Chester Zoo Heart of Africa site plans?

bongorob said:
The zoo has a policy to exclude animals from Australia, because they do not have any field programmes there. I think this is a silly way to do things, but it is what they do,

The tree kangaroo will be housed in Islands when the enclosusure is ready, they haven't started it yet.
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I swear that they used to have kangaroos!
 
Giant Panda said:
As are Heck's macaque and babirusa ;)
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Even Wallace was puzzled by the fauna of Celebes, as Sulawesi was known: he pointed out the high proportion of endemic species in several groups and the unusual combination of species with links to Asia and the more western islands and species with links to the south and east. He eventually drew his line to the west of the island, but was well aware of its porosity.
Of course the idea of a transition zone is sensible, but although cassowaries may have a claw stretched into this zone, it's hardly a justification for labelling them as Asian.
 
gentle lemur said:
Even Wallace was puzzled by the fauna of Celebes, as Sulawesi was known: he pointed out the high proportion of endemic species in several groups and the unusual combination of species with links to Asia and the more western islands and species with links to the south and east. He eventually drew his line to the west of the island, but was well aware of its porosity.
Of course the idea of a transition zone is sensible, but although cassowaries may have a claw stretched into this zone, it's hardly a justification for labelling them as Asian.
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Very true. My point was only that their distribution relative to Wallace's Line is hardly a justification for labelling them Australasian. And that biogeography is fun :)
 
bongorob said:
The zoo has a policy to exclude animals from Australia, because they do not have any field programmes there. I think this is a silly way to do things, but it is what they do,
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They don't have field programmes in Playland, but they've got play areas.

(I could be ruder.)
 
On balance Sulawesi has a Sunda-type tetrapod fauna according to Holt et al. So there are Asian marsupials: the question is why they did not penetrate further when they can compete against placental mammals.
 
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