Biggest feather in your cap/bragging point

tigris115

tigris115

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
So do y'all have something in your zoo history that you consider worth bragging over or something that you consider rare/cool as hell?

The only real example I can think of is having seen Nola about a year before she passed. I'm sure some of you, especially the older Zoochatters have something better
 
I saw Fitz of Louisville Zoo roughly a month prior to his passing. Naturally, when the news broke that he had succumbed to EEHV, I was devastated!

Fitz was a definite highlight of my families visit to Louisville Zoo. His antics were hilarious! His poor mother though, lol. Let's just say that she really had her hands full with that one! Such a shame that the North American African Elephant population lost such a lively calf before he could make his mark on it.
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Also of note, I went to the Belize Zoo in July!

Great place, I was impressed with the quality of their exhibits despite the minimal funding. The animals were all in excellent shape and every 'keeper that I spoke to was clearly fond of their charges. They do a ton of rescue work in-country and offer free field trips to every primary school in Belize, so education is a definite priority!

Interacting with the tapirs was great fun, but the real highlight of the experience was getting to meet four out of the five cat species who call Belize home! The pumas were sadly no shows, but the Margays, Ocelots, Jaguarundis and Jaguars were all awesome! They had a whopping seven individual jaguars in residence, one of whom I was able to get up quite close to. (He was sleeping right by the fencing.)

But hands down, the most memorable of the cats was the jaguarundi! He was a little ham! Came right up to the fence to see me as soon as I stumbled upon his exhibit, he even started rubbing against the fence and purring! I fell in love and spent quite a bit of time with him, I came back to his habitat several times.
 
Oh heck, I don't know. I've tossed treats to a hippopotamus. I've seen a baby giant panda. I've seen both Granddad and Cookie. I've also seen one of the last Persian leopards in the US. I don't know how impressive a resume this is.

The ones I take the most pride in are the hippopotamus encounter and my memory of quite a few no longer extant exhibits, tbh.
 
tigris115 said:
Nola
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JVM said:
Granddad and Cookie
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If you're going to refer to an animal by name, it'd be nice to also include the species and/or why they are significant. I for one have no idea what either of you are referring to with these names.

As for me, perhaps the coolest thing I can say is that I saw Rosamond Gifford Zoo's Asian elephant twins, Yaad and Tukada, when they were only around a month old. They are the elephant twins in my profile picture, and the only surviving pair of elephant twins ever born outside the native range.
 
Neil chace said:
If you're going to refer to an animal by name, it'd be nice to also include the species and/or why they are significant. I for one have no idea what either of you are referring to with these names.

As for me, perhaps the coolest thing I can say is that I saw Rosamond Gifford Zoo's Asian elephant twins, Yaad and Tukada, when they were only around a month old. They are the elephant twins in my profile picture, and the only surviving pair of elephant twins ever born outside the native range.
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Sry. Nola was the last Northern white rhino in NA
 
Neil chace said:
If you're going to refer to an animal by name, it'd be nice to also include the species and/or why they are significant. I for one have no idea what either of you are referring to with these names.
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Granddad was the Shedd Aquarium's Australian lungfish and Cookie was Brookfield's pink cockatoo, both of whom were famously long-lived. They arrived in 1933 and 1934 respectively and died in 2017 and 2016 respectively.

My bad, I usually try to very good about including species names in these kinds of statements.
 
Fed and pet a North Island Brown Kiwi is probably my most unique zoo encounter I have had yet.

Outside of zoos, I've been to the Galapagos Islands twice and experienced things very few people ever get to see(up close mating ritual of Galapagos Hawks, Waved Albatross, Flightless Cormorants, Santa Fe Lava Lizards, Blue-Footed Boobies, ect, and my guide let me pluck a bit of loose shed from a Galapagos Land Iguana to pass around to the tour group, sadly couldn't keep the shed though)
 
Having been a volunteer at the Philadelphia Zoo was essentially living the dream for me. I got to be at my favorite place in the world and my talents and love of animals was accepted and reliable. Unlike my crappy college where my academic advisor scoffed at me. Anyway, I was able to take a trip to Ecuador and aid in the conservation of frogs due to my envolvement at the zoo. I had a Hyloscirtus tapichalaca jump on me, got to see one of the rarest frogs in the world, Atelopus nanay, and released poison dart frogs into breeding ponds (I believe they were Anthony's poison frogs).
 
While not exactly a zoo, though they do operate on the same grounds as the now-closed Mountain View Conservation & Breeding Centre and were once considered partners to some degree, I have had the opportunity to work closely with the highly endangered northern spotted owl in captivity.

As well, I own a handful of original, press photographs of unique zoo animals (northern white rhinos, Barbary lions and a dusky seaside sparrow), as well as a 123 year-old photo book from the Berlin Zoo, entitled Lebendbilder aus dem reiche der Tiere.
 
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