Melbourne Zoo Melbourne 2013 news

Zoo Updates

I visited for the fourth time this year today, and here are a few little updates:

-One of the Philippine Crocodile hatchlings is on display in a tank in the reptile house, opposite its parents.
-Stuttering Frogs, and tadpoles, are now on display in the Frog House, replacing the Crucifix Toads and Japanese Fire-bellied Newts. The Poison Dart Frogs were off-display.
-There are now a pair of Blue-fronted Amazons in the macaw aviary, which has lost the signage for Blue-and-Yellow and Buffon’s Macaws, and I didn’t see either of these, nor the Curassow anywhere.
-Wild Seas was closed for maintenance.
-Two new enclosures have been built on the lawn between the carousel and bistro, one has a Red Panda, the other appeared empty (but would also be ideal for holding Red Panda). http://www.zoochat.com/51/new-red-panda-exhibit-melbourne-zoo-345232/
-Small Cat Row no longer has Red Pandas, and now has four exhibits for Coati, two for Serval and one for Asiatic Small-clawed Otters. There was no sign of the Caracal, and its exhibit said “closed for refurbishment”. I hope it hasn’t died.
-Three of the big cat enclosures were empty, with just two Snow Leopard enclosures and one Sumatran Tiger enclosure in use.
-The Great Flight Aviary has been renovated, with new rails, and looks a lot better. Unfortunately they have also removed all the species signs from inside the aviary!
-There was a Cassowary in a pen next to the Parma Wallabies (adjacent to and viewed from Great Flight Aviary), so either they have received an additional bird, or they have moved this species out of the GFA (where I couldn’t see any).
-As previously noted, Tree-top Monkeys and Apes has had a bit of a rearrangement. The Gibbon enclosure has been extended and now has two viewing windows, a Goodfellow’s Tree Kangaroo has replaced the Spider Monkeys, which in turn have replaced the Ruffed Lemurs, which have disappeared.
-Lemur Island is definitely taking shape, although I doubt it will be completed this year. Much of the viewing areas are in place, but the island itself doesn’t appear to be built, and I think will be more of a walled/moated land area rather than an actual island. http://www.zoochat.com/51/lemur-island-construction-melbourne-zoo-november-345227/, http://www.zoochat.com/51/lemur-island-construction-melbourne-zoo-november-345226/, http://www.zoochat.com/51/lemur-island-construction-melbourne-zoo-november-345225/
-Rest of zoo looking much the same, the big cat/bear/lemur area is looking more run down, but the rest of the zoo looked pretty good, although I skipped a few areas.
 
Grant Rhino said:
Unfortunately it died recently (in the past few months). Although it lived a long life and was about 17!
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That's sad. Melbourne has now lost two cat species this year - Caracal and Persian Leopard, both of which were the only ones of their species/subspecies in Australasia.
 
Statement just released through Melbourne's Facebook: Thoughts are with the elephant team over this sad turn of events :(

It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Sanook, Melbourne Zoo’s youngest elephant calf, overnight.

Sanook was observed to be playing energetically and suckling from mother Num-Oi as usual yesterday, with no indication of any illness, and there were no signs of trauma when he was found this morning.

A postmortem will be carried out today to seek the cause of death.
 
The tyre toy setup is part of their night den, so it was something that he played with all the time (supervised & unsupervised). This same setup existed for the previous calves & there had been no issues :(

He was a rambunctious little guy with LOTS of energy to burn.

I truly feel for the keepers who not only had to find him, but also probably had to watch the CCTV.
 
FriendOfTheZoo said:
Yeah, I just read that here: Baby elephant Sanook died accidentally while playing with favourite toy, Melbourne Zoo says - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

It's a bit silly to allow the animals toys while no one there to supervise them. I guess they won't make that mistake again.

RIP Sanook. :(
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That's a bit knee-jerk. If they took all enrichment off them between 5PM and 8AM they'd be criticised, rightly, for leaving the elephants with absolutely nothing to do for two-thirds of their life. Poor keepers can't win, it seems.

This is a tragic accident and a very hard day for Melbourne Zoo. But unless it becomes clear that a genuine mistake was made I hope it changes nothing.
 
It confirmed on the news tonight that they have removed tyre toys from the night dens.

How is it a knee-jerk reaction? Just like when children are near dangerous things that can cause them harm (dogs, pools, playground equipment etc), adults should be watching them closely. Seems logical that they would remove items from an animals enclosure that could cause harm to them when not being closely monitored.

Just a shame they had to learn this lesson the hard way. :(
 
CGSwans said:
This is a tragic accident and a very hard day for Melbourne Zoo. But unless it becomes clear that a genuine mistake was made I hope it changes nothing.
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Great shame but such accidents do happen. I'm surprised the mother didn't try and intervene to pull it off when he became distressed.
 
I know he was a very strong, persistent & energetic so I"m guessing he's managed to lock himself & the tyre into a strange position. Perhaps one that even Num-Oi couldnt free him from.

Can anyone tell me if other zoos allow their calves to play with tyre toys at night?
 
Slightly related but I notice that Taronga's young elephants do seem to get stuck quite a bit in their tyre toy attached to the overhead platform (now a feeding platform). I wonder if this will now prompt Taronga to remove this?
 
I wouldnt be surprised if quite a few zoos reviewed the practice. Although I do truly believe it was a freak accident. Especially since it had been used for 3 years without any issues.

There have been some suggestion on social media that CCTV should be monitored at all times. Obviously this would be an extremely expensive task as it's not like building security, where you can have a virtually untrained eye watching the monitors. However is it an expense that should be worn in the name of animal welfare? What do others think of this?
 
Pay trained ele keepers to be security guards, and monitor cameras during the night?

Nup.

Cheaper & easier to simply remove the tyres from the night den while keepers are at home sleeping, as they have already done.
 
Giving an impending birth I thought there would have been keepers there around the clock. But yes very much a horrific and very sad freak accident, but given the incident, the use of suspended toys such as tires and alike in many institutions will not form part of over night enrichment schedules or as unsupervised enrichment specifically for young calves.
 
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