Indri

Tim May said:
In his book “The Management of Wild Mammals in Captivity” (1964) Lee Crandall mentions that “eight or ten specimens were received at the Paris Menagerie in 1939, all of which died within one month”.
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Tim May said:
Crandall gives the source for his comments about the indri in Paris as:-
Hill, W. C. Osman (1953)
Primates. 1. Strepsirhini. (Interscience Publishers Inc., New York and University Press Edinburgh.)
which might provide further information about the Paris animals.
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I was in the Zoological Society of London Library today, so took the opportunity to consult the book by Osman Hill mentioned above.

Frustratingly, this volume provides no further details of the Paris indri; Crandall evidently repeated the information almost word for word from Osman Hill’s book; the only additional information supplied is that Osman Hill learned of the Paris indri from a Dr. Madeleine Friant.
 
I went to the Andasibe reserve in October 1987 and saw a large enclosure that had been built around some trees. It had included indris for a time, but they soon died. If they had survived, I was told that they would have been sent to Paris. I went to Paris Vincennes Zoo in 2008 and saw representatives of 5 families of lemurs. Stand out species included my first aye-aye, which put its middle finger into a gap by the glass. I like to think that I made finger contact with Humphrey. Other species included a red-tailed sportive lemur (the only example listed in Zootierliste), the only fork-crowned dwarf lemur I've ever seen and my first greater bamboo lemurs.

Zootierliste says that Prague Zoo had indris between 1931 and 2001, but I find this difficult to believe.
 
Any photographs of the fork-crowned perchance?
 
Sorry, Dave. I didn't have a camera that could take photos in the nocturnal lemur house without disturbing the animals.
Here is the photo from Zootierliste, but I don't know if it was taken in Paris Vincennes.
gabelstreifigerkatzenmaki.jpg

Photo by: W. Dreier
 
Yep, I believe it was. Makes the mind boggle to think about the diversity of lemur taxa at that place as recently as the late 1980s really!
 
I Think keeping these would very much be like keeping Koalas or pandas, Not many of their food is actually grown anywhere outside of madagascar however. Surely somewhere will do it in the next few years. Cough, Probably san diego cough.
 
DCzootripper said:
I Think keeping these would very much be like keeping Koalas or pandas, Not many of their food is actually grown anywhere outside of madagascar however. Surely somewhere will do it in the next few years. Cough, Probably san diego cough.
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You really did make it sound more simple than it already is especially without taking the fact that indris also need to consume dirt/earth that is not easily replicable into account. Zoos including SD are also too preoccupied utilizing their limited space for animals they already have so importing a new species is out of question.
 
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