Animals you'll never see in a zoo #2

MARK said:
Four-horned antelope/chousingha appears to be down to one animal at Paris. In the 80's there seemed to be one in every other enclosure at Howlett's, I don't know what happened there.

You are right, I saw them there in the mid 80s they had quite a few of them.
Two more: Chiru and kodkod. I don't think either has ever been kept in captivity.


I did hear some years ago that one or two of the European zoos had Kodkods

Re dugongs - not seen any in captivity, but have seen them in the wild...
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Seaworld in Queensland have a young pair on display[/QUOTE]

There is one zoo in Temuco, Chile that keeps kodkod... I think....:confused:
 
Yeah, @Potto, I do know that saolas have been kept in zoos; there are even videos of that available:
Image - Saola in captivity - Saola - Pseudoryx nghetinhensis - ARKive

However, as You correctly remarked, all specimen died pretty soon-so officially, no saola is currently kept in a zoo.

And about Dugongs: I think the ones at Toba and Singapore have already been mentioned, haven't they?

Looking at patrick's remark about river dolphins: well, the one Boto left at Duisburg now lives in a quiet a nice exhibit and it seems that Venezuela Aquarium also keeps at least some Botos.
|Aquarium de Valencia| - Fundación J.V.Seijas
Haupt IT - Delfine und Stromausfälle Fütterung der Ungeheuer
 
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Thanks for the links Sun wukong, the Valencia aquarium seem to treat their dolphins like bottle nosed dolphins in similar sort of environment and is there only one pool for them there?
 
My pleasure, @kiang. The author of the link states that they keep 2.3 animals. The three females are on the show, which means there must be a second exhibit for the males during show time (or they just fool around while the "ladies" have to work...;)
 
I just re-read this thread all the way from the start, very interesting.

glyn said:
are bilbies maintained in any zoo outside australia, or platypus? or coroboree frogs.
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no-one took up on glyn's corroboree frog question. Are there any overseas now? I know in one of Gerald Durrell's books he mentions in passing that he had kept (bred?) them in the Jersey Zoo's reptile house.

Re leopard seals, Napier Marineland in NZ had one many years ago (in the 80s?). I've seen a photo in a book showing it leaping to take a fish from a trainer, the way dolphins do. VERY impressive photo given the seal's huge length!!

EDIT: I just went to the Marineland site Marineland of New Zealand, Napier - History
They got 2 leopard seals in 1969, 1 in 1971, 2 in 1976, and 1 in 1984. The first leopard seal show was in 1969. Other interesting animals they have had include dusky dolphins, pigmy sperm whales, Weddell's seals and yellow-eyed penguins.

Re giant armadillo, London Zoo has had at least one. There is a photo in "The World Of Zoos" (1968) of a keeper posing with one next to a three-banded armadillo for size comparison. Other interesting photos in the book include a Sumatran rhino at Copenhagen, giant pandas at Moscow and London, Philippine tarsier at Frankfurt, manatees at Georgetown and four shoebills at Frankfurt.
 
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I saw the giant armadillo at Regent's Park in the early '70s. It was in the Stork & Ostrich House and was asleep inside on the couple of times I saw it (you used to be able to go inside then). I think I have a photo somewhere - I'll add it to my list of photos to dig out.

Alan
 
I love giant armadillos, one of the many many animals on my want-to-see-in-the-wild list. I'm sure this or another London Zoo giant armadillo ties in with Gerald Durrell (or maybe David Attenborough, seeing they were both collecting animals for British zoos at the same time; but I have "Zoo Quest To Guiana", and there's nothing about giant armadillos in there). Anyway, as I recall, Durrell was trying to catch a giant armadillo by special request of London Zoo but couldn't find any, and when he got back home discovered that by coincidence another collector had managed to catch one for the Zoo instead. For some reason I always assumed the one in the 1968 zoo book to be this individual, but I just checked the dates of Durrell's expeditions and they were in 1950 to British Guiana ("Three Singles To Adventure"), 1953-54 to Argentina and Paraguay ("The Drunken Forest") and 1958 to Argentina ("The Whispering Land").
 
I'm sure that giant armadillo photo is a good deal older than 1968; its style is from the '50s (or even earlier) - so it may be the specimen that you mention.

Alan
 
gentle lemur said:
I'm sure that giant armadillo photo is a good deal older than 1968; its style is from the '50s (or even earlier) - so it may be the specimen that you mention.
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the English edition of the book is from 1968, the original German from 1966. The caption speaks of the armadillo in the present tense "A giant armadillo... may be seen at the London Zoo. It measures five feet from nose to tail and weighs nearly 133 pounds."

But I totally agree it does have a 1950s air about it and it probably was taken then, which may be (subconciously) why I have always equated it with the armadillo that Durrell wrote about.
 
Potto-just like the already mentioned saola, there are CURRENTLY no koupreys in any zoos worldwide. If You want to take into count historical husbandries, then a lot of the animals listed were at least once kept in captivity somewhere. If You just count current husbandries-which I did on the list You cite, then neither koupreÿs or saolas or...are kept in a zoo nowadays.

And to precise-the kouprey was kept in Paris from 1937-1941/2, as then-Zoo director Achille Urbain who had officially described the species after obtaining the horns from the veterinarian René Sauvel was highly interested in this species. BTW: a Cambodian nobleman might have have also kept one.
 
Re: giant armadillos. Duisburg kept all in 3 individuals from 1973-1976. Hannover and Frankfurt as well as Berlin kept some in the 1930-40s, Wroclaw Zoo in the 1960s.
 
Potto said:
Kouprey was also kept at Vincennes Zoo in Paris in 1937;)

sorry for the correction again:o
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But is it a genuine species, or is that individual, (the only one to be photographed?) a hybrid/crossbred animal?
 
Chlidonias said:
I love giant armadillos, one of the many many animals on my want-to-see-in-the-wild list. I'm sure this or another London Zoo giant armadillo ties in with Gerald Durrell (or maybe David Attenborough, seeing they were both collecting animals for British zoos at the same time; but I have "Zoo Quest To Guiana", and there's nothing about giant armadillos in there). Anyway, as I recall, Durrell was trying to catch a giant armadillo by special request of London Zoo but couldn't find any, and when he got back home discovered that by coincidence another collector had managed to catch one for the Zoo instead. For some reason I always assumed the one in the 1968 zoo book to be this individual, but I just checked the dates of Durrell's expeditions and they were in 1950 to British Guiana ("Three Singles To Adventure"), 1953-54 to Argentina and Paraguay ("The Drunken Forest") and 1958 to Argentina ("The Whispering Land").
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David Attenborough's attempts to find a giant armadillo are described in "Zoo Quest in Paraguay" (1959). Despite many days searching the chaco on horseback, he and his team were unsuccessful. The closest they came was finding tracks and food burrows which he was told were around four days old. Intriguingly, he mentions at the end of his book crossing paths in Buenos Aires with an "animal collector friend and his wife", who I presume must have been Gerald and Jacquie Durrell. They were also searching for the giant armadillo and were about to set off for northern Argentina to follow a lead. However, Attenborough mentions that months later he found out they too had been unsuccessful.
 
well there you go then...I knew it was one of them -- I just picked the wrong one!
 
Writhedhornbill said:
Check the rare species in European zoos threads. There is something on Pangolins there.
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I know this post was a long time ago but i just wanted to inform you that I thinkthere were pangolin at Toronto Zoo.I only think so because there was one at toronto zoo on a 1980's zoo movie called Zoo Adventure.There are definitely none anymore and i heard they don't do well in captivity.
 
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