Singapore Night Safari Singapore Night Safari News

Chlidonias said:
Zooish, have you seen the Creatures Of the Night show at the Night Safari? Is it worth spending time on, or just give it a miss?
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Zoochatters can probably give the show a miss. The time could be better spent on the walking trails or taking a second ride on the tram (tickets are good for multiple rides).
 
thanks Zooish. I usually ignore animal shows at zoos but thought I'd better check in case they had a banded linsang in the show or something like that and I missed it :D
 
Zooish said:
A group of Brushtail Possums were acquired a while back and have been off display, they most likely will be part of the new trail.
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zooboy28 said:
Wellington Zoo (NZ) acquired a male Nyala from Singapore earlier this year. Wellington Zoo has a large groiup of Brushtail Possums (80+). I believe that because Brushtail Possums are protected in Australia they cannot be exported, but they are most certainly not protected in NZ, and probably can be. So, my thinking is that maybe the Possums were swapped for a Nyala?
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Zooish said:
Thanks for the info zooboy82. Its definitely a possibility on the brush-tailed possums being from Wellington. They've started breeding off-exhibit.
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the possums did indeed come from Wellington Zoo: Wellington Zoo Trust | 2010-11 Annual Report: Animal collection
"In September three brush tailed possums left us to go to Singapore Zoo where they have formed a new breeding group and have settled in very well"
 
Chlidonias said:
the possums did indeed come from Wellington Zoo: Wellington Zoo Trust | 2010-11 Annual Report: Animal collection
"In September three brush tailed possums left us to go to Singapore Zoo where they have formed a new breeding group and have settled in very well"
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Some of the wallabies (Bennett's or parma) supposedly came from New Zealand as well. They arrived in January 2012.

The possums have settled in well indeed. I saw about 6 of them on display.
 
Zooish said:
Some of the wallabies (Bennett's or parma) supposedly came from New Zealand as well. They arrived in January 2012.

The possums have settled in well indeed. I saw about 6 of them on display.
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Wellington have a large number of Parma Wallabies (~25), but no Bennett's, although many other New Zealand zoos have those, so Wellington could have organised something.
 
funnily enough there's just been an article released about those wallabies (although it doesn't say where they came from):
Night Safari welcomes new wildlife from Australia - inSing.com
14 August 2012

They were from Australia and are now calling Singapore home. So comfortable are they that they even gave birth to their children here.

No, don’t start judging these new foreigners now until you see them.

Meet the Bernett’s and parma wallabies, new residents of the Night Safari. They are part of the family of marsupials, such as kangaroos, koalas, possums and wombats, which are native to Australia.

This Friday, these wallabies will get their first sniff of onlookers when the Night Safari - the world’s first dedicated night zoo - opens up its new Wallaby Trail to visitors.

Even before the trail was opened, zookeepers received a wonderful surprise in June when they saw tiny heads peeking out of the pouches of the wallabies. There were four babies in all – they are called joeys – two for each species.

It is a first for Night Safari since their arrival in January this year. Before this, both Night Safari and Singapore Zoo never had these two wallaby species in their animal collection, the Wildlife Reserves Singapore wrote on its website.

Apart from the cute Bernett’s and parma wallabies, there will be other mammals, birds and reptiles from the region of Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand on the Wallaby Trail, the Wildlife Reserves Singapore said in a statement.

There will be a vast array of flora and fauna on display as visitors walk through the trail - sugar gliders, a white-lipped python from Papua New Guinea, a tawny frogmouth, which is a native bird from Australia, and brush-tailed possums, which is the largest of its kind.

Another attraction is the Naracoorte Caves – a reconstructed, simulated limestone cave that is home to cave-dwellers such as free-flying bats, the giant river toad and the beauty snake.

Visitors can learn more about the wildlife and their habitats through an interpretive centre that showcases various animal and plant specimens from the region.

Mr Kumar Pillai, general manager at the Night Safari, said: “We’re excited to highlight these Australasian species in the Wallaby Trail because the Australasian region is home to more than one million species of plants and animals, many of which are found nowhere else in the world.”

The 4,800 sqm-trail will open on 17 August.
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another question for Zooish: the tarsier in the Night Safari...is there just one? Or more than one?

I saw a site a few days ago while looking up something else about tarsiers and it said there were three tarsiers there (one Philippine and two Bornean, or vice versa) but I don't know how old the information was.
 
@Chlidonias: There was a media blitz the past week for the Wallaby Trail's official opening this Friday.

There's just one Spectral tarsier now. There used to be a pair until one died some years back. I've not heard about there being a Philippines one before.
 
zooboy28 said:
Wellington have a large number of Parma Wallabies (~25), but no Bennett's, although many other New Zealand zoos have those, so Wellington could have organised something.
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I understand the 2 species were sourced from NZ and Holland, so it looks like the parma's came from Wellington (part of the deal with the possums) and the Bennett's came from Holland.
 
Chlidonias said:
I saw a site a few days ago while looking up something else about tarsiers and it said there were three tarsiers there (one Philippine and two Bornean, or vice versa) but I don't know how old the information was.
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Zooish said:
There's just one Spectral tarsier now. There used to be a pair until one died some years back. I've not heard about there being a Philippines one before.
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actually I stuffed that up completely! Perhaps I should have re-checked it before posting :D
The site actually said one male Sumatran tarsier and two male spectral tarsiers. The site is just someone's hobby site I think so it may not be at all accurate.
tarsier
 
Chlidonias said:
actually I stuffed that up completely! Perhaps I should have re-checked it before posting :D
The site actually said one male Sumatran tarsier and two male spectral tarsiers. The site is just someone's hobby site I think so it may not be at all accurate.
tarsier
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Hah! Well, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Sumatran at some point, possibly a confiscated animal.
 
Zooish said:
Night Safari is currently building a $2.5-million Australasian Trail, set to open in June 2012. No details have been revealed yet. An existing Babirusa exhibit is located at the end of the proposed trail, and the recently-opened Naracoorte Cave (a misnomer really as it houses Asian cave animals) is also located along the way. A group of Brushtail Possums were acquired a while back and have been off display, they most likely will be part of the new trail.

Have any of the Aussie / NZ zoochatters heard of possible animal swaps with Singapore? I know Singapore wanted Tasmanian Devils some years back. Wallabies were also proposed to be part of the trail.
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Just to go back to where the Australasian animals came from, the Wellington Zoo's Annual Reports show that they sent 3 Brushtailed Possums to Singapore in 2010/11, and then three Parma Wallabies in 2011/12.
 
zooboy28 said:
WRS don't even display Javan Langurs anywhere do they? And what do they want White Lions for? Aren't they phasing out their White Tigers because they serve no conservation purpose?
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The Javan langurs are completely free-ranging at the Zoo, although they have been conditioned with food to hang around the Primate Kingdom area.

I'm not so sure about phasing out of white tigers. WRS has never stated that before. It admits as much that the white tigers have no conservation value except to attract eyeballs and hopefully bring more awareness to the tigers' plight.

I'm guessing the white lions will be part of Night Safari's expanded Equatorial Africa zone. WRS probably chose white lions to differentiate them from the existing Asiatic lions.

Ultimately WRS' parks are populist establishments and white/albino anythings usually attract more interest from the regular zoo-goer.
 
Zooish said:
The Javan langurs are completely free-ranging at the Zoo, although they have been conditioned with food to hang around the Primate Kingdom area.

I'm not so sure about phasing out of white tigers. WRS has never stated that before. It admits as much that the white tigers have no conservation value except to attract eyeballs and hopefully bring more awareness to the tigers' plight.

I'm guessing the white lions will be part of Night Safari's expanded Equatorial Africa zone. WRS probably chose white lions to differentiate them from the existing Asiatic lions.

Ultimately WRS' parks are populist establishments and white/albino anythings usually attract more interest from the regular zoo-goer.
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The Javan langurs are great and new to Chinese zoos！ Thus Xiangjiang Safari Park now has eight leaf-eating monkey species, i.e. golden snub-nosed monkey, Guizhou snub-nosed monkey, black-shanked douc, white-headed langur, Francois's langur, silver langur, purple-faced langur, Javan langur, making it the zoo with most leaf-eating monkeys in China.
 
baboon said:
The Javan langurs are great and new to Chinese zoos！ Thus Xiangjiang Safari Park now has eight leaf-eating monkey species, i.e. golden snub-nosed monkey, Guizhou snub-nosed monkey, black-shanked douc, white-headed langur, Francois's langur, silver langur, purple-faced langur, Javan langur, making it the zoo with most leaf-eating monkeys in China.
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That's a great collection of colubines. The safari park itself looks pretty impressive, but its a pity they're still sticking to circus shows and dressing up apes.
 
Zooish said:
That's a great collection of colubines. The safari park itself looks pretty impressive, but its a pity they're still sticking to circus shows and dressing up apes.
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Yes, I hate these. Both circus shows and dressing up apes are illegal in Chinese zoos, but maybe because Xiangjiang is a private zoo, they have not stoped the circus shows in the zoo.
 
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