@Dan: You said it yourself: If no place can be found for the new baboons they are euthanized. Simple as that.
@snowleopard: I don't think that our "ideal exhibits" would look that different from each other. I guess I just tend to have a wider acceptance of exhibits that are not "ideal" than you as you demand excelence. I guess people like us need each other. It can roughly be said that you are the visual one while I am the practical one
About the exhibits you mentioned...
Bronx Zoo: This does look like a fine exhibit. However, the monkeys in the Bronx exhibit are geladas and very different from the hamadryas baboons here. That argument won't work
Singapore Zoo: This also looks very nice. However, it only beats Copenhagen Zoo's exhibit in two categories: Size (significantly) and looks. The exhibit is not more natural. Just more natural looking. But just to clarify I also prefer this one to the one in Copenhagen.
Flamingoland: It is hard to get an idea of this exhibit but from the photo I am not that impressed. Baboons have no use of a large lawn of grass but rather complicated rocky formations and other climbing structures. It is not a bad exhibit but it does not hold any advanges against Copenhagen's (except size).
Toddy, I've seen Singapore's in person, and it's no more natural as it's still all concrete and any plants that are in there are covered in hotwire, deeming them pointless (well, to me ). Like you said, it only looks more natural because the fake rock looks less like concrete and more like natural rocks.
I bet this offers shed loads of enrichment for them, probably just as much as Singapore and Flamingo land do (possibly more than the latter).
Copenhagen is well known for having amore liberal attitude towards the use of euthanasia than many other zoos.
It's an interesting debate. Given the death-rate amongst young animals in the wild, and given the enrichment to be found in rearing young, and given that the alternative home for many animals can be so dire (see countless posts of primate sanctuaries), maybe this is the best solution. But I wouldn't want to be making that decision, i must admit.
I believe that goes for most of the Danish zoos. We also have a rumour of being almost "barbaric" with many of our European and American colleagues beacuse of our practise of feeding whole carcasses to our predators (a whole cow/goat, a horse's head, etc.). Many people from especially Germany, France and Spain state how that could newer be done in their zoo.
Personally, I am proud of living in a country where we do things this way. The animal is dead anyway and kids need to learn where the meat comes from. Also, I have never seen a happier polar bear than one playing with a horse head
Given the death-rate amongst young animals in the wild, and given the enrichment to be found in rearing young, and given that the alternative home for many animals can be so dire (see countless posts of primate sanctuaries), maybe this is the best solution.
1) The enrichment it gives the individual animal or even the whole group of raising young which is an incredibly important part of the animals' life cycles in the wild.
2) The death-rate in the wild is significantly larger than in a zoo and in all animal populations it is perfectly normal that not all the young survive.
Do people really think it's barbaric to feed whole carcasses? I've seen that done loads of times in Britain and no one seemed too bothered. There was the usual "Ewwww", but once it was being torn apart by wolves people loved it lol.
@Toddy and Sooty Mangabey
The issue of killing surplus animals is indeed an interesting one. I raised this topic when I was new to ZooChat, probably in a very naive way, and I have learnt a lot by being a member of this site for one and a half year now. It might just be that I look upon this subject in a somewhat different way now and I will probably try to muster up some courage to create a thread on the subject one of these days...
@Ash
Just like you I find it astonishing that it is not OK everywhere to feed whole carcasses to predators in zoos. Zoos should be about reality, not some Disney fairytale fantasy of the world.
Indeed, there's an initial shock of seeing the whole carcass but it's great watching a pack of wolves eat like they're meant to. I've never encountered anyone who was really offended by it either which shocks me more, I would have thought Britain would have been the most sensitive in Europe in this situation!
