Yes, and I suppose we should feed the zebras to the lions in Elephant Odyssey because that's what happens in the wild. Perhaps we should also just completely abandon veterinary medicine while we're at it because wild animals don't get medical care.You should see what they do in the wild, it’s crazy
San Diego Zoo San Diego Zoo News 2024
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Your ideas, not mine!
Comparing sardines to zebras is like comparing apples to airplanes. I'm not saying one species is more valuable than the other, but the ethics in regards to live feedings are completely different.
How do you find the "ethics" to be any different? Yes, the brain of a zebra is far more complex than that of a random fish, but I fail to see how that argument can be made without placing more value on the zebra than the random fish.
Feeding small living fish is something that is done in many zoos, I have seen tentacled snake living with their feeder fish (in many cases a necessity to keep them eating) and in tropical halls the smaller fish are often part of a food chain. Like the penguin example that can be done in a natural setting without dangers to the hunter, whereas feeding a zebra alive (apart from all the legal stuff around it) would be very stressful and dangerous for both the zebra and the lions. A zoo lion enclosure is in most cases not big enough for a natural hunt on a large ungulate. So yes the ethics are different, feeding a zebra alive is bad practice, but live feeding fish in different ways can be a necessity or the most natural enrichment possible.
Panda_Fan
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I think the pandas are going to be in display by the time you get there.
BenFoxster
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I wasn’t going to chime in, as this should probably be made into a separate thread by this point, but considering the benefits live fish feeding bring to intelligent species like penguins and polar bears, plus the respective species’ needs for extra stimulation considering their needs to swim great distances (in general aquatic species like polar bears, cetaceans, etc, need major stimulation) and prey drive, plus the fact that the fish would have been killed and frozen to feed to the animals anyways, it stands that at the end of the day the fish would be killed and fed anyways, so the added stimulation and improved well being of the species in greater need of breeding or conservation far outweighs the negative.
On the contrary zebras aren’t being farmed and killed for lions, with large predators being fed specialized and pre prepared meets to prevent disease, so even if it were possible to feed them live zebras it wouldn’t necessarily be safe or healthy, plus to add to lintworm’s point, most large prey would be able to do harm to their predators creating an unsafe environment for all species involved, while fish won’t be harming most species.
cornu aspersum
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I believe this is why people tend to find zebra more valuable than fish from a moral standpoint.
X213G
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Thanks that’s what I was looking forward to
The zoo has yet to announce it, all they’ve mentioned is later this summer.
I don’t think any of us would know that unless the zoo made a press release about it. However, seeing you’re from LA like me, CALM Zoo in Bakersfield and Santa Barbara Zoo should have Island Foxes.
X213G
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Is they’re a thread where you can talk about creating your own zoo.
I’m confused: Are you going there in hopes of seeing them there exclusively despite having seen them? Santa Barbara is almost equidistant to San Diego from LA, I’ve heard people have more luck seen the island foxes at Santa Barbara. San Diego has a massive collection they rotate with animals held behind the scenes so it’s whatever they deem fit for any exhibit.
Yes, this is the page for what you’d want to do.
Speculative Zoo Design and Planning
None of it is open yet.
Well, the video was posted 10 days ago, that does not mean it was necessarily recorded 10 days ago. That said, the video does show red panda and takin out on exhibit. Maybe the takin were moved or in a different exhibit? I am not familiar enough with SDZ to say.
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