Checking the small print
I have only recently had time to go through the 2015 paperwork and I spotted some things that haven't appeared here before, mainly because they refer to the stock that is off-show.
First, as Mark Pilgrim has written, 4 pied tamarins were born last year: they have been trying to succeed with this sensitive species for many years and I presume that the successful parents are off-show, perhaps in the units between RotRA and the Animal Hospital. Also off-show are the slender-tailed cloud rats, which bred too.
Birds bred off-show included Cabot's tragopans, which some ZooChatters will remember and collared partridges, which I had never heard of before. Among the parrots, the grey-breasted parakeets and Mount Apo lorikeets were successful - you can hear them and just about see them with binoculars from the waterfowl rearing area.
Reptile breedings included tentacled snakes, eyelash vipers and beautiful pitvipers plus several species of smaller lizards, although in many cases there were quite heavy losses among the young animals (which is not uncommon with "lower vertebrates"). We must not forget the tuatara of course.
There was little success with breeding amphibians. They have brought in some new species and it looks as if they are still getting to grips with their husbandry.
Finally, I took a special interest in the fishes. Nagy's and Linke's liquorice gouramis were both bred, as were a couple of small
Betta species ('fighting fishes'). I also noted that the zoo has a pair of the large
Betta macrostoma, sometimes called the Brunei beauty - I'd love to see them, although I wonder if these species are a little too shy to show well on display. I was particularly pleased to see that they also bred two of my favourites, the beautiful little butterfly barb and the giant freshwater pipefish (
Doryichthys boaja). I would love to see them in the refurbished Aquarium
One final word, I am going to ask the zoo to make a minor change to the species lists, by putting the column headers as a separate line on
every page, which will make it much easier for readers to get a grasp of all the figures.
Alan
