ZSL London Zoo ZSL London Zoo News 2016

Regent said:
Yesterday golden lion tamarins were occupying the enclosure where gentle lemurs were housed as you enter the lemur indoor area. When you enter lemur indoors, first window on your right
Click to expand...

I know where they're housed, if you look in the right hand wall of the right hand part of their enclosure you'll see a hatch. That's going to be used as a second entrance/exit for the lemurs so that they can reduce conflict between the dominant males and the lower ranking males.
 
Enjoyable visit this morning; first time I'd been in a little over a month.

Pottos and galago both active, but no sign whatsoever (as always for me) of the slender loris. Have there always been so many Malagasy Jumping Rat enclosures down there? It felt to me like they were repeated more than I'm used to.

Tree kangaroo definitely not present upstairs; I only realised when I came back on this site that she had been on show briefly! Boky-boky very active - I respect that a lot of people don't like the lack of geographical integrity, but I think they're a good use of the space. Tamandua very active also - climbing up together to almost walkway height.

No sight of aye-aye at all. In all my visits, I've only ever had one short glimpse - unlike Chester, which I've visited once and enjoyed 10 minutes of watching uninterrupted activity from their aye-aye.

Couldn't see the kinkajou in Casson. Along with the loris, I think these are the only two species (of those advertised as on show) that I've never managed to spot!

I'm sure this is old news by now, but the duiker seemed very successfully integrated in with the okapi. Both okapi were outdoors and browsing apparently contentedly (none of the repeated route-walking that I've seen sometimes from the female), and neither species seemed concerned by the shared space.

Sadly, it does seem that Professor Woo is gone permanently. As said by others above, there were hatches down in front of the glass and the information boards have been removed from the wall. Has anybody heard anything definitive about this? I assume death is the only likely explanation? Given the animal's age, and the short time he'd been at the zoo, will this be seen as a sign of potentially poor keeping, or just bad luck?

As lots of others have said, Bhanu out of sight and the females all clustered as tightly as possible in one end - just like every other time I've been since LotL opened! Here's hoping they gradually get coaxed into enjoying more of that great space. ("Great" for them, that is, I won't rehash old arguments about the human decor...)
 
Could visitors say what the animal is as well as the pet name such as Proffesser Woo the tiger or what ever.
I haven't been to ZSL for years, so the species name as well as the pet one would help me keep up and save time scrolling through old posts to (on a landline) to find out what is being discussed.
sorry to be a pedant.
 
The only time I've ever seen the kinkajou is at about 3ish, when occasionally, the Keeper for the Day people go and have a play with her...
 
dean said:
Could visitors say what the animal is as well as the pet name such as Proffesser Woo the tiger or what ever.
I haven't been to ZSL for years, so the species name as well as the pet one would help me keep up and save time scrolling through old posts to (on a landline) to find out what is being discussed.
sorry to be a pedant.
Click to expand...

Professor Wu was (hopefully is) a Chinese giant salamander...
 
dean said:
Could visitors say what the animal is as well as the pet name such as Proffesser Woo
Click to expand...

Sorry! I don't normally do it - except to distinguish one animal from another within a population - but I always found it slightly weird how ZSL used the 'Professor Woo' name as if he was some kind of cartoon, and I've ended up adopting it myself semi-ironically...!
 
chrisjpl said:
Sorry! I don't normally do it - except to distinguish one animal from another within a population - but I always found it slightly weird how ZSL used the 'Professor Woo' name as if he was some kind of cartoon, and I've ended up adopting it myself semi-ironically...!
Click to expand...

The giant salamander named Professor Wu, was given that name because one of the project leaders was called Professor Wu
 
Regent said:
The giant salamander named Professor Wu, was given that name because one of the project leaders was called Professor Wu
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd read that on the website, I just found it very strange how they included the title - I don't think they'd ever call one of the panthera "Mr Bhanu" or "Duchess Melati"!
 
chrisjpl said:
As lots of others have said, Bhanu out of sight and the females all clustered as tightly as possible in one end - just like every other time I've been since LotL opened! Here's hoping they gradually get coaxed into enjoying more of that great space.
Click to expand...

I hope this doesn't turn into another situation like Whipsnade's Rhinos of Nepal building and the watermoats...

I imagine the male would show better if/when he is put with the females as he would then group with them. I also wonder if the sand substrate of the extended enclosure contributes to them not using it, as they have always been used to the grassy substrate previously.
 
oflory said:
The only time I've ever seen the kinkajou is at about 3ish, when occasionally, the Keeper for the Day people go and have a play with her...
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the keeper for the day don't have a play with the kinkajou. They normally have the keeper for the day people inside the adjacent enclosure where they place food for the hairy armadillos. Sometimes that timing overlaps with the Animal Adventure people checking on Forest the kinkajou and they might watch.

Hard to put a precise time when this occurs as it is obviously dependent on how many AA people are on duty and when they are needed for other activities. Sometime between 1:30 and 3pm seems to most likely at the moment.
 
tennisfan said:
I'm pretty sure the keeper for the day don't have a play with the kinkajou. They normally have the keeper for the day people inside the adjacent enclosure where they place food for the hairy armadillos. Sometimes that timing overlaps with the Animal Adventure people checking on Forest the kinkajou and they might watch.

Hard to put a precise time when this occurs as it is obviously dependent on how many AA people are on duty and when they are needed for other activities. Sometime between 1:30 and 3pm seems to most likely at the moment.
Click to expand...

Ah well, some mixture of 'experience' people, in any case!
 
Panthera1981 said:
Any ideas what happened?

Will London continue with the species? Seems an awful shame to seemingly just give up!
Click to expand...

No... there has been a postmortem of course, though I'm sure the results won't be made public. London has said it would like to continue with the species – depends what's available, I guess.
 
volvox said:
No... there has been a postmortem of course, though I'm sure the results won't be made public. London has said it would like to continue with the species – depends what's available, I guess.
Click to expand...

Apparently London are in talks to get new Chinese giant salamander(s). So there you go!
 
All I wish for is that if they do get them back that they go into the aquarium. Much more space, they'd work with the theme of the first hall (rivers and lakes) and it's dark in there so we would actually see active salamanders.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top