Diets for herbivorous animals

[Zoovolunteer]

Hi all

I recently went to a lecture by an expert in zoo animal nutrition where some interesting points were raised about the captive diets of herbivorousanimals. In particular, that the kind of fruits and vegetables fed have been designed for human tastes, and have much higher sugar and water content, and much lower protein and fibre content, than wild fruits, and this may cause problems in some animals - many primates and some rodents (degus for example) are prone to diabetes or obesity in captivity. Do the zoo people here take any special steps to provide wild fruits for captive animals? I know most browsing animals get cut tree branches or similar but do many zoos have a dedicated browse plantation or other means of maximising the foliage part of an animals diet?

 

[kiang]

I think this may have come to light when Port Lympne had their pair of Sumatran rhino and the staff there fed them the best tropical fruit money could buy, along with forage, but it was later when Cincinnati, looked into a diet to help with breeding was it found out that leaves and branches were the best diet for the rhino and cut out all those high sugar fruits.

 

[okapikpr]

Okapi, for example, in captivity can have very high levels of glucose in their urine leading to kidney and renal failure. Many believe that fruits have a real effect on glucose levels, especially since okapi in Epulu have no glucosuria and are not given produce. I know of many okapi institutions that have elimated fruits and vegetables from diets.

http://theokapi.org/teksten/glucosuria.pdf

 

[dragon(ele)nerd]

Agree with you too much fruits are somewhat acting like sugary foods there is a theory that over-ripe fruit make certain animals go into a drunk phase. Take example elephants that cosume roughly 150kgs of food a day but in captivity usually around 80 ish kgs. ( according to the the elephant sanctuary in howenheld Tennesse.) But of that around only 8kgs of vegetables or fruits.
Vegetables such as Carrots and Broccoli are also considered as a treat.


The bulk would probably be dehydrated grass. Hope this helps a bit....

 

[Sun Wukong]

I mentioned the aspect about the fruits bred for human consumptions and its results on animal diets before. Some zoos have reacted by cutting down the fruit ratio and increasing the share of fibre-rich food items (to the dismay of a lot of spoiled zoo animals ).
In some specialised species, like Giant Pandas, koalas, diverse leaf-eating langur species, moose etc., keeping zoos have special contracts with delivering plant centres, farmers and/or small browse plantations on their own. However, that all depends on the location; a zoo in say, a rural part in Vietnam will have less problems providing their douc langurs with the right browse all year long than for example Cologne zoo...Same goes for wild fruits in other species.