks ridiculously large and bulbous for the bird, sort of like a classic Roman nose. The second, how foul the nests were. I always watched the soon-to-fledge chicks with considerable eagerness, because I wanted to be ready to clean up their disgusting nests as fast as I could before another bird immediately started to nest there.
Eventually, we were forced to start pulling eggs, lest the aviary become buried under a swarm of pigeons.
Besides the speckled pigeons, we also had a flock of four lace-necked doves in that exhibit, two pairs. These birds received the same care as the speckled pigeons, with the key difference being that they never bred. I suspect that they would have if the speckled pigeon numbers had been more managed – as it was, I think that the much larger speckled pigeons just monopolized all of the nest sites.
There was also a lone Australian crested dove. This bird was rarely seen by visitors, as it hung out in the supports at the top of the aviary and rarely came out into view. This was a pity, because it was easily the most visually striking the pigeons and doves in the aviary, and the one that I think would have received the most interest from visitors. I would have liked to have built a separate exhibit for that bird and acquired a potential mate, but wasn’t given the chance to. In the end, I wonder why we even had it.
Besides the aviary birds, we also had a pair of bleeding heart doves, the only SSP (not that we participated) doves that I’ve worked with. These birds were kept in perhaps the most ill-suited exhibit that I could have imagined for them, a cube about 4’ x 4’ x 4’ in our reptile house, a cage space that would have worked better for, say, a corn snake than a dove. The cage was floored in wood shavings, and had a few perches, not that there was room to go anywhere. The exhibit was fronted with glass, so the birds spent much of their time warily watching the visitors, only to panic when a keeper would open the panel door at the back of the exhibit, leaving the birds sandwiched between humans (I at least tried to knock gently before opening so that they wouldn’t be caught completely off-guard, and if possible I never serviced their exhibit when the zoo was open and visitors were present, so they wouldn’t feel trapped).
The doves were there when I started at the zoo; if they had stuck around longer, by the time I was given a promotion and at least some decision-making ability (just some… like many privately owned facilities, the owner was the ultimate decision-maker), I would have moved them to one of the smaller outdoor aviaries. As it was, they were shipped out to another facility or dealer a few months after I started, to my relief.
At the time that I worked here, I had fairly little interest in most birds, doves and pigeons included. It was a shabby place overall, but I do wish that I'd been able to look at those animals and their setup again with fresh eyes now that I'm more interested in these taxa. I've been to many AZA facilties - some fairly large - that don't have a single dove or pigeon species, and it didn't occur to me at the time how unique it would be for me to work with four species - four genera, mind you - each day.
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Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
I remember seeing a flock of Australian Crested Doves at Exmoor Zoo, some years, and they looked great. I agree, the housing for the Bleeding Heart Doves was awful.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
@Osedax as a North American, I’ve said that if northern cardinals and blue jays weren’t native species, we’d probably start an SSP for them. Just goes to show, one person’s pest is another one’s zoo animal.
One of the trickier things about writing this thread has been deciding when to handle a species individually versus when to lump it together as part of a genus or family. Consider skinks, for example, I’ve worked with a lot of species over the years, ranging from flighty little emerald tree skinks to plodding shinglebacks – do you tackle them all together, or split them up? Do I even remember the subtle differences in caring from blue tongued skinks versus pink tongued skinks?
Of course, some species have a way of standing out – like Corucia zebrata.
This hefty lizard is alternatively called the prehensile-tailed skink, the monkey-tailed skink, the Solomon Islands skink, or a host of other names – which is why, in my experience, herp keepers are much more likely to use scientific names when discussing their animals as opposed to bird and mammal keepers. It is the largest of the living skink species, and, except for the blue-tongue, perhaps the most commonly kept. It’s popularity is due both to its excellence as an exhibit animal, compared to many other skinks (enhanced by its size, its willingness to lie draped out over a branch in the open, and its sociable nature, which lets you house a group together) and its suitability as an animal ambassador.
I’ve worked with these species at two AZA facilities, one of which kept the species as both an ambassador and as an exhibit animal, the other just as an exhibit animal. Exhibits were perhaps a bit plainer than I would have liked for a forest species – gravel substrate (for ease of hosing, with the understanding that they wouldn’t spend much time on the enclosure floor), a tangle of branches, and a few suspended cork-bark logs for hides. This species comes from a high-humidity environment, and there were times when it seemed like all I did was water the skinks, which would climb out in the open and, with eyes shut, point their faces into the nozzle to soak up the spray. Under dry conditions they can appear to be a somewhat drab lizard of dull olive green, but when the water hits them you can understand how they got the genus name Corucia, from the Latin for “shimmering.” Without adequate humidity, you run into all sorts of shedding challenges, which will be a headache for you and (especially) the skink to clear up.
As befits an arboreal species, you want an enclosure that has height as its greatest dimension – besides allowing more climbing opportunities, it is very beneficial to allow the animals the option to move closer or further from the heat and light sources as a form of choice (decision-making, even on such seemingly basic things, is some of the best enrichment).
The skinks were fed a salad mix of leafy greens, vegetables, and some fruits, dusted with calcium and minerals (in the wild, some of the plants that they eat are known to be toxic to humans). While the species is herbivorous in the wild, you should never discount the possibility of small animals being snapped up; heck, even giraffes will eat meat if given the chance. That being said, at one zoo, we kept our skinks on display with Solomon Island leaf frogs, and I never saw the species interact – or even notice each other, as they occupied different parts of the enclosure, and really might as well have been in separate exhibits.
As I've mentioned, they're great exhibit animals. They'll happily climb around in your arms (brace yourself for a few pin-pricks from their claws - which can become more than pin-pricks if they really start to scramble), or you can put them on a perch for demos.
What makes these skinks so interesting is their reproductive biology – a lot of lizards give live birth, but the prehensile-tailed skink produces a placenta, gives birth, and then cares for its infant (sometimes twins). The infant is born after a gestation of six months! (longer than that of many mammals larger than the skink), and is relatively enormous at the time of birth. It seems more mammal-like than reptilian in some ways.
I’ve heard a theory that skinks from different islands will not breed successfully. I have no idea if this is true or not; in my experience the species will breed super readily, but perhaps I’ve just always had compatible pairs. I actually find live-birth frustrating in reptile species; it’s a lot easier to manage and limit reproduction when you have an egg that you can just pull.
The mother will be fearless in the defense (real or perceived) or her young – I was checking in on a pair, when the female who I had considered to be a very sweet, tractable individual that I handled regularly, came barreling out of her hide, jaws snapping, and I barely pulled back in time to save my nose from a chomping. I was at a loss to explain it – until I looked past her in the hanging cork bark tube, and saw the newborn baby behind her. As the infant grew, she settled back to her old personality.
One of the trickier things about writing this thread has been deciding when to handle a species individually versus when to lump it together as part of a genus or family. Consider skinks, for example, I’ve worked with a lot of species over the years, ranging from flighty little emerald tree skinks to plodding shinglebacks – do you tackle them all together, or split them up? Do I even remember the subtle differences in caring from blue tongued skinks versus pink tongued skinks?
Of course, some species have a way of standing out – like Corucia zebrata.
This hefty lizard is alternatively called the prehensile-tailed skink, the monkey-tailed skink, the Solomon Islands skink, or a host of other names – which is why, in my experience, herp keepers are much more likely to use scientific names when discussing their animals as opposed to bird and mammal keepers. It is the largest of the living skink species, and, except for the blue-tongue, perhaps the most commonly kept. It’s popularity is due both to its excellence as an exhibit animal, compared to many other skinks (enhanced by its size, its willingness to lie draped out over a branch in the open, and its sociable nature, which lets you house a group together) and its suitability as an animal ambassador.
I’ve worked with these species at two AZA facilities, one of which kept the species as both an ambassador and as an exhibit animal, the other just as an exhibit animal. Exhibits were perhaps a bit plainer than I would have liked for a forest species – gravel substrate (for ease of hosing, with the understanding that they wouldn’t spend much time on the enclosure floor), a tangle of branches, and a few suspended cork-bark logs for hides. This species comes from a high-humidity environment, and there were times when it seemed like all I did was water the skinks, which would climb out in the open and, with eyes shut, point their faces into the nozzle to soak up the spray. Under dry conditions they can appear to be a somewhat drab lizard of dull olive green, but when the water hits them you can understand how they got the genus name Corucia, from the Latin for “shimmering.” Without adequate humidity, you run into all sorts of shedding challenges, which will be a headache for you and (especially) the skink to clear up.
As befits an arboreal species, you want an enclosure that has height as its greatest dimension – besides allowing more climbing opportunities, it is very beneficial to allow the animals the option to move closer or further from the heat and light sources as a form of choice (decision-making, even on such seemingly basic things, is some of the best enrichment).
The skinks were fed a salad mix of leafy greens, vegetables, and some fruits, dusted with calcium and minerals (in the wild, some of the plants that they eat are known to be toxic to humans). While the species is herbivorous in the wild, you should never discount the possibility of small animals being snapped up; heck, even giraffes will eat meat if given the chance. That being said, at one zoo, we kept our skinks on display with Solomon Island leaf frogs, and I never saw the species interact – or even notice each other, as they occupied different parts of the enclosure, and really might as well have been in separate exhibits.
As I've mentioned, they're great exhibit animals. They'll happily climb around in your arms (brace yourself for a few pin-pricks from their claws - which can become more than pin-pricks if they really start to scramble), or you can put them on a perch for demos.
What makes these skinks so interesting is their reproductive biology – a lot of lizards give live birth, but the prehensile-tailed skink produces a placenta, gives birth, and then cares for its infant (sometimes twins). The infant is born after a gestation of six months! (longer than that of many mammals larger than the skink), and is relatively enormous at the time of birth. It seems more mammal-like than reptilian in some ways.
I’ve heard a theory that skinks from different islands will not breed successfully. I have no idea if this is true or not; in my experience the species will breed super readily, but perhaps I’ve just always had compatible pairs. I actually find live-birth frustrating in reptile species; it’s a lot easier to manage and limit reproduction when you have an egg that you can just pull.
The mother will be fearless in the defense (real or perceived) or her young – I was checking in on a pair, when the female who I had considered to be a very sweet, tractable individual that I handled regularly, came barreling out of her hide, jaws snapping, and I barely pulled back in time to save my nose from a chomping. I was at a loss to explain it – until I looked past her in the hanging cork bark tube, and saw the newborn baby behind her. As the infant grew, she settled back to her old personality.
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Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Of all the species that I’ve worked with, I don’t think any has elicited as much fascination from the general public as tigers. Maybe it’s because they are so, so common in zoos that zoo folks sometimes take them for granted, but they are truly magnificent animals, all the more so when you are working close quarters with them.
If cheetahs are the big cat with which I’ve worked with the most individuals, and jaguars are the big cat with which I’ve worked the longest, tigers are the big cat which I’ve worked with at the most facilities – one AZA, two non-AZA. None of them, I’m sorry to say, had what one would call a world class – or even very decent – enclosure. The AZA facility was an old-school big cat enclosure – expanded a bit a few years before I started, but still not especially big. It was flat and it was rocky, and there wasn’t much you could do with the space (certainly not add plants). The first non-AZA zoo was one of those zoos that likes to style itself as a rescue, but at the end of the day is probably the sort of place that the animals need to be rescued from. Its tiger enclosure was in a wooded corner of the zoo – which sort of made me nervous, since the exhibit itself was a rather flimsy construct of wire and old wood, and a single branch dropping could have split the cage apart like an egg. I told the director that the only thing keeping that tiger in its cage was a sheer lack of ambition on the cat’s part. It was an ugly, cluttered mess. The second non-AZA zoo had a large, grassy field for an enclosure – lots of space, but not much to it (mostly I was resentful because the zoo owner insisted on the yard being kept mowed like a lawn, which was a long, miserable job in the summer. This fellow had heard of the Hagenbeck revolution and wanted none of it). All three facilities had pools in their exhibits large enough for a cat to fully enter.
The older female "Amur" at the first of the two non-AZA zoos where I worked with this species
The enclosures at the AZA zoo and the first non-AZA zoo were fully enclosed (roofed), while the second non-AZA was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with strands of hotwire, which we tested daily (and, inevitably, shocked ourselves on occasionally). I’ve often felt that the fact that tigers, lions, and cheetahs aren’t great vertical jumpers compared to other cats means that they often get larger, more spacious habitats, since many zoos aren’t constrained by the expensive need to roof the habitat.
The tiger at the AZA zoo was an Amur, as was (ostensibly, anyway) the one at the first non-AZA; each facility had a single cat. The second non-AZA had a pair of siblings, brother and sister, listed as Bengals – the female was orange, the male white. The two were acquired by the zoo as cubs and partially hand-raised. They were together when they were out on exhibit, but were separated in their holding building, which is where they were fed.
Whereas the tigers at the AZA and first non-AZA zoo were fed a standard diet of processed zoo carnivore food (ground horse), the cats at the second non-AZA zoo had more eclectic fare. Yes, they got the carnivore diet, but our zoo also included a large safari park and we fed the tigers and cheetahs (which had an adjacent exhibit and shared the holding building) ungulates from the park, both those that died naturally and those that were culled. On one particularly bad winter, I remember walking up to the building in the snow and finding a small stack of ungulate carcasses stashed in a nearby snow bank, dropped off there for the tigers. I’d drag a mid-sized ungulate, say a fallow deer, into the building, where I could at least feel my hands, remove the stomach and rumen contents, and then split it between the two tigers. One carcass would last the tigers a week. We’d let them eat all that wanted to of it the first night, the second night they’d have leftovers, and so on, until finally they just had scraps of bone, and then a fast day or two. It blew my mind that I would drag inside an entire deer or antelope, and in a week, what was left wouldn’t fill a dustpan. It was great enrichment for the cats (though I think the owner was more focused on the economics – zoo carnivore diet ain’t cheap, you know).
In the winter, when we were closed, carcass feeding was fine – no public around, and the tigers wanted to be in their warm dens anyway. The stressor came in the summer, when the cats wanted to take their carcasses outside, and you had to be careful manning the doors to their dens. It wasn’t usually as much of a challenge on the first day of the feed, since the carcass was so big and bulky that the tigers were slow with it. It was more of a problem when the carcass was a day or two older, and the cats had broken it up a bit – the owner was terrified that a tiger would rush out with an elk head or something in its jaws and scare the visitors (for this reason, I wasn’t even allowed to give the tigers bison or camel shed as enrichment, since it would look too much like an animal being eaten), and I received a thorough chewing-out one day when I let a tiger sneak out with a leg. “Why does that cat NOT have a concussion from you slamming the door on its head?” the irate curator wanted to know.
Tiger at my second non-AZA zoo, resting at the edge of the pool.
Personality wise, my experience with tigers has been the exact opposite of jaguar. Sure, both are terrifying apex predators – but with the possible exception of the single puma I worked with, tigers have struck me as the friendliest, most outgoing, most confident of the big cats, and the most solicitous of affection and attention from their keepers. Sure, the pair of “Bengals” were semi-hand-raised, but the two Amurs were like this two – rushing up to greet you the moment they saw you, lots of rubbing against the fence soliciting scratches and belly rubs (which I supplied), chuffing, prustening, and all around being lovebugs. Except when I tried to part a tiger from its carcass (a lot of folks at the second non-AZA zoo was of the “hose and zapper” school of shifting), I never saw a tiger react with any aggression, certainly nothing of fear. On my first day at each zoo, they were snuffling my hands through the fence. I’d say that it’s because tigers are so large that they can afford to be more curious and less fearful, more open to being playful, but my (more limited) experiences with lions haven’t really supported that hypothesis. When I would visit the zoo on my days off, the tigers would notice me – even in street clothes, even in a crowd, and rush over to the fence where I was standing, to the confusion of the visiting public. I used this power to my advantage when visitors were engaging in behavior that I considered offensive; I’d go to the back of the exhibit and call the cats over so the jerk guests couldn’t see them.
I can’t say that I noticed much of a difference between the tigers, physically or behaviorally. The three from the non-AZA zoos were all likely hybrids of subspecies; the one at the AZA was a pure Amur (though we still called them Siberians back then). The two Amurs (for simplicity’s sake, we’ll pretend the one tiger was an Amur and the other two really were Bengals) were both older animals, and maybe struck me as a little less tolerant of heat than the Bengals, but that may have just been an age thing rather than a subspecies difference – if there even was a difference.
I mentioned that one of the tigers I worked with was white; I didn’t notice any unusual medical problems on his part associated with this (after all, his orange sister would have been just as inbred as he was), apart from his being a bit cross-eyed. We used to joke that if he was loose and on the rampage, the safest place to stand would be directly in front of him, as he wouldn’t know where to jump. I will, however, say that he was also the single dumbest cat that I ever worked with of any species, and I wondered if that was related to being a white tiger. His sister would always figure out novel stimuli or challenges much more quickly than he did. (I would like it to be known that this male was fixed, and the plan at the zoo was not to breed him with the sister to generate more white cubs).
Cross-eyed white tiger
Tigers rival lions as the biggest cats in the world, and it’s hard to appreciate just how big they are until you are standing in front of one, in a small holding building, with eight inches of air and a single panel of chain-link fencing between the two of you. When it stands on all four legs, a tiger’s head is roughly on the level of your stomach. When it stands up on its back legs, putting all of its not-inconsiderable weight on said piece of chain-link, it towers over you. And when it roars in that enclosed, echoing space, the force of sound strikes you in an almost physical way. Then, they’d drop back down, rub the wire, and look at you inquiringly, wondering if you had a treat, or at least if you were willing to stay for a bit and give them a scratch, and then you’d remember that you had the best job on earth.
If cheetahs are the big cat with which I’ve worked with the most individuals, and jaguars are the big cat with which I’ve worked the longest, tigers are the big cat which I’ve worked with at the most facilities – one AZA, two non-AZA. None of them, I’m sorry to say, had what one would call a world class – or even very decent – enclosure. The AZA facility was an old-school big cat enclosure – expanded a bit a few years before I started, but still not especially big. It was flat and it was rocky, and there wasn’t much you could do with the space (certainly not add plants). The first non-AZA zoo was one of those zoos that likes to style itself as a rescue, but at the end of the day is probably the sort of place that the animals need to be rescued from. Its tiger enclosure was in a wooded corner of the zoo – which sort of made me nervous, since the exhibit itself was a rather flimsy construct of wire and old wood, and a single branch dropping could have split the cage apart like an egg. I told the director that the only thing keeping that tiger in its cage was a sheer lack of ambition on the cat’s part. It was an ugly, cluttered mess. The second non-AZA zoo had a large, grassy field for an enclosure – lots of space, but not much to it (mostly I was resentful because the zoo owner insisted on the yard being kept mowed like a lawn, which was a long, miserable job in the summer. This fellow had heard of the Hagenbeck revolution and wanted none of it). All three facilities had pools in their exhibits large enough for a cat to fully enter.
The older female "Amur" at the first of the two non-AZA zoos where I worked with this species
The enclosures at the AZA zoo and the first non-AZA zoo were fully enclosed (roofed), while the second non-AZA was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with strands of hotwire, which we tested daily (and, inevitably, shocked ourselves on occasionally). I’ve often felt that the fact that tigers, lions, and cheetahs aren’t great vertical jumpers compared to other cats means that they often get larger, more spacious habitats, since many zoos aren’t constrained by the expensive need to roof the habitat.
The tiger at the AZA zoo was an Amur, as was (ostensibly, anyway) the one at the first non-AZA; each facility had a single cat. The second non-AZA had a pair of siblings, brother and sister, listed as Bengals – the female was orange, the male white. The two were acquired by the zoo as cubs and partially hand-raised. They were together when they were out on exhibit, but were separated in their holding building, which is where they were fed.
Whereas the tigers at the AZA and first non-AZA zoo were fed a standard diet of processed zoo carnivore food (ground horse), the cats at the second non-AZA zoo had more eclectic fare. Yes, they got the carnivore diet, but our zoo also included a large safari park and we fed the tigers and cheetahs (which had an adjacent exhibit and shared the holding building) ungulates from the park, both those that died naturally and those that were culled. On one particularly bad winter, I remember walking up to the building in the snow and finding a small stack of ungulate carcasses stashed in a nearby snow bank, dropped off there for the tigers. I’d drag a mid-sized ungulate, say a fallow deer, into the building, where I could at least feel my hands, remove the stomach and rumen contents, and then split it between the two tigers. One carcass would last the tigers a week. We’d let them eat all that wanted to of it the first night, the second night they’d have leftovers, and so on, until finally they just had scraps of bone, and then a fast day or two. It blew my mind that I would drag inside an entire deer or antelope, and in a week, what was left wouldn’t fill a dustpan. It was great enrichment for the cats (though I think the owner was more focused on the economics – zoo carnivore diet ain’t cheap, you know).
In the winter, when we were closed, carcass feeding was fine – no public around, and the tigers wanted to be in their warm dens anyway. The stressor came in the summer, when the cats wanted to take their carcasses outside, and you had to be careful manning the doors to their dens. It wasn’t usually as much of a challenge on the first day of the feed, since the carcass was so big and bulky that the tigers were slow with it. It was more of a problem when the carcass was a day or two older, and the cats had broken it up a bit – the owner was terrified that a tiger would rush out with an elk head or something in its jaws and scare the visitors (for this reason, I wasn’t even allowed to give the tigers bison or camel shed as enrichment, since it would look too much like an animal being eaten), and I received a thorough chewing-out one day when I let a tiger sneak out with a leg. “Why does that cat NOT have a concussion from you slamming the door on its head?” the irate curator wanted to know.
Tiger at my second non-AZA zoo, resting at the edge of the pool.
Personality wise, my experience with tigers has been the exact opposite of jaguar. Sure, both are terrifying apex predators – but with the possible exception of the single puma I worked with, tigers have struck me as the friendliest, most outgoing, most confident of the big cats, and the most solicitous of affection and attention from their keepers. Sure, the pair of “Bengals” were semi-hand-raised, but the two Amurs were like this two – rushing up to greet you the moment they saw you, lots of rubbing against the fence soliciting scratches and belly rubs (which I supplied), chuffing, prustening, and all around being lovebugs. Except when I tried to part a tiger from its carcass (a lot of folks at the second non-AZA zoo was of the “hose and zapper” school of shifting), I never saw a tiger react with any aggression, certainly nothing of fear. On my first day at each zoo, they were snuffling my hands through the fence. I’d say that it’s because tigers are so large that they can afford to be more curious and less fearful, more open to being playful, but my (more limited) experiences with lions haven’t really supported that hypothesis. When I would visit the zoo on my days off, the tigers would notice me – even in street clothes, even in a crowd, and rush over to the fence where I was standing, to the confusion of the visiting public. I used this power to my advantage when visitors were engaging in behavior that I considered offensive; I’d go to the back of the exhibit and call the cats over so the jerk guests couldn’t see them.
I can’t say that I noticed much of a difference between the tigers, physically or behaviorally. The three from the non-AZA zoos were all likely hybrids of subspecies; the one at the AZA was a pure Amur (though we still called them Siberians back then). The two Amurs (for simplicity’s sake, we’ll pretend the one tiger was an Amur and the other two really were Bengals) were both older animals, and maybe struck me as a little less tolerant of heat than the Bengals, but that may have just been an age thing rather than a subspecies difference – if there even was a difference.
I mentioned that one of the tigers I worked with was white; I didn’t notice any unusual medical problems on his part associated with this (after all, his orange sister would have been just as inbred as he was), apart from his being a bit cross-eyed. We used to joke that if he was loose and on the rampage, the safest place to stand would be directly in front of him, as he wouldn’t know where to jump. I will, however, say that he was also the single dumbest cat that I ever worked with of any species, and I wondered if that was related to being a white tiger. His sister would always figure out novel stimuli or challenges much more quickly than he did. (I would like it to be known that this male was fixed, and the plan at the zoo was not to breed him with the sister to generate more white cubs).
Cross-eyed white tiger
Tigers rival lions as the biggest cats in the world, and it’s hard to appreciate just how big they are until you are standing in front of one, in a small holding building, with eight inches of air and a single panel of chain-link fencing between the two of you. When it stands on all four legs, a tiger’s head is roughly on the level of your stomach. When it stands up on its back legs, putting all of its not-inconsiderable weight on said piece of chain-link, it towers over you. And when it roars in that enclosed, echoing space, the force of sound strikes you in an almost physical way. Then, they’d drop back down, rub the wire, and look at you inquiringly, wondering if you had a treat, or at least if you were willing to stay for a bit and give them a scratch, and then you’d remember that you had the best job on earth.
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The ones I worked with weren't the sharpest tools in the box either; made darting them a lot easier, though...
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, I have never worked with either Indian or Siberian tigers (I know keepers who have, and they have said how amiable they were) . However, I have worked with Sumatran tigers,which were definitely not amiable, maybe because they were a pair. They would give you all of the I love you signs, chuffing and rubbing up against the mesh, but woe betide anyone stupid enough to put their fingers through to give them a stroke. They were mainly fed on abattoir meat, stained blue, not for human consumption,and occasionally whole or part of carcasses. Fortunately, I have never witnessed the need for zapper or hosed water. As luck would have it, they produced two cubs after I had left. Totally agree with your comment about having the best job, as I used to say to the other keepers, if you don't love your job, you never will !!
Some of my past volunteer work put me around tigers (generic rescues) and I found their personality to be pretty similar to what you describe; there was one in particular that loved to chuff with me and play chase along the fence perimeter.
I wonder if the difference with lions could be that lions maybe aren't as unequivocally the apex predators in Africa the way tigers might be in Asia, since hyenas can (and often do) give them a run for their money. Social structure may affect their behavior too, since there is also pride dynamics and the constant threat of usurping from loner males.
That being said, when I was on safari we had a male lion walk right up to one of the jeeps, scratch itself on it, then lay down right in the road between two cars... so even if they *are* generally more fearful than tigers, they aren't always!
I have to imagine they're not hard to breed, given how extremely common they've become (I don't think that's been primarily through wild collection) but interesting to hear that it might be pair-specific. It seems to me like their captive population in the US has been expanding a lot even in the past few years; every couple of months I learn of another zoo having acquired them.
I’ve not worked with tigers, but I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that Sumatrans were the least good tempered in a circus setting, with Amurs the most amiable
Apparently, another example of the short-man syndrome, aka Morbus Chihuahua.
Same applied apparently to Sun Bears
Nah, sloth bears are worse. They have that "I'm on a special diet that makes me a cranky Karen" vibe.