chimp cage, home to ex-circus chimps Charlie and Samantha (father and daughter), who will soon be going to Mogo Zoo in Australia. Photo taken 17 September 2008
not that I've seen. The lemurs are usually sitting on top of their hut and the pheasants just doing pheasanty things on the ground. The ring-tailed lemurs are also kept with pheasants and I've never seen any interaction between them either.
I think its really just through lack of cage-space. Willowbank's not a large zoo by any stretch of the imagination and there's no zoogeographical separation other than that there is a distinct NZ area (the zoo is roughly divided into three areas: NZ, farmyard, and exotic). There doesn't appear to be any problems with housing the lemurs and pheasants together so I don't have an issue with it. The cages are quite large and heavily planted, and they really just seem to ignore one another. More odd was the former mixing of ring-tailed lemurs and cockatoos where you could plainly see tension between the mammals and the birds.
The Chimpanzees Charlie & Samantha were ex circus chimps.
Also this is not a good enclosure for chimpanzees to live in so it was good they were sent to mogo zoo in a larger enclosure, the enclosure then held a family of western lowland gorillas & is now having construction to house hybrid orangutans
