You all forgot than yet another foreign collection kept and bred volcano rabbits !
Antwerp Zoo in Belgium had a small colony at the end of the 70-ties, beginning 80-ties and althrough they bred them several times, the colony also died-out.
I´ve several reports about studies done on these animals at Antwerp.
Teporingos breed like ... rabbits. At the Mexico city zoos there are babies every year. I placed a photo of an adult teporingo or volcano rabbit on the Los coyotes zoo gallery in the mexico section. As I can remember, only once were the teporingos sent outside of mexico. When Ueno Zoo from japan sent their male panda to attempt to mate with the 2 female giant pandas at chapultepec ( this failed by the way) they actually recieved volcano rabbits, so this is what it takes to get volcano rabbits. The mexican government does not let them out.
Given that Xin Xin (born 1990) was sired by Chia Chia it is odd that London never got anything back from Mexico City. Maybe the almost immediate eruption of the closure crisis meant that this got forgotten. At any rate, there would have been a time when the Clore would have been thrilled to have had Teporingos.
On my last visit to Chapultepec zoo, march 2013, a docent told me that the total population of teporingos in the Mexico city zoos that have them ( Chapultepec and Los Coyotes) has exceeded 300 animals. Many are off exhibit.
With such a number of such an endangered animal it realy would be wise to send some to collections aboard ! As already mentioned Jersey would be an obvious ( and wise ) choice !
Agree completely vogelcommando. I was critical of sending 10 teporingos to Nagoya zoo, but then i had no idea that the captive population of volcano rabbits in the Mexico City zoos had actually reached 300 animals. The wild population is stable at about 3000 animals. Of course, the challenge is adapting volcano rabbits to survive at a lower altitude since they are very adapted to high altitudes and Mexico city is also very high.
The teporingos were sent to Nagoya zoo the 21st of August 2013, and according to Zims, there are 3 males and 6 females... I also found out that Tokyo Ueno Zoo had 12 individuals in 2003 and they slowly descended until in 2004 they only had 4 individuals and these 4 individuals until the last one died on may the 12 2010.
Whem Ueno Zoo sent a male panda to attempt to breed with the chapultepec zoo female pandas, they asked for teporingos and recieved the group that toto mentions. Actually the zoo outside of mexico with the greatest success with teporingos has been Jersey. Of course it cannot be compared to the number of volcano rabbits that have bred in the mexico city zoos. As Hix mentioned in another gallery the teporingos are simply very adapted to living in high altitudes.
