Free-ranging animals

Z

ZooPro

Well-Known Member
From the Clore Pavilion, London Zoo thread:

grantsmb said:
I doubt whether free-ranging Tamarins/marmosets would work at a big Urban Zoo like London- they would possibly get stolen in no time at all! Jersey has overall a very different sort of visitor to London Zoo- mostly older people and genteel holidaymakers so there is a more 'cultured' and relaxed atmosphere and little risk of theft there. City zoos tend to have a higher percentage of the type of visitors who are likely to get up to mischief.:(
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I hate to contradict you grantsmb ;) , but there's a great example of this with GLTs free-ranging throughout a large portion of the National Zoo in Washington DC. National is a free zoo, and has a very high visitation, and DC is hardly as genteel and cultured as Jersey (although parts of DC are truly lovely - sorry any DC readers!).

The GLTs have night boxes throughout the trees, and of course, have access to heated indoor areas at night. There are ropes strung between a number of trees, so the animals have a large area to roam around. To my knowledge, there have never been any escapes or thefts of these animals at National. The international studbook keeper for GLTs works at National Zoo, and if there was any hint of a problem, I'm sure he'd push for an end to free-ranging GLTs.
 
singapore zoo had free-ranging tamarins, and so too did adelaide for a while. the program might hae stopped now, but to the best of my knowledge no tamarins were stolen there (unlike most other small mammals not nailed down in adelaide), although one was eaten by a devil
 
Bristol had free-ranging Geoffroy's, I think they'd tried to tie down their territory to the Amazon region, but obviously something didn't work out as they were only living free for a short spell. Whether the change of heart was due to the monkeys behaviour or the visitors i'm not sure.
 
ZooPro said:
I hate to contradict you grantsmb ;) , but there's a great example of this with GLTs free-ranging
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ZOOPRO- You're welcome to contradict me anytime!:)

Perhaps at Washington any person making off with marmosets would be surrounded by police and read their 'Miranda' rights.... Its interesting though that they don't have any theft problems there. I always take rather a dim view of (much of, not all) the British zoo going public I'm afraid, and its interesting how their behaviour varies from zoo to zoo, depending on the location, local 'culture' etc.

(At ZSL they also need to be very rich to afford the entry fee in the first place....);)
 
glyn said:
whipsnade-marmosets
artis-loads of both tamarins and marmosets
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Apenheul- dozens of free-ranging Squirrel monkeys. When we visited there a few years back, it was a drizzly day. The squirrel monkeys climbed all over my 12 year old daughter and their muddy little feet left her clothes covered in filthy footprints. Yuk, but we had a laugh.... I also noticed generally that Dutch Zoo visitors, including the children, were far better behaved than you would find in UK.(for example in the Clore Pavilion...)
 
Perhaps one of the earliest zoos to successfully experiment with free ranging species was dear old Whipsnade. THey have always had ranging free on the estate the following; Bennetts Wallaby, Prairie Dog(escaped?) Muntjac, Chinese Water Deer, Mara. (I have seen Mara free range in some German zoos)

There was a trend some years ago to have free-flying macaws in several bird gardens in Uk- its been largely discontinued owing perhaps to the high value of the birds- also despite being usually successful, they sometimes get blown away in high winds and lost.

There are a number of exhibits nowadays which feature 'meet the lemurs/monkeys etc' and allow the public to interact/touch harmless varieties, some have free-ranging lemurs, others are in 'walk-thru' exhibits.
 
grantsmb said:
have always had ranging free on the estate the following; Bennetts Wallaby, Prairie Dog(escaped?) Muntjac, Chinese Water Deer, Mara.
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and arn't many of these species such as the wallaby and muntjacs now feral in the UK? ;)

i think australia has pretty strict laws on free-ranging species. it seems largely reserved for large natives such as wallbies/kangaroos and emus.

unfortunately somebody forgot to tell our dear freind david gill that. he thought he could replicate his successful a-little-too-free-range UK zoo over here...with pretty disasterous concequences!!! ;)
 
free range animals

I always get mixed up with cappuchins and tamarins , but Wellington Zoo has one of them on free range . They wear special collars that have transmitters , which the keepers can always locate where any particular animal might be .
I am not aware of any problems
 
Nigel said:
I always get mixed up with cappuchins and tamarins , but Wellington Zoo has one of them on free range . They wear special collars that have transmitters , which the keepers can always locate where any particular animal might be .
I am not aware of any problems
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Wow, that's news to me! I doubt very much that it would be Capuchins - they are nasty little buggers! They are the larger brown monkeys on the island soon after the front entrance, after the otters. It would be more likely tamarins that are free-ranging, but I have not heard of Wellington doing that, and I'd be surprised if they had the resources to keep track of them.

I could be wrong - I'll try to find out.
 
i'm especially fond of the undead one in pirates of the caribbean... now thats a nastly little capuchin!!
 
And still staying on the thread of free-ranging, I especially liked the one free-raning through the New York Natural History Museum in Night at the Museum - what a horror that one was!
 
well i think the best ever on-sceen free-ranging by a capuchin monkey - was the white-fronted variety that spread the deadly "motaba" virus through america in dustin hoffman's shameful "outbreak"....

interestingly i wasn't aware until i saw this film that capuchins actually come from africa... ;)
 
patrick said:
and arn't many of these species such as the wallaby and muntjacs now feral in the UK? ;)
unfortunately somebody forgot to tell our dear freind david gill that. he thought he could replicate his successful a-little-too-free-range UK zoo over here...with pretty disasterous concequences!!! ;)
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1. Muntjac are well established in parts of the UK(such as East Anglia) and to a lesser extent Chinese Water Deer too. I think both species originated from Woburn(the big Deer Park/Safari Park near Whipsnade.) I don't believe anything has ever escaped from Whipsnade(apart from Prairie Dogs burrowing under the fence but still staying in the immediate vicinity). Wallabies were free living in Yorkshire for a long while- I believe they've died out now but there may be a colony somewhere else.

2. I thought David Gill had his zoo in Australia, at Mareeba, BEFORE starting the South Lakes Park over here in UK, rather than vice versa? I think Coatis have escaped from South Lakes and are living ferally in the area. (see how easily this is now turning into a different thread- 'escaped animals '.;)
 
grantsmb said:
2. I thought David Gill had his zoo in Australia, at Mareeba, BEFORE starting the South Lakes Park over here in UK, rather than vice versa? I think Coatis have escaped from South Lakes and are living ferally in the area. (see how easily this is now turning into a different thread- 'escaped animals '.;)
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Nope. Gill bought the land at Mareeba about 6 years ago, and built the zoo from scratch. South Lakes was already well established by that stage, and in fact, a number of the animals that Gill imported came from South Lakes.
 
ZooPro said:
Nope. Gill bought the land at Mareeba about 6 years ago, and built the zoo from scratch. South Lakes was already well established by that stage, and in fact, a number of the animals that Gill imported came from South Lakes.
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Oh, okay. Did he want a zoo on both sides of the world then?

His park at South Lakes has grown very rapidly in the last few years, that's when I started to notice it... I'm sure you know that over here too, there has been some bad publicity(animal escapes, car park...) but not on the same level as he managed in OZ. I don't think he's a member of the usual zoo organisations over here either.
 
patrick said:
i'm especially fond of the undead one in pirates of the caribbean... now thats a nastly little capuchin!!
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I would not want to meet any free-ranging CApuchin despite the fact they're frequently shown in films etc as pets or the barrel organ-grinder's monkey.etc I think it was a Capuchin that ate the poisoned dates in one of the Indiana Jones movies too?

I think they are among the most unnattractive of monkeys with a temperament to match....
 
i believe they would be very tempremental, as i beleive they are one of the most intellegent new ages monkys. there is eveidence that they use , in the wild, rocks to crush nuts etc, (basically a lage rock where a nut is placed, and a smaller rock used to break nut) over time, as you can imagine a large indentation forms on the rock from generations of monkys using the large rock.

arcehologists belived ancient tribles must have made the indents, but it was caught on film it was these guys, and they have used it for centuries in the smae way, and it has been shown generation after generation, the young ones are tought

each troop, or more so sub. species has differnt types of tools.

very intellegenat animals
 
yeah, whilst admittedly capuchins are not y favorite onkeys either i have seen documentaries of them doing prett remarkable things!
 
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