Guenons

A

Ara

Well-Known Member
I'm beginning to despair about the lack of safe colonies of guenons in the world's zoos.

It's just a personal preference I suppose, but to me they are the most attractive and interesting of the primates.

A check of ISIS shows that there seems to be a pair here; a pair there and a trio somewhere else, but no zoo seems fair dinkum enough about them to set up proper breeding colonies with sufficient founders to guarantee some sort of ongoing breeding success into the future.

Take it from me; the horrible bushmeat trade is knocking them around just as much or more than it is the apes. Some species are endangered and some are still relatively common, but that situation will not continue indefinitely.

Australian zoos have just a few, (old animals), and are not really interested.
What's the situation like in Britain, and Europe generally?
 
It depends on the species; De Brazza's Monkey, Pattas Monkey, Hamlyn's Monkey, Diana Monkey, L'Hoest's Monkey etc. are some of the guenons more or less often shown in zoos. However, there seems to have been a general decrease of guenon species kept in European zoos over the last decades, and in many cases, there are just "relict" populations of them in smaller zoos. Some zoos like Heidelberg or Mulhouse have dedicated themselves to breeding some endangered guenon species like Roloway Monkeys.
 
Yes, guenons are decreasing. The same is actually with macaques and langurs.

Would be nice to keep them more. Unfortunately, even species which are commonly sold as meat in Africa there are problems with importing them.
 
We need to find all the zoos that keep thses species, and bring them together into some larger groups. Chester and San Diego keep Campbell's guenon, but Chester only has two females, and San Diego has one of the only Captive males. In order to keep species like the Campbell's Guenon in zoos, we are going to have to bring as many representatives of certain species into some breeding groups.

Then, the zoos who have submitted their animals, should get some of the young and build up another group, and so on, with more and more zoos keeping these species...

They are so nice, and some species do very well, we just need to manage them properly...
 
Wern't the Campbell's Guenons at Chester the ones from London? If so I would expect the females are too old to breed. More guenons in captivity would be nice though. Everywhere seems to keep large groups of Sulawesi Black Macaques.
 
@Writhedhornbill: "We"? So You want to mobilise all zoobeat members to storm the Guenon-keeping zoos, kid-(or rather monkey)-nap their animals and herd them together? ;)

Bongorob mentioned an important aspect: very often, these particular specimen are either too old for breeding or the founding base (and, as Jurek7 correctly remarked, this isn't that easy to be filled up) is so small that an unsystematic breeding would do more harm than good. Is it really that important to establish ex-situ populations of various guenons-or should You focus on just a few? The plan f.e. Heidelberg and partly London undertake is a good one: first, help local conservation groups and local zoos in the original habitat (e.g. West Africa); in the end, after establishing a solid base & partnership, non-African zoos could get additional animals from African zoos for their selected breeding groups.
@bongorob: "Everywhere seems to keep large groups of Sulawesi Black Macaques." That might only be true for the UK, as I can think of only ~7 European (except Rotterdam & Antwerpen mostly smaller) zoos keeping them.
 
I may be wrong about this, but I think that the social structure of guenons in the wild is not well understood. Obviously patas and grivets/vervets are exceptions to this generalisation, probably because the fieldwork is easier.
This means that zoos have rarely got past the Noah's ark 'two by two' approach. The pair have a couple of babies, then one of the adults dies and there are problems finding unrelated mates for the others. I can't help thinking that if a collection could get hold of a number of individuals, they could be managed more like a species of deer or antelope: a breeding male housed with a group of females and then replaced by an unrelated male after a couple of years. I don't know if a bachelor group of males would live together - perhaps they are the ones which could be kept with gorillas or mandrills.
In my opinion, the best guenon exhibit in the UK is at Port Lympne where a group of 1.3 adult De Brazza's, with half a dozen juveniles and infants, share a large open-topped enclosure with a similar number of Eastern black and white colobus. This enclosure is essentially native woodland, with several live trees, smaller bushes and herbs (I have a photo of two of the females in the gallery).

Alan
 
I think most guenons have the same social system of male + several females. About African zoos - I think those in C and W Africa are too base to form sustained partnerships. There is nice drill centre, but e.g. in Congo/Zaire, once Aspinall-funded people had to flee the war with young gorillas and bonobos.

Problem is, that zoos which keep few species in attractive exhibits, often get rid of guenons. Guenons are cold-sensitive, jump very well - hard to use moats, need much climibing equipment, destroy live trees and cannot form large mobile herds like e.g. baboons. And males are often aggressive. Other monkeys are better in this way.

BTW, Basel has group of vervets on an island. I once watched lively scene of darting one which got out.
 
I'd be interested to hear what Sebbe67 has to say about this, as I see on another thread that he studied L'hoest's guenon in the wild for 4 years.

Are you there, Sebastian?
 
Ara said:
I'm beginning to despair about the lack of safe colonies of guenons in the world's zoos.It's just a personal preference I suppose, but to me they are the most attractive and interesting of the primates.

A check of ISIS shows that there seems to be a pair here; a pair there and a trio somewhere else, but no zoo seems fair dinkum enough about them to set up proper breeding colonies with sufficient founders to guarantee some sort of ongoing breeding success into the future.

What's the situation like in Britain, and Europe generally?
Click to expand...

I agree with all your above comments wholeheartedly. In the Uk this beautiful group of monkeys is not as badly of as in Australia, but its much the same story as you can see from ISIS listings. The only species that are shown by several zoos are Diana & De Brazza, a couple have L'Hoest's while nowadays only Edinburgh and Twycross have Hamlyn's- this lovely species seem to be dying out in our zoos as few of the European collections which still have them are breeding them in sufficient number to maintain the dwindling population. One or two have Patas(Colchester, Woburn) or Vervets but they're almost 'forgotten' about.

Twycross has the largest selection of guenon species, but mostly only pairs and singletons, and their recent breeding record with Guenons is poor. However, they have shown the way by sending a pair of non-breeding Whitesides(?) Guenons to a zoo in France where they have collected a group together, in order to try and start them breeding successfully.

The best UK exhibit Guenon exhibit is definately the De Brazza group at Port Lympne(see Gentle Lemur's post above) and I hope they can do something similar for the smaller(about 4) group of Dianas at the same park. Elsewhere the other zoos with De Brazza or Diana are mostly just breeding pairs with one or two offspring. I hope they are allowed to increase so that the future for these two species at least becomes more secure than it is at present.
 
bongorob said:
More guenons in captivity would be nice though. Everywhere seems to keep large groups of Sulawesi Black Macaques.
Click to expand...

Too true... Sulawesi Macaques are to be seen in many of our zoos- presumably they breed freely and so there are plenty of surplus with which other zoos can set up groups. Completely the opposite story to the Guenons.
 
gentle lemur said:
I may be wrong about this, but I think that the social structure of guenons in the wild is not well understood.
This means that zoos have rarely got past the Noah's ark 'two by two' approach. The pair have a couple of babies, then one of the adults dies and there are problems finding unrelated mates for the others.
Alan
Click to expand...

Yes I agree, its no doubt because they are high rainforest canopy species or live in other inaccessible places e.g. De Brazza's are supposed to live in riverine swamps.

I have read that De Brazza's, and possibly some other species are monogomous, rather than polygamous. I don't know what evidence there is for this and it doesn't seem born out by the successful Port Lympne group(though I think it did start as just a pair...) Two other zoos in Uk where single pairs of De Brazza are now breeding successfully are Blackpool and Bristol (Edinburgh?) I agree in the past this 'pair' method for guenons has failed when one adult dies and a new mate can't be found- I think nowadays such exchanges between zoos e.g. within Europe are more efficient and that 'replacememt mate finding' is less of a problem than it used to be. But with limited captive populations such as the guenons, it is still a factor to take into consideration.

I'm hopeful at least De Brazza and Dianas will increase in the UK zoos that have them so we can keep them for posterity. I don't rate the future for any other guenon species in our zoos very strongly though.
 
The owl faced guenons are breeding at Edinburgh, so there is some chance that we may have these for the forseeable future....
 
Fodders said:
The owl faced guenons are breeding at Edinburgh, so there is some chance that we may have these for the forseeable future....
Click to expand...

The Owl faced monkeys at Edinburgh have declined drastically in number. There is little chance they can sustain them in the longterm with just one breeding female.
 
ara, whilst unfortunately the australasian breeding program for de brazza's guenons has failed due to lack of commitment, the vervet guenons are breeding very well at werribee with a group of around 20 animals. monarto zoo is also jumping into the vervet game (though no other zoos are committed at this stage).

i suppose however the decision to import a colony of vervets at werribee contributed to the failure of de brazza's at melbourne. since if werribee had decided to keep the existing species of guenon rather than importing another less-endangered species, we might have a thriving de brazza colony out there at present.
 
I'm pleased t see Monarto may be getting vervets. They would also be a great additon for the Perth Open range, if it ever goes ahead.
 
Still, it's nice to know that vervets are a goer in Vic. and S.Aust.
They are another species that Taronga used to have in large numbers but which have gone.
 
perth until recently had some too - of different subspecies to the east african vervets currently at werribee. not sure where they were sent.

hopefully for the guenon's sake, monarto will follow through with its plans and acquire purebred east africans at that.
 
There are some Vervets at Gorge Wildlife Park, they may have gone there, Gorge i do not belive are breeding them i will check on that though. I will be going there at the end of feb to drop off some animals so will do it then.
 
Its a great shame if the opportunity has been lost to maintain De Brazza's in Australian zoos now. If the survivor(s) from Melbourne and Taronga were brought together would that make a viable group?

To my mind its the forest guenons which are the most striking- vervets don't have the same attraction though they are doubtless more suitable for open range zoos like Weribee being a grassland species.

In the UK Vervets(and Patas monkey) are only kept in a couple of places- relics from when they were more commonly seen in our zoos in the distant past.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top