In Japan they are famous for being “motionless”. In the internet they are considered “brutal” over the fact that they east baby crocodiles and have a difficult upbringing, which compliments their large looking brow.
I don’t remember when I first got introduced to shoebills. I assume I first saw them in a book but I don’t know which one. I took the species for granted when I visited Japan and went to two facilities with these magnificent birds. I found out that they were rare and difficult to breed when I first started to use the forums. Since then I have been rooting for the JAZA accredited zoos with shoebills to crack the code for breeding these birds and guarantee the future of the species not only in Japan, but at the rest of the world as well.
The code to breeding shoebills HAS been cracked though, there’s just not a single damn facility who has the birds to do it who’re willing to set them up properly to breed.
They don’t even need tons of space (although it absolutely helps). They need privacy and quiet, LOTS of water and foliage, parent reared, socially compatible birds, and live food.
Japan is absolutely squandering any potential they have. Most of their birds are human imprinted, and of those that aren’t, I don’t think any are actually exhibited in a way to help promote breeding.
Of the three captive pairs that have bred, most, if not all, of the birds have now passed away, and the population, outside of the recent Japanese imports, are all older animals, and once again, mostly imprinted as well.
Simply put, until a facility is willing to spearhead an import from Africa of birds collected as free living juveniles/adults, and house them in a set up conducive to breeding, there won’t be any breeding. These Japanese facilities having females laying eggs is great and all, but that is only one small step on a large flight of stairs to get these birds breeding successfully. Honestly, getting the females to lay is probably the easiest part of breeding them!
