Yes, on my most recent visit, the sign had be switched. I saw a lesser in there so can personally confirm the switch as well. Do you know if there are plans for the Damaraland mole-rats?
I was gonna ask about those guys, however there were only two volunteers in the the building. One was giving a group of people a tour of the zoo and the other guy was talking to people and left the area for a bit and when I was finally to talk to him I had completely forgotten about them because I was to busy talking to him about the opossum.
Since my trip was cut short today I plan on going again later this week. I will see if I can get you an answer.
I just realized, they're building a new exhibit somewhere else in the building, not tearing down the current one and rebuilding it. Couldn't the Damaraland mole-rats just stay where they currently are? I'll see what I can find out later this week.
The new exhibit will be home to an entirely new colony of naked mole-rats (I believe the volunteer said 45 individuals). The Damaraland mole-rats are fairly old apparently, so once they die and the current naked mole-rat colony dies off the exhibit will be renovated. The volunteer said the top of the curators wish list is some species of fruit bat, though that's not 100% confirmed.
Thanks for gathering this information. Do you happen to recall which species of fruit bat was mentioned? The current curator of the Small Mammal House has done a great job of lowering the number of lion tamarins and increasing overall diversity of species.
She didn't say any specific species. Originally she just said that the rumor was it was gonna be some species of bat, then later on she said that the top of the curators wish list was fruit bat. I'm just assuming the fruit bats would go into the renovated exhibit.
Edit: Somewhat funny story. When my mom and I were leaving the zoo a couple stopped to look at the zoo map. The man was proud that they started at the top of the zoo and saw everything (we were parked in E lot, so this was at the lower entrance). The woman he was with said "no we didn't see the bats" (zoo hasn't had bats since 2009). The man asked where they were and she points to symbol for the small mammal house. He said "we saw that" and she says "but we missed the bats" and once again points at the symbol for the small mammal house (I guess she thought it depicted a bat). Just by the look on his face I could tell this guy was so disappointed that they missed something. I wanted to tell them that the zoo doesn't have bats, and the symbol for the exhibit is of a fennec fox and not a bat, but I just kept my mouth shut.
@TeaLovingDave no, it was the zoo’s last greater, who also died. Many animals in this house have died recently, though luckily they were almost all of old age.
