Is integrity in species and subspecies important for captive populations?

[wallaby]

The travesty in that is it is not at all necessary. There are sufficient numbers of pure-bred giraffe around. Yet, quite a few zoos remain contend to breed hybrid / crossbreeds that do not exist in their natural habitat.

Same with the issues raised on generic carnivores. They occupy desperately needed captive space for endangered taxa. Of which once more there are sufficient founders to start up a conservation breeding program.

Oh, I didn't mean giraffes, just animals in general.

And I do agree, keeping common/LT species is nice and all to see, but it would be better if the zoos are able to keep endangered animals for a conservation program. That'll also help for their 'conservation' image and such. Just out of curiosity, is there any zoo that does only endangered taxa?

I'm actually going to go to Brookfield zoo today, I'm curious to see the ratio between endangered and LT animals kept int the zoo. I'll take some pictures as well!

Sorry, didn't mean to derail the thread!

 

[jbnbsn99]

There are sufficient numbers of pure-bred giraffe around.

Not in the US.

 

[Kifaru Bwana]

Not in the US.

It would be the task of the TAG to look into how to correct that issue and promote pure-bred conservation breeding programs for giraffest. The immediate goal would be to breed from the pure-breds already there and secondly look into ways to bring in the taxa / numbers necessary to do so.

I have gleaned from what little has been talked about on this forum that only Masai giraffe are in any numbers (now we have had talk in Europe regarding Basel and massaicus and now this group has been disbanded ..., yet the survivors are spread over Europe and could be better used in the US) as purebreds.

I seriously do not / fail to understand what is the problem with reticulateds in US/SSP zoos untill someone explains it to me. Yet even there, I would favour breeding pure-bred and phasing out the generic giraffe (even if that means we have to start from scratch).

The TAG has surely determined how many captive spaces are available and which ones have a meaningful conservation breeding role and which not. It is then the challenge to bring those spaces in the second group into the first lot. It is pretty irrelevant which taxon is than chosen ..., allthough one would favour one that has some level of threatened status in the wild.

 

[jbnbsn99]

The problem is, most, if not all Reticulateds are of hybrid origin. Rothschild's might be salvageable.

 

[Kifaru Bwana]

Is there anything like any documentation of this?
Studbook perhaps?

 

[Arizona Docent]

It seems to me that as suggested above it should be possible to start from scratch with new imports of reticulated giraffe. After all, this is exactly what the lion SSP did a few years ago - let the current (at that time) population die out and import new founders from South Africa. If zoos wanted to unload their hybrid giraffes sooner, they would have no problem selling them to non accredited wildlife parks. I have heard firsthand from a private wildlife park in my state that male giraffes cost $40,000 US dollars and female giraffes cost $100,000 US dollars.

 

[JBZvolunteer]

The question that we should be looking at though is what percentage of each animal is of each different species. I know for domestic goat breeding, we have two different terms for high percentage bloodlines known as purebred and full blood. A full blood has a 100% bloodline of one species of goat, whereas a purebred has 90% or more of one bloodline for one goat species. The thing is, we aren't looking at the percentage of a certain breed instead we are just writing off all hybrids as "bad", and "useless for conservation". In all honesty, if we were to try and aim for purebred status for either rothschild or reticulated populations instead of full blood status, part of the current populations in zoos could be salvageable.

 

[wallaby]

Sorry if this post throws the thread askew, but I'm curious (And I apologize for my lack on knowledge on this subject):
If a, for example, rothschild and reticulated giraffe interbred in the wild, would there be any downside/negatives when it comes to their survival in the wild? And not just with giraffes, but any interbreeding between sub species.

Once again, I apologize for my lack of knowledge.

Edit: Oh and I do mean sub species that would naturally meet in the wild, or are very similar in comparison.

 

[jbnbsn99]

Reticulated and Rothschild's Giraffes do not interbreed in the wild.

 

[wallaby]

Reticulated and Rothschild's Giraffes do not interbreed in the wild.

I apologize for the statement above, I had contradicted myself with what I had said. But, are there any major impacts when two sub species interbreed out in the wild? (If they do hypothetically)

 

[ThylacineAlive]

Reticulated and Rothschild's Giraffes do not interbreed in the wild.

I think he meant hypothetically.

@Wallaby- You don't have to apologize, it was a simple mistake. But as mentioned above, giraffes are considered to be full species now and not subspecies anymore.

~Thylo

 

[wallaby]

I think he meant hypothetically.

@Wallaby- You don't have to apologize, it was a simple mistake. But as mentioned above, giraffes are considered to be full species now and not subspecies anymore.

~Thylo

Thanks! And I still feel like I should since I don't know much but I still post in a thread aha.

Then what if a southern white rhinoceros and northern white bred together? Would there be any major impact?

 

[ThylacineAlive]

Thanks! And I still feel like I should since I don't know much but I still post in a thread aha.

Then what if a southern white rhinoceros and northern white bred together? Would there be any major impact?

Well I'm sure they'd still be able to function fine in the wild but I must point out again that it's now believed the Northern White Rhino is a separate species also if I'm not mistaken.

I good example of a cross-subspecies animal living in the wild is the European Bison. More or less, about half the current wild population of European Bison are B. b. bonasusXB. b. caucasicus and they're doing fine.

~Thylo

 

[wallaby]

Well I'm sure they'd still be able to function fine in the wild but I must point out again that it's now believed the Northern White Rhino is a separate species also if I'm not mistaken.

I good example of a cross-subspecies animal living in the wild is the European Bison. More or less, about half the current wild population of European Bison are B. b. bonasusXB. b. caucasicus and they're doing fine.

~Thylo

That's what I heard as well, but it wasn't from a very reliable source so I didn't think much of it.

Oh okay thanks for the info! Didn't know that!

 

[jbnbsn99]

I apologize for the statement above, I had contradicted myself with what I had said. But, are there any major impacts when two sub species interbreed out in the wild? (If they do hypothetically)

Are there impacts? Depends entirely on what you mean. A lot of what you're trying to infer I think is a man-made constraint. The two species are fairly well separated. The Rothschild's is more closely related to the West African Giraffe than it is to the Reticulated. There is roughly 300,000 years separation between Rothschild's and Reticulated. The Reticulated is a more desert adapted species and as such is a much smaller animal than the Rothschild's which inhabits wetter areas. It's been noted since around 1910 that the Reticulated was quite distinct from the other neighboring giraffes.

 

[jbnbsn99]

I good example of a cross-subspecies animal living in the wild is the European Bison. More or less, about half the current wild population of European Bison are B. b. bonasusXB. b. caucasicus and they're doing fine.

~Thylo

Not only are the modern Wisents mostly hybrids between the two populations, they are also ancient hybrids and have a significant portion of Aurochs DNA in them.

 

[Chlidonias]

I apologize for the statement above, I had contradicted myself with what I had said. But, are there any major impacts when two sub species interbreed out in the wild? (If they do hypothetically)

no there aren't. Typically subspecies are separated geographically but where populations of two subspecies do meet there is almost always a hybrid zone. There is literally nothing stopping two subspecies breeding together because they are the same. If you should drop an animal or small group of animals into the otherwise-separated distribution of another subspecies then they will interbreed but the new arrivals would eventually get swamped genetically (if the new arrivals were few in number and the naturally-occurring subspecies in larger numbers).

The zoo situation is rather different because you may have two very different subspecies adapted to completely different environments, a prime example would be Siberian and Malayan tigers. The hybrids between these two may not be suitable for survival in either of the wild distribution ranges.

 

[jbnbsn99]

Then what if a southern white rhinoceros and northern white bred together? Would there be any major impact?

There has been one hybrid animal. From what I've read, she was not the healthiest individual and died prematurely.

 

[tschandler71]

Is there a particular history why Reticulated based hybrids are more common in US Zoos and they are passed on as "savanna" dwellers when yet they are often called the Somali giraffe and are desert adapted?

 

[jbnbsn99]

Is there a particular history why Reticulated based hybrids are more common in US Zoos and they are passed on as "savanna" dwellers when yet they are often called the Somali giraffe and are desert adapted?

Complicated question. I think it may boil down to the fact that very few people actually know what a savanna is - a wooded grassland. What we think of as a typical savanna, something like the Masai Mara or Serengeti, is not a true savanna.