I believe the last two were geriatric. However, the decision to stop breeding them was because they were of indeterminate subspecies.
Last of their kind in a zoo
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Onychorhynchus coronatus
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Ah I see, well it is sad as I remember seeing them and thinking they were quite charismatic animals.
I think it is absurd (though hardly suprising considering that it is ZSL afterall) that they were replaced by red river hogs though and especially considering that they could have brought in Visayan warty pigs.
Yes after many years at London Zoo the long-beaked echidna were sent to Taronga.
Yea, you wouldn't have, these developments are pretty recent.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
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Seems like it, yes, very recent indeed as I was only last there in October / November.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
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Ah I see, thanks for that @Tim May !
You don't happen to know what the rationale for sending the echidna there was do you ?
The echidna were sent away about the time of the London Zoo Closure Crisis when the zoo's animal collection was being reduced to cut costs.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
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Ah I see, well it is a shame that they went, considering how long echidnas can live for some of them might well have still been around today had they stayed.
One, a female, had been at London Zoo since 1965 and another, a male, had been at London Zoo since 1986 (and before that had spent fifteen years in Dallas Zoo).
Onychorhynchus coronatus
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So I may be wrong then as both were pretty old by the early 90's anyway.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
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how old is JR now ?
Close, but no cigar - the entire captive stock of Bornean Bearded Pig were found to contain hybrid contamination (domestic pig) somewhere back in their lineage.
But, sadly, is off-display and unlikely ever to return onshow
He's about 50 now - he came to Dallas as a wild-caught young adult in 1971. The female only died a handful of years ago, and was a fair bit older than him, so he may or may not be the captive lifespan holder for the species.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
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What an incredible life he has had !
Going from the rainforests to Papua New Guinea to the USA to the UK and then to Australia and still going strong.
What a character!
This is getting very off topic now but just going to answer this quickly - it's not absurd at all. Red river hogs fit with the theme of Gorilla Kingdom (just over the way from said enclosure) a lot more than any Asian pig species would. In addition to this, right after London received Whipsnade's herd of red river hogs a group of four (that's how many a friend counted at least) Visayan warty pigs moved to Whipsnade. I would actually argue that London going for babirusa, a species that is less threatened than warty pigs but is in far greater need of more holders in Europe, is a better move. It also now means that ZSL as a whole have one of the most comprehensive collections of wild pigs in Europe - with red river hogs, warthogs and babirusa at London Zoo, and wild boar and Visayan warty pigs at Whipsnade...that means the only wild pig species kept in Europe that they're missing is bearded pig.
Which ironically is the one that was replaced by the RR hogs!
I remember seeing them in Cologne & Basel and (I think) maybe Frankfurt, which definately had Proboscis I know. I seem to remember London dabbled with Doucs for a while at one stage too?
I also once saw a large group of Doucs in the Dusit Zoo in Thailand- despite very basic housing they looked bursting with health, noticeably more so than the European ones I'd seen previously- I suspect climate/diet are still important factors to success.
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'Ben' was named after the American actor/comedian Ben Lyon, who with his partner BeBe Daniels moved to London and had a successful UK Radio show in the 1950's 'Life with the Lyons'. So Ben's (the rhino) original partner was 'Bebe' (ZSL having something of a tradition of naming certain animals after well-known media personalities- remember Esther( after Rantzen) and Parky(after Parkison) the Black rhinos. After Bebe (also a Northern White presumably) died the replacement female was this Southern White, 'Mashobeni.' Tim May might remember what happened to her, as to whether she died at London or Whipsnade.The northern white rhino bull 'Ben' is on the left, the female was a southern white rhino. With hindsight , Ben was sent to Dvur Kralove far too late. But it must be remembered that in the early 1970s very few white rhinos had been born in captivity. The importation of larger groups from South Africa to San Diego and Whipsnade advanced knowledge about their management considerably.
For most of its time the Sobell cage most visible in the background was the Mandrill enclosure. And the other thing is the porta-cabin-type gift shop.
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Rosamond Gifford Zoo has the last White-winged Vampire Bat (at least outside the Neotropics). I would assume it is a remnant of the group imported by Cornell in the 90s to study vampire bat behavior.
Indeed "Bebe" was a northern white rhino; she died in 1964.
Her replacement, the southern white rhino "Mashobeni", was sent to Glasgow Zoo in 1986 shortly after "Ben" was sent to Dvur Kralove. She died in Glasgiw in 1995.