I have seen village weavers mixed with woodhoopoes as well, and other weaver species (red-billed quelea and black-headed weaver) mixed with Eurasian hoopoes. So I think it would be possible.
Mixed species exhibit ideas
- Thread starter LowlandGorilla4
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I have seen village weavers mixed with woodhoopoes as well, and other weaver species (red-billed quelea and black-headed weaver) mixed with Eurasian hoopoes. So I think it would be possible.
Beekse Bergen has them with Starlings, Spoonbills, Cranes, Guineafowl and Turacos. Antwerp has Buffalo weavers with Vultures, Ibises, Storks, Rollers, Hamerkops, Ducks and Hornbills. Artis with Stone curlews, and Avifauna with Congo peafowl. So I think you can say they go safely with essentially any bird except birds of prey.
For mammals there's Antwerp again with Buffalos, as well as Blijdorp with Squirrels and Leipzig with great apes. Beekse Bergen had weavers with Hippos and Nile crocodiles, Zoo Halle with Chacoan maras and they're also free-roaming in Rimbula (with elephants, gibbons, lemurs and spider monkeys) and Burgers' Bush (with aardvarks, small-clawed otters and capybaras)
(Note that some of these include free-roaming in larger halls and probably shouldn't actually be held together with these animals in a smaller exhibit)
I want to create a setup similar to the Hippo aviary in Beauval, but with beavers. I assume the fish will be fine but I'm also going to ask because of the bird mix. Would beavers be fine with Sterlet, Common carp, Common rudd and European perch, as well as Western capercaillie, Hooded crow, Tufted duck, Northern shoveler, Northern lapwing, European oystercatcher, Eurasian spoonbill and Eurasian pygmy owl
Lincoln Park mixes American Beavers with Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers, so I imagine the ducks would be fine at least.
felis silvestris
Well-Known Member
I’ve heard of Bat eared foxes mixed with meerkats.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Salisbury Zoo kept American beaver with night herons and screech owl, so I think you'd be okay for the non-duck birds (as has been mentioned, duck and beaver has been a tried and true combo at many other zoos). The Salisbury mix ran into difficulty (resulting in the owl being removed from the mix) because the night herons kept snagging the screech owl's diet, but I don't think you'd have that dynamic with the birds that you're talking about, except maybe crow vs. owl.
Oh, I didn't notice that. Yeah, mixing a crow and an owl is not a good idea.
Avifauna mixes Tawny owls and Hawk owls together with Ravens, as well as the common mixture of ravens with Eurasian eagle-owls. These are different species of course, but still similar situations. So I hoped it might be okay
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
And it very well might be. A lot of it comes down to the exhibit design and size, the management protocol, and the individual animals of each species
Bongos can be mixed with duikers if I recall correctly, Mandrills on the other hand I don't think can be mixed with anything, primates in general can be tricky with mixes, perhaps birds if in an aviary setting, but casual mauling of the birds by the primate could still be a problem.
Milwaukee mixes bongo with Yellow-backed Duiker, Kenyan Crested Guineafowl, and Red River Hog. The mix used to also include African Spurred Tortoise but they were removed because they didn't get along with the duiker.
Brookfield used to mix Mandrill with Allen's Swamp Monkey, Angolan Colobus, Red-tailed Guenon, and Pygmy Hippo. This mix also included a variety of African passerines as well as White-cheeked Turacos that had many areas to escape to out of reach of the primates.
Charles
Well-Known Member
Thanks, my local zoo I think is getting bongo or mandrill and want to see if anything else will join them, probably not duiker as I think they are going to go in with the okapi their getting
Should be fine other than I'd ix-nay the crow and the owl. The crow will steal food from everything else and likely harass the owl. Pygmy-Owls are notoriously aggressive and you may find some problems with them attempting to kill the lapwings at least.
Bongo with RRH has been notoriously problematic, several zoos have had to discontinue the mix. Okapi has been mixed with Bongo in large exhibits, though no idea on how those mixes have gone.
felis silvestris
Well-Known Member
AFAIK, Edinburgh did it over a decade ago and it seemed to work well
Charles
Well-Known Member
My local zoo already has rrh and their mixed with giraffe eland and zebra so it’s unlikely to be them
I think with okapi they’re so shy that the only thing that will mix with them without causing distress would be something as small as a duiker and zoos don’t want to risk anything as okapi are so precious
also other than lar gibbons, what can be mixed with Sumatran orangutans?
Well, a lot of other gibbon species too; saimangs are a main example, they're often mixed with Sumatrans. I've also heard of Asian Short Clawed Otters with Sumatran orangutans before too.
Depends on the size and the structure of the exhibit I think. I have seen this combination in wildlife park type settings with large to very large paddocks, where it seems to work fine. If the exhibit is large enough, has different feeding areas and shelters and allows the animals to get out of each others sight, that would definitely help in making the mix work.