Free roaming animals.

pachyderm pro

pachyderm pro

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
Many zoos have the concept of free roaming animals mainly peacocks, geese and smaller bird species. However some zoos have pretty interesting ones like the free roaming orangutangs at Singapore zoo please share some of the coolest free roam animals you have seen.
 
Tierpark Hagenbeck, Hamburg: Reeve’s muntjac, Patagonian mara, capybara (occasionally).
Zoo Salzburg: Griffon vulture & ring-tailed lemur
Wuppertal Zoo: Eastern chipmunk
Wilhelma Stuttgart: yellow-crowned amazon
Cologne, Heidelberg, Barcelona...Zoo: Ring-collared parakeet
Zürich Zoo: Golden-headed lion tamarin
Entebbe Zoo: vervet
San Diego Wild Animal Park: Bongo-killing cougar
 
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Singapore Zoo: common brown lemur, white-faced saki, cottontop tamarin, javan langur. All animals know where they are fed so tend to stay in the area, however I have seen the sakis go quite far into other parts of the zoo!
 
Batto said:
Tierpark Hagenbeck, Hamburg: Reeve’s muntjac, Patagonian mara, capybara (occasionally).
Zoo Salzburg: Griffon vulture & ring-tailed lemur
Wuppertal Zoo: Eastern chipmunk
Wilhelma Stuttgart: yellow-crowned amazon
Cologne, Heidelberg, Barcelona...Zoo: Ring-collared parakeet
Zürich Zoo: Golden-headed lion tamarin
Entebbe Zoo: vervet
San Diego Wild Animal Park: Bongo-killing cougar
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The Vervets in Entebbe are not free-ranging, they are wild animals that are not part of the zoo's collection.

:p

Hix
 
there is a difference between "free-roaming" animals, and animals which are actually wild.

To my mind the palm squirrels in Perth and the eastern chipmunks at Wuppertal are not free-roaming animals, because the zoos simply released them and the populations are wild and fending for themselves, and have been self-sustaining for decades. (In fact in the case of Perth it seems that the squirrels are no longer found in zoo grounds, only in the surrounding suburbs).

There is an obvious wavy line when it comes to examples like Whipsnade or peacocks, though.

Animals like the Entebbe vervets don't count as "free-roaming" at all.
 
If we follow your definition, Hix and Chli, then the ring-collared parakeets, the amazons and the cougar are neither “free-ranging“. I’m going to follow Chli’s example from another thread and just leave it at the status of mutual disagreement...;)
 
Batto said:
If we follow your definition, Hix and Chli, then the ring-collared parakeets, the amazons and the cougar are neither “free-ranging“. I’m going to follow Chli’s example from another thread and just leave it at the status of mutual disagreement...;)
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Free-roaming implies that the animals are owned by the zoo, which is also the case for this topic as can be deducted from the first post...
 
@lintworm: that definition gets rather blurry when it comes to the chipmunks at Wuppertal...never been at Perth, so I cannot judge.
 
Batto said:
Zürich Zoo: Golden-headed lion tamarin
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These aren't free roaming at Zurich, however the Saimiri boliviensis boliviensis squirrel monkeys are on a walk-through island enclosure in the early afternoon on sufficiently warm days.

Species that do roam freely in Zurich are ofc peacocks, all species in Masoala, and (wild) breeding white storks, which are provided nesting opportunities throughout the zoo.
 
@antonmuster: so they must have stopped that practice after the incident of one of the apes grabbing one by the tail and throwing it around (at least that’s what I recall the vet telling years ago). As for free-ranging squirrel monkeys, you could also add Tierpark Hellabrunn.
 
Trentham Monkey Foresat (UK) :- Barbary macaques. The whole place is a giant walk-through for two(?) groups and though it's not exactly exciting to a zoo enthusiast it's still quite interesting to see.
 
The Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina has a fairly large number of 'free range' lemurs. Technically they are still contained within fencing, but they are considered free range. Same with the Lemur Conservation Foundation in Florida.
 
Free-roaming and zoology

Hi all, I'm new to this forum and interested in zoos doing progressive work on the animal welfare/enrichment side. Do you think any of these zoos, with free-roaming species, are doing that, or is free-roaming not a new thing to zoology? Cheers.
 
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My favorite example I've seen are the prairie dogs at the Capital of Texas Zoo. Their main town is in the camel paddock (which is not where they were released initially, but where they decided to settle) however their burrows are all over the place in one section of the zoo, and I saw one right outside the brown lemurs, about two feet from me. I could have reached over and touched it (well, I could have if it weren't sitting by its hole, which I assumed it would dive back into if I tried).
 
Bristol used to have free roaming Geoffroy's Marmosets. They did quite well for a few years, and bred successfully, but were eventually confined to quarters after they went "over the wall" one day. Quite a few zoos have free ranging callitrichids as they are quite territorial and can be relied on to go home in the evening - Durrell is the most obvious one of these.
 
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