Dudley Zoological Gardens Porcupines and other questions about Dudley?

adrian1963

adrian1963

Well-Known Member
Over the past couple of years Dudley's group of porcupines as decreased in size quite a bit and I was wondering if any of you knew where they had gone?

Does anyone know if the larger animals from the old Birmingham Zoo came back to Dudley or where they moved to other collections?

Does anyone else think the area where the burger van is directly as you go into the zoo could be moved and this area could be turned into a great tiger enclosure (extending upto the back walk way below the old chairlift)

When was the last time they kept any poisonous snakes at the zoo in the reptile house?

Do you think Dudley should concentrate on smaller animals like small primates and birds or stay the way it is?
 
adrian1963 said:
Over the past couple of years Dudley's group of porcupines as decreased in size quite a bit and I was wondering if any of you knew where they had gone?

Does anyone know if the larger animals from the old Birmingham Zoo came back to Dudley or where they moved to other collections?

Does anyone else think the area where the burger van is directly as you go into the zoo could be moved and this area could be turned into a great tiger enclosure (extending upto the back walk way below the old chairlift)

When was the last time they kept any poisonous snakes at the zoo in the reptile house?

Do you think Dudley should concentrate on smaller animals like small primates and birds or stay the way it is?
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Much as I've always loved Dudley, I haven't been for eleven years. I've kept up my membership though. I think Dudley should continue as it is, in fact I was horrified when the Elephants went - I was a big fan of their outdoor paddock if not the house itself. Are the Porcupines still in the moated exhibit next to the Barbary Sheep? When this held a single Red River Hog in the early 1970s it was one of my favourite zoo exhibits anywhere, in fact it remains an all-time favourite.
 
Parrotsandrew said:
When this held a single Red River Hog in the early 1970s it was one of my favourite zoo exhibits anywhere.
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He was called Thurston- believe it or not he was one of only two of these pigs in the UK at that time- the other was at Paignton.
 
Thanks for the information Pertinax was the other one female or male and did they ever breed do you know
 
I don't know if Thurston at Dudley was originally one of a pair or not. The one at Paignton may have been a female but they were never paired up. Red River Hogs did not reappear in the UK until the 1990's after that.
 
Thank-you for putting a name to one of my favourite animals. In Clinton Keeling's "They Live at the Castle" there is a brief interview with Cyril Grace about his time at Dudley. In his answer to a question about notable arrivals during his period in office he includes "a Red River Hog" so I suspect Thurston was always a singleton. I wish I'd seen the "six Maxwell's Duikers" he also mentions.
 
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