Auckland Zoo Hybrid oryx?

robmv

robmv

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Can someone help me out please. I've got in into my head that a couple of hybrid oryx (Arabian x Scimitar-horned?) were born in a New Zealand zoo a few years ago. I thought this was at Auckland, but I e-mailed the zoo and they say it was not there. Have I imagined it?
 
Hi, unfortunately I can’t help You completely, but I’m sure that there was at least one event when the mentioned two species, exactly male Scimitar-horned oryx & female Arabian oryx produced a hybrid, but I don't know where it was happened.
 
Oryx in NZ

Try Orana Park near Christchurch . I am not sure exactly which speciers of oryx , but I do know that they have had several breeding successes with these .
To my knowledge , it is the only zoo in NZ that has ever kept oryx , but they have done very well down there .
 
there have never been Arabian oryx in NZ as far as I know. It would be very unlikely if there were. Scimitar-horned oryx and gemsbok are the only oryx to have been kept in NZ
 
This is a very old thread, but while doing some research for another matter I came across a snippet of information in the New Zealand Card Index at the Auckland Library which reads "Jezebel, the zoo's only gemsbok has given birth. The father is a scimitar-horned oryx." It is dated February 1984.

See here for the actual card: Inmagic DB/Text WebPublisher PRO: 1 records

Another card dated 13 April 1984 reads "Pictures of the zoo's latest addition, Follee, a cross between an oryx (Baasha) and a gemsbok, Jazebel."

See here for the card: Inmagic DB/Text WebPublisher PRO: 1 records [It is just the Index card, not the actual photos unfortunately]

What is interesting is that the first card specifically states that the gemsbok is the only one at the zoo (in 1984). I have a photo in the gallery from c.1992 which shows three animals -- http://www.zoochat.com/14/gemsbok-154289/ -- which makes me wonder if these animals are actually the female gemsbok plus two hybrids?
 
Chlidonias said:
What is interesting is that the first card specifically states that the gemsbok is the only one at the zoo (in 1984). I have a photo in the gallery from c.1992 which shows three animals -- http://www.zoochat.com/14/gemsbok-154289/ -- which makes me wonder if these animals are actually the female gemsbok plus two hybrids?
Click to expand...
interestingly and unexpectedly, I just found in a Subsaharan oryx studbook that two female gemsbok were imported to Orana Park from Toronto Zoo in 1987 which could explain the three animals in the 1992 photo at Auckland Zoo. (Although the studbook says one of those females died at Orana in 1994 which doesn't make sense).
 
Chlidonias said:
interestingly and unexpectedly, I just found in a Subsaharan oryx studbook that two female gemsbok were imported to Orana Park from Toronto Zoo in 1987 which could explain the three animals in the 1992 photo at Auckland Zoo. (Although the studbook says one of those females died at Orana in 1994 which doesn't make sense).
Click to expand...
....aaaand just to complicate matters more, I have found out from Zooboy28 that the two gemsbok which went to Hamilton from Auckland in c.1995 were born in 1984 and 1985 which means they must have been two hybrids (the 1984 one I noted earlier plus another from the following year) and that the pure-bred female had died in the meantime. So the three animals in the 1992 photo must be the pure female plus two hybrids.

It seems Orana's import had nothing to do with the Auckland gemsboks (but they must have always remained off-display at Orana as I never saw them and they've never been mentioned in any Orana publication).
 
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