Are there any Long Beaked Echidnas in Captivity?

MonkeyBat said:
Strangely enough, a photo for a long beaked echidna is on Saint Louis Zoo's website Mammals On Our Web Site | Saint Louis Zoo
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If they somehow got one recently, they would have posted about it on their social media. There are a ton of animals on exhibit that are not listed on their site, but almost all new additions get twitter mentions these days. I don’t know why they have a photo of one online, but I can check with my zoo friend about it and find out.

That photo specifically looks to be of a Sir Attenborough’s Long-Beaked Echidna, which is critically endangered.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Doubt it given said species has never been photographed alive and is known only from one specimen collected in the 1960s :p
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Then Google Images lied to me lol. I don’t know much about echidnas. It must be one of the other two long-beaked echidnas then. I do very much doubt they have one though.
 
imaginarius said:
That photo specifically looks to be of a Sir Attenborough’s Long-Beaked Echidna, which is critically endangered.
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It looks like an Eastern long-beaked echidna to me, very likely photographed at a zoo in Oceania. The photo looks old due to the slightly faded colours etc., although that could just be the formatting/quality. It is very unlikely, verging on impossible, that St Louis have this species - given the lack of photo credits looks like the picture was copied from the internet, although I can't find a similar image.
 
amur leopard said:
It is very unlikely, verging on impossible, that St Louis have this species - given the lack of photo credits looks like the picture was copied from the internet, although I can't find a similar image.
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I can almost 100% guarantee St. Louis does not have a Zaglossus of any species.
 
I'm not sure why there is so much discussion over this photo on Saint Louis's site, but I can add some clarity here: the zoo does not have Zaglossus. That photo has been on the website for as long as I can remember, and I believe is simply meant to represent monotremes generally. Until recently you would have seen a clickable profile for Egg-Laying Mammals and then Short-beaked Echidna, which the zoo held in the Children's Zoo animal building; however, as the Children's Zoo is now closed indefinitely those URLs have been removed (as have others from that area of the zoo, such as the Matschie's tree kangaroo that lived with the echidnas). I'm uncertain as to whether the zoo still has the Short-beaked.

Edit: Here's the species profile for Short-beaked Echidna, pulled up using the Wayback Machine. As you can see it correctly labels the species, but the photos are a mix of Long-beaked and Short-beaked: Egg-laying Mammals :: Saint Louis Zoo
 
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Dassie rat said:
Thanks, Tim

I remember the list of mammals being in the 2nd edition of the International Zoo Yearbook. I don't know how accurate the figures were, but the longest-lived mammal in the list was a long-beaked echidna, which surprised me
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I've consulted that edition of the International Zoo Yearbook and checked the Longevity Survey you referred to.

The figures supplied are based on the ZSL's records between 1930 and 1960. Consequently the long-lived pachyderms, commented on in earlier posts, would not have featured in the list as they all lived long before the date range covered by the survey.
 
Coelacanth18 said:
I'm not sure why there is so much discussion over this photo on Saint Louis's site, but I can add some clarity here: the zoo does not have Zaglossus. That photo has been on the website for as long as I can remember, and I believe is simply meant to represent monotremes generally. Until recently you would have seen a clickable profile for Egg-Laying Mammals and then Short-beaked Echidna, which the zoo held in the Children's Zoo animal building; however, as the Children's Zoo is now closed indefinitely those URLs have been removed (as have others from that area of the zoo, such as the Matschie's tree kangaroo that lived with the echidnas). I'm uncertain as to whether the zoo still has the Short-beaked.

Edit: Here's the species profile for Short-beaked Echidna, pulled up using the Wayback Machine. As you can see it correctly labels the species, but the photos are a mix of Long-beaked and Short-beaked: Egg-laying Mammals :: Saint Louis Zoo
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I do wonder what became/will become of most of those Children’s Zoo animals. They said the Tasmanian Devils will stay and be viewable, but I imagine the rest were sent to other zoos. A shame, really, especially for the aforementioned tree kangaroos and a few others. After the temporary Dinoraurus exhibit this spring, they will redevelop it into a new zoo section. I’m hoping it’s an Australian-themed one, but we’ll see.
 
On Zoo institutes website Alex Kant posted a photo of this species taken at Moscow zoo in 2011.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Doubt it given said species has never been photographed alive and is known only from one specimen collected in the 1960s :p
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I knew the First specimen was collected in 1962, but I at least thought there were at least one photograph of the species alive, are there more books on the subject of this echidna that I could read? Not a great question, just curious.
 
Tim May said:
I've consulted that edition of the International Zoo Yearbook and checked the Longevity Survey you referred to.

The figures supplied are based on the ZSL's records between 1930 and 1960. Consequently the long-lived pachyderms, commented on in earlier posts, would not have featured in the list as they all lived long before the date range covered by the survey.
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Thanks, Tim

I remember going through the list. I didn't remember that it only covered 1930-1960
 
the racoon has spoken said:
Believe there's only a single elderly male held bts.
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Taronga's animal alternates between on and off display , but I don't know which is the case right at the moment - EDIT, if their nocturnal house is closed for renovation as mentioned earlier in the thread, then yes the echidna will indeed still be off-display.

The Port Moresby Nature Park in PNG also has the species (I can't remember if one or more, off the top of my head).
 
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