Animals You've Seen That Few Zoochatters Have Seen

Jurek7 said:
I feel a bit ashamed to boast about animals I have seen, because so much depends on your age and resources to travel.

@Giant Eland: I have seen Honduran white bat. They are easy in La Selva, Costa Rica.

I saw Giant Panda, Golden snub-nosed Monkey and Takin in the wild, anybody else?
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It's okay, I mean to entire point of this thread is to gloat a little bit. You are correct though in that age and travel resources greatly decide how many animals one has seen. For example, I'm sure a 70-year-old globetrotter has seen many more animals than a teenager that hasn't ever left his/her home country
 
Tim May said:
Indeed, Antwerp Zoo presented London Zoo with a pair of imperial pheasants in 1971.
Incidentally, the link below provides an interesting article on the hybrid origin of imperial pheasants.

Hybrid origin of the imperial pheasant Lophura imperialis (Delacour and Jabouille, 1924) demonstrated by morphology, hybrid experiments, and DNA analyses
.
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Very interesting, indeed. From what I can remember the London Imperials were from the captive cross-breeding back/breeding attempts aimed at preserving the small stocks of Imperials which had been bred from the original pair imported by Delacour, and which by then had become highly in-bred. Silvers were used in this attempt, but these presumably were the large white nominate types which were in Europe then, and not L.n.berliozi which is considered in the above paper to be the ancestral origin of the Imperial 'hybrid' in combination with the Edwards.

At the time I remember it was considered odd to use the Silver as a 'rescue' spp for the zoo hybridisation programme, as most people assumed the Imperial was either very closely related to the Edwards or even just an aberrant form of it. We had never seen a Berlioz's Silver then of course. I always found it interesting that the most important difference between the Imperial and the Edwards, was not often mentioned at the time - that male Imperials only moult into full adult colour in their second year (like a Silver), whereas Edwards do so in their first year. But - Imperials laid very small clutches of eggs, like an Edwards, not at all like a Silver.

Now we have the Vo Quy's Pleasant too - which really does look as though it is the aberrant Edwards, the Imperial was then thought to be..
 
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Just a heads up that I've fixed the quote-box error in the above post :)
 
I don’t know if this accurate but uncommon animals that few zoochaters have seen are
1. Red Uakeri - Los Angeles Zoo
2. Rough Legged Hawk - Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
3. Northern Saw Whet Owl - Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
4. American Kestral - Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
 
Giant Eland said:
I'd be curious if any Zoochatters actually saw this species in the US. Seemed like seeing them at the Los Angeles Zoo was an impossibility, and I don't think they've been kept elsewhere stateside.
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I saw them at LA a couple of years ago. They had a number on exhibit , but they mostly hung out in nest boxes, but two were visible when I was there.
I was like -this is so cool they were only discovered a few years ago, my wife was like.....meh.

This thread is a great memory jogger.
Saw amazonian manatees in St Louis in the late 60s. When I was a 'ute.

Also forgot about all the critters I saw in Costa Rica (including Honduran white bat- they called them tent making bats.)
No idea where my list is, but I saw around 90 species of bird there, few if any I have seen in zoos. (wild muscovy-haha) The coolest was a white hawk.
 
John Marchwick said:
2. Rough Legged Hawk - Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
3. Northern Saw Whet Owl - Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
4. American Kestral - Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
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All three of these species are quite common in North American collections, the last one is also kept at several European zoos.
 
Brum said:
How about Mauritius kestrel? I know they were held in a few places in the 90's and noughties but not sure how many people saw them?
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that @Carl Jones has seen seen Mauritius Kestrel :p

Andrew Swales said:
Mauritius Kestrels were one of those species which seemed to be everywhere, and then suddenly gone - like the Gough Island Moorhen.
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I remember reading somewhere that the Gough Island Moorhen suffered from a lack of genetic diversity and subsequent hybridization, before it seems collections eventually lost interest in the taxa.

Personally I'd love to see both the moorhen and the kestrel, but I doubt either will ever happen.

birdsandbats said:
All three of these species are quite common in North American collections, the last one is also kept at several European zoos.
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Are Northern Saw-Whet Owls common in collections? I've heard of only two or three places with them.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
I remember reading somewhere that the Gough Island Moorhen suffered from a lack of genetic diversity and subsequent hybridization, before it seems collections eventually lost interest in the taxa.
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Yes, the matter was discussed at some length in my "Species We Have Lost" thread :)

TeaLovingDave said:
Gough Moorhen (Gallinula comeri) - this taxon was last held in 2008 at Curraghs Wildlife Park, having been held at a staggering 22 European collections within the timespan in question, the vast majority of which were within the United Kingdom and regularly bred the taxon.
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ThylacineAlive said:
With 22 collections holding the species and regular breeding, what happened to the Gough Moorhen population? I'm not an expert on rails, but I wouldn't imagine the taxa would be one that would have presented too much of a challenge in keeping, and being an endangered island bird that bred well I'd imagine there'd be interest in keeping them. Seems like a quick downfall for what seems to be a relatively common species in the Europe (especially the UK).
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TeaLovingDave said:
I don't know offhand, but I imagine it would be either due to the breeding rate still being exceeded by the rate of death - unlikely I suspect, considering how common it was and the length of time some collections kept the taxon - or due to collections simply losing interest in keeping the species.

In the timespan in question, the following collections held the species according to ZTL:

Wilhelma - held c.1975 until 1995 (bred 1978, 1981, 1982, 1983)
Budapest - held 2000 until 2006 ( no breeding listed)
Vogelpark Avifauna - held 1990 until 2002 (bred 1991, 1993, 1994)
Artis - held 1972 until 2003 ( regular breeding between 1972 and 1999)
Poznan Nowe - held 1991 until 2004 (bred 1992)
Basel - held 1969 until 1994 (bred 1990, 1993 at least)
Lotherton - held 1993 until 2007 (bred 1996, 2003)
Bristol - held 1999 until 2005 (no breeding listed)
Chester - held 1990 until 2003 (bred 1994, 1998)
Tilgate Nature Centre - held 1993 until 1997 (no breeding listed)
Banham - held 1990 until 2000 (bred 1993, 1994)
Paultons Park - held 1992 until ???? (no breeding listed)
Hayle - held 1990 until 1995 (bred 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994)
Harewood - held 1995 until 2001 (no breeding listed)
Gatwick - held 1996 until 1997 ( no breeding listed)
ZSL London - held 1956 until 2000 (regular breeding from 1958, final breedings in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997)
Newquay - 1992 until 1997 (no breeding listed)
Paignton - 1990 until 1999 (bred 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996)
Twycross - 1992 until 2002 (no breeding listed)
Curraghs - 1994 until 2008 (no breeding)
Amazon World - 1997 until 2000 (no breeding listed)
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vogelcommando said:
Funny but I had a talk with devilfish about this species last saturday while walking along the cage it was kept in ( now it house a pair of Red-billed currasows ). The original birds were brought illegaly to Europe and offered to several zoos but most refused them, the price being to high ! Evenso later several ended up at several zoos ( confistigated, price dropped ??? I'm not sure, have to check that one ) and as stated already, bred quite well. Inbreeding and hybridisation with common moorhen made the population almost infirtile and so the species disappeared from Europe
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ThylacineAlive said:
Are Northern Saw-Whet Owls common in collections? I've heard of only two or three places with them.
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Off the top of my head, I can think of three zoos I have visited that keep them.

An interesting fact about this species is that it is the most frequently banded (AKA ringed) species in the United States.
 
birdsandbats said:
I assume that zoos that I haven't visited also keep them.

Also, I believe it is more common as a bts animal, so possibly even some more zoos that I have been to keep them.
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I'm not sure that taking what is probably a small percentage of zoos you have visited and then just assuming that they are kept at other zoos which you haven't visited is a valid method of extrapolating how common a species is in captivity.
 
Chlidonias said:
I'm not sure that taking what is probably a small percentage of zoos you have visited and then just assuming that they are kept at other zoos which you haven't visited is a valid method of extrapolating how common a species is in captivity.
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I see Tuatara approximately a dozen times a year; ergo this must be an incredibly common species in European collections according to the birdsandbats doctrine :P ;)
 
Chlidonias said:
I'm not sure that taking what is probably a small percentage of zoos you have visited and then just assuming that they are kept at other zoos which you haven't visited is a valid method of extrapolating how common a species is in captivity.
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This exact line of thinking is how come I didn't realize Bronx had the only North American Gelada troop* for the longest time.

*Obviously they don't anymore but they did for a long time.

~Thylo
 
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