Short news from European Zoos

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even if they do, I'm not convinced the species has a chance of survival.
Even if controlled well and protected to a great extent, I'm very much afraid the number of individuals is too limited to form a viable, sustainable population save from the consequences of limited numbers and inbreeding.
 
Xerxes said:
even if they do, I'm not convinced the species has a chance of survival.
Even if controlled well and protected to a great extent, I'm very much afraid the number of individuals is too limited to form a viable, sustainable population save from the consequences of limited numbers and inbreeding.
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I do not agree with you on that. If the entire population is now brought together you have several possible combinations:

2 M ex Dvur as breeders
2 M wildborn potential breeder
2 F ex Dvur as potential breeders
1 F wildborn potential breeder
+
at least 1-2 M whose genetic material has been preserved.

Anyway, I will have to see from my contacts whether it is meant black or white rhinos here. Will get back on this and post it in a new thread. :p
 
I say it's hard, but possible
 
Rhino transports to Africa?

Did not expect to get back so soon on this.

Yep, it has been confirmed regarding northern whites. But negotiations have just started and it is early days.

Will keep you posted! (and transfer this to a new thread) :cool:
 
Just a short remark: Species? Last time I checked, there were two SUBspecies of the White Rhino-which I personally have a hard time to distinguish from each other...;)
 
Sun is right ; you have the southern and the northern. southerns is most common in both wild and captive environments.
They're not very clearly distinguished anyway.
 
Sun Wukong said:
Just a short remark: Species? Last time I checked, there were two SUBspecies of the White Rhino-which I personally have a hard time to distinguish from each other...;)
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The Northern has black hair fringes on the ears, lacking in the Southern...
 
Anyone (cough Toddy cough) ever heared about Jyllands Park Zoo in Denmark? They don't even seem that small, even though they are not listed on zoos.dk - zoos.dk... Anyone know anything about it.

Found it on ISIS listing common tupaia's (Tupaia glis) and became a little interested...
 
My time to shine ;)

Jyllands (Jutlands) Park Zoo is one of the two largest minizoos in Denmark: Not sure which is the largest, Park Zoo og Skaerup Zoo, since I have never been to either. That is also why it is not listed on Zoos.dk. I have brochures and zoo maps from there, and they do house a lot of animals you don't normally find in a minizoo. Lions, tigers, black panthers, giraffes, tapirs, hamadryas baboons and cheetahs. Sadly, they don't seem very enthuastic about their animal holding, since it is also partly an amusement/family park. It has a bad reputation among the danish zoo-professionals, and I'm not sure all their animals are aquired completely legal. My friend visited it this summer, and he said that though they have many interesting species, it's just to "familyparky" (there's a new word :p).

Here is a link to their rather crappy website: Jyllands Park Zoo
 
Pertinax said:
The Northern has black hair fringes on the ears, lacking in the Southern...
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Hello,

I'm a french zookeeper and I'm working with Rhinos in Zoo de Lunaret, Montpellier...

I'm able to say that lacking black fringes on ears is absoluty not a mean to distinguish Southern WR from Northern WR.

Effectively, our young male, Jobi (who born at Suffolk Safari Park) has these black fringes on his ears, somethat longer that in Norther subspecies !!!
And one of our females, Mafunyane, has these black finges too, and she comes from South Africa...
 
thnx for the info Todds :)

And about the rhino's. I've been to Dvur and saw the rhino's but i never saw any difference so i tried to find it on the internet but i never found any information regarding hairy fringes. The only information i found about the differences that i recollect was regarding a larger/smaller hump on the back.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that some sites report a very large (for subspecies) difference in genetics but i don't know if that was scientific or not...
 
Vinch said:
Hello,

I'm a french zookeeper and I'm working with Rhinos in Zoo de Lunaret, Montpellier...

I'm able to say that lacking black fringes on ears is absoluty not a mean to distinguish Southern WR from Northern WR.
.
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Okay, I stand corrected....:(

From what you say, it seems some White rhinos have the hair fringes, but not others? I do have some postcards of the male Northern White which used to live at the London Zoo, and he had hair fringes on the ears. I've seen photos of(some of) the Northern Whites at Dvur Kralov and they seem to have them to.
I also looked closely at Whipsnade's(Southern) whites recently and none of them seemed to have them.

But I'll take your word that its nothing to do with the subspecies....
 
Yes, I've just looked at a whole lot of photos/postcards of Southern White Rhino in zoos. About 50% of them seem to have hairy ears.....
 
I did a little research and found the following morphological differences described in literature:

The Northern white has a more exaggerated flat nose than the southern type. Lydekker, R., 1908.
The Southern White appears to have more hair (in the adults) than occurs in the Northern Race Alexander, A.; Player, I.C., 1965. (hey, it’s colder in the South)

The Northern White has somewhat higher legs and a less long body than the Southern Race. Skinner, J.D.; Smithers, R.H.N., 1990.


Hope this helps, the differences appear to be very small though.
 
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RRC-Admin said:
I did a little research and found the following morphological differences described in literature:

The Northern white has a more exaggerated flat nose than the southern type. Lydekker, R., 1908.
The Southern White appears to have more hair (in the adults) than occurs in the Northern Race Alexander, A.; Player, I.C., 1965. (hey, it’s colder in the South)

The Northern White has somewhat higher legs and a less long body than the Southern Race. Skinner, J.D.; Smithers, R.H.N., 1990.


Hope this helps, the differences appear to be very small though.
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Maybe, maybe...

But In ours four Southern White Rhinos, I 'm able to say that:
- the young male, Joby, is very high legged and proportionaly shorter body. If he has fringed ears, he is hairless on his body.
- the old male Cassius has no fringed ears, he has hair on his body and a very large flat muzzle.
- a female, Mafunyane, is very hairy, very high legged, long bodied, has fringed ears (less than Joby's ears).
- and the other female, Jabulani, is very short legged, short bodied, has fringed ear (as Mafu's ears), and hairless body... Her muzzle is very flat.

Cassius, Jabulani and Mafunyane came from South Africa... Joby is born in Suffolk Safari Park and he belongs to Southern race...

I think that the White Rhinos vary too considerably in size, hairs, proportions, shape, so it is no possible to make a diagnosis for Southern or Northern race ...
And the most reasonnable analysis is only caryotyping or DNA determination....
 
The question should be: if the two subspecies are so similar, why not crossbreed them instead of starting with an extremely small founding population? There have been speculations that this crossbreeding might interfere with future reintroduction plans, as the Southern subspecies might not be adapted to the habitat of the Northern subspecies. However, then why not at least "try" F1 hybrids, like the one specimen at Dvur?
 
Sun Wukong said:
The question should be: if the two subspecies are so similar, why not crossbreed them instead of starting with an extremely small founding population? There have been speculations that this crossbreeding might interfere with future reintroduction plans, as the Southern subspecies might not be adapted to the habitat of the Northern subspecies. However, then why not at least "try" F1 hybrids, like the one specimen at Dvur?
Click to expand...

As far as i am aware, the difference is mainly genetical. Therefore, when trying to keep the animal in this world why would you crossbreed. To save some of the northern white rhino's genetics? You could do that in a "frozen" DNA databank...

If it was up to me, i'd say either try and keep the northern white's pure or let them die out and replace them with southern whites when the area is calm enough and there are enough spare ones around. Having hybrids around won't really help anything would it?

Why would reintroduction plans fail with pure southern whites btw, as far as i know they are remarkably similar so i don't see a problem with reintroduction of pure whites...
 
@jwer: Let's take a look how many Northern White Rhinos exist:
-probably ~4 in the wild
-2 (1,1) in SDWP, one not fertile, one not behaviorally receptive
-Dvůr Králové Zoo: 7 (3,4) "pure" and one hybrid; as far as I remember, only one of the males and two of the females are considered for mating

All in all a pretty small founding base, even if additional animals from Uganda are brought in.

About possible reintroduction problems: one would be the resistance of the Southern Whites against certain diseases there that do not occur in their native range. One example could be Nagana, a protozoan disease (especially Trypanosoma congolense as well as other trypanosomes) transmitted by tsetse-flies (Glossina sp.). Most populations of Southern whites occur below the "tsetse-fly belt" (i.e. the habitat of tsetse flies in Africa), while the Northern whites live in this very area. Northern's seem to cope with trypanosomasis and might even be parasite carriers without negative consequences for the animal; whether this is also true for the Southern whites-?
For comparison, a map of the distribution of the white rhinos (orange = Northern, green = Southern)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Mapa_distribuicao_original_white_rhino.png
and the distribution of tsetse flies:
http://www.au-ibar.org/isctrc/26Meeting/HTML/SOCIO ECONOMICS AND USE OF GIS_files/image018.jpg

Even if SF movies want to make You otherwise- it's not "just": put the "genes" in the freezer, then later on put them into the microwave-and presto: You've got a Northern White Rhino! Trust me, it's not that easy. Instead, one should rather use now what is available.
 
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