Do you know why some primate species are so rare in captivity?
Climate, diet, problems with digestion in captivity( leaf-eaters in particular), rarity in the wild leading to unavailability.
Climate, diet, problems with digestion in captivity( leaf-eaters in particular), rarity in the wild leading to unavailability.
I think a lot is due to the education and marketing departments of zoos. Many exhibits have little notices listing the common name, Latin name and perhaps a little map. These are unlikely to attract a visitor who goes part an exhibit after seeing an animal there. I remember a zoo exhibiting a paradise tree snake. If the notice had said that the 'flying' snake glides between trees and perhaps shown a video, more visitors may have been interested. Several exhibitions in museums show a range of audio-visual display material to interest visitors. Many zoos should use similar techniques.
Interesting, I first looked at the illustration in HMW, but that shows a completely different monkey for A. macconnelli. When diving in the literature, it seems that the morphology of the Singapore animals does indeed match Guyanan Red Howler (another example of the horrible quality of the illustrations in HMW 3).
I guess they imported their animals directly from Guyana then?
Indeed, their collection is not that good, it depends a bit on what they receive from confiscations and how long they can keep them alive. In January I saw:Please could you provide a list? I'd be very interested to know more. On my 2010 & 2016 visits they only kept a fraction of that number.
For a while WRS also held a couple of Venezuelan reds but I believe the current animals are Guyanan.They indeed imported their animals from (British) Guyana
Indeed, their collection is not that good, it depends a bit on what they receive from confiscations and how long they can keep them alive. In January I saw:
2 species of spider monkeys (C + B)
2 subspecies of woolly monkeys (P + T)
Capuchins (macrocephalus and yuracus)
Saki monkeys (inusta)
Titi monkeys (discolor)
Squirrel monkeys (peruviensis)
Night monkeys (nigriceps?)
Ouakaris (ucayali)
Saddle-back tamarins (leucogenys)
Pygmy marmosets
Has anyone been to the primate park in the Canary Islands? What do they have?
Please note that ethologists can be male or female.
1 Ethologists tend to work in the wild in order to view natural behaviour. It can take a long time for some animals to get used to scientists and disregard them, so some observed behaviour may not be natural. Ethologists can work in a laboratory with some smaller animals, as long as the animals' 'habitat' replicates their habitat in the wild. Some primates are kept in laboratories and may be studied by primatologists, but the behaviour of laboratory primates may not represent their behaviour in the wild.