Personal species lists by zoo

devilfish

devilfish

Well-Known Member
Does anyone here maintain lists of the animals they've seen on each zoo visit? I tried a few years ago but my system quickly collapsed. I was wondering if anyone had a better way of doing things than just making lists on a word document or excel spreadsheet after visits.
 
I do when I visit a zoo that I suspect might need an update on Zootierliste - or more correctly, I take photos of every animal and species sign I see, and do the update from those.

In case of major zoos that are almost always up-to-date, I'll just photograph the animals I see so when I review my pictures, I'll have a good idea of which species are kept, but not so that I can make a complete species list.
 
devilfish said:
Does anyone here maintain lists of the animals they've seen on each zoo visit? I tried a few years ago but my system quickly collapsed. I was wondering if anyone had a better way of doing things than just making lists on a word document or excel spreadsheet after visits.
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Honestly never done. Sounds like a cool idea to do, however. But how did your system collapse?
 
Canihelpyou? said:
Honestly never done. Sounds like a cool idea to do, however. But how did your system collapse?
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I do what Hvedekorn does, taking photos of pretty much everything for reference, but with losses of photos from various collections, and given that I'm less able to devote time to animals, zoos and my photos, I've found that I've got a weaker memory of species I've seen than I thought I did, and many of my photos which are unidentified while I'm travelling often don't get thoroughly reviewed once I'm back.

A few years ago I made individual Word documents, with one per collection, listing common (and sometimes scientific) names for each species. This became a huge chore after visits, requiring photo review and listing often commonly seen species. I was hoping to pick this up again, but in a more practical manner, giving me an excuse to identify some long-unidentified specimens, and making it easier to check certain taxonomic groups; e.g. which Neotropical raptors I've not yet seen.
 
I'm not sure how useful this will be to your question, but what I do is not keep track of every species I've seen in every zoo I've visited, but just keep a list of all animals I've seen in total. This means I only have to worry about the common zoo species once, and because I sort this list taxonomically it means I can easily see which (sub)species of a certain genus/family/order I've seen (and thus compare with a full list to know what species I still need to see). I always include a location with every (sub)species, often of where I saw the species first, but also sometimes of where I had the most memorable experience or saw the species the best.

I've tried listing all species in a zoo by either noting it all down (but this takes a lot of time during the visit itself) or taking pictures of all signage (but this takes in a lot of storage space if you shoot in RAW and don't bother to switch over for every sign there is), so ultimately I stopped doing that and now only do so for species of which I'm not sure I've seen them (and once in Plzen for the entire zoo because I had a lot of time and had to list all passerines and primates anyways).

I'd definitely recommend making these lists in Excel as opposed to Word, though, because I feel the format lends itself to more easily sort and count things, and it's easier to spread a lot of different information like location, date, subspecies etc. over different columns.
 
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I did sometimes writing by hand in my natural history diary, but not for every zoo. Until 2006 I have not even the zoo visits annotated. First zoo visit annotated was London (september 06), where I only listed the bird families seen and the bird species whose feathers I got, taxonomically ordered. Next zoos shows often the entire species list, either for seen species or only for photographed species, but sometimes I skipped the list of a zoo. However now I think that I would do for every zoo visit and only for photographed species.
 
I do what @Vision does as well, I also list how many collection I've seen a species at like the ex. below but I understand it might get tiring and it's only because I list the captive species I've seen since 2016 (the year where I really got into zoo-visiting) and as such I haven't visited that many zoos as of now.

- Ruddy shelduck - Jardin Zoologique de Rabat (first zoo where I've seen them) | 3 (I've seen them at 3 zoos since 2016)

I personally use Google Sheets for this list but Excel works as well.
 
Yep. Part of the thrill of zoo visit for me is the illusion of discovery. I like to imagine I’m documenting the animals of a new land.
 
I have a some kind of personalised version of Zootierliste for mammals, birds of prey and some other groups. I keep it simple, it taxonomy based and I just note the the zoo I've seen the species without further dates or so (and when revisit a zoo and the species is gone, I transfer the zoo name to the heading "former"). I started my lists in 2001 by writing by hand in a little notebook. After a few new hand writing versions, my lists are now in Words.
 
I have an excel file with 4 sheets : Mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.
I write down where and when I saw each species/subspecies (only the year but I may write somewhere the precise date).

I am down to share my listing method if one needs a canvas for listing its sights.
 
I have been to various zoos and have written lists of animals I've seen (or not seen, as the case may be), but I have lost some lists or had problems reading my handwriting. I also wonder if it's worth listing species I've seen several times before. With future visits, I intend to make more use of lists, such as Zootierliste, so I can tick off species seen and add animals not listed.
 
Thank you all for your input. I've decided to start a list, properly.@Tomek convinced me of its importance when I spent a few days in Czechia last week with him (and then with other zoochatters). I'll probably start with a spreadsheet with multiple pages but will need to work out how to structure each page. It'll take years, but will hopefully help in future.
 
I have a bucket list of sorts in my journal of species that I have never seen before and want to see either in the wild or captivity / zoos.

Over the years I've managed to tick quite a lot of them off , but there are still a few that remain and if I'm realistic that I probably will not see alive in my lifetime such as the pangolin , solenodon and duck billed platypus.
 
I don't bother unless it's a zoo that is seldom-visited by other ZC members and online information about the zoo is limited or outdated.
 
devilfish said:
It'll take years, but will hopefully help in future.
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I don't think it will take so much time! I've done mine in the space of a month or so, not only for zoos but for anything captive (private collections, pet shops, shows...) and not only from a point forwards, but also backwards helped by the handwritten lists I had. In fact I update it each year. Here is not ordered by zoo, but it's very easy to just search a zoo with ctrl+F within the list and look for every species seen it that zoo. Species that you've seen
 
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