Smithsonian National Zoo Smithsonian National Zoo News 2020

Andrew_NZP said:
Toni died in 2006, and came to the zoo in 1989.
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Thanks for the correction, I'm sorry. I used to know the studbook inside out, but with the studbook inaccessible, I find myself relying too heavily on aging memory. I didn't think she had been with us during Kumari's lifetime, because she responded so poorly to Kandula, and I didn't remember her at Kandula's 5th birthday party in November 2006. I should have looked it up in WAPO archives.
 
marvinjonesIII said:
At that time, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans were exhibited in the Small Mammal House. Each had glass-fronted, all-indoor exhibits I believe where the mixed-species habitats for lemurs and tamarins are now. Chimps were phased out and gorillas and orangutans moved to the Great Ape House in 1981 to prepare for the renovation of the building. The "new" exhibit did not embrace naturalism and was designed to be easily to clean and hose down. It was certainly an improvement over their old quarters but outdated the day it opened (Woodland Park Zoo's groundbreaking gorilla habitat opened two years earlier) and now an ugly relic of a time past.
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Great info. I wonder why they were housed in the SMH, with presumably no outdoor yards? I went to check when the Monkey House ceased being used, and while I didn't get an exact year, it's because of this great, long article from 1990 that features many great stories about animals that may have been in your consciousness but are fading. As of 1990, the Monkey House was still in use, so it was well after great apes were living in the SMH.

The news that the Great Ape House was designed to be cleaned and disinfected may surprise many, given the terrible smell that permeated the building until recently. Although it's a terrible Brutalist concrete horror with no naturalism in exhibitry, the zoo was ahead of its time in worrying about the human-primate spread of illness. Nowadays, all keepers use masks and gloves as a rule, but in 1979, the design with floot-to-ceiling glass walls aimed to hermetically seal the apes off from the general, disease-spreading public.
 
This is the article I mentioned above, as well as some surprise takeaways:

AT THE ZOO - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch.../1990/06/17/at-the-zoo/66ebffbc-5bbb-47b8-a6d 5-22a1e118ef14/

** Memories of the Bat Cave, which was under Lion/Tiger Hill via a door facing the restaurant! I waited too long to take a look. It was closed well over a decade ago when it's population had exploded to five times its capacity. They sent all the bats away, and began a LONG cleanup of all the guano, after which it was thought the bats would return. They never did. There's a space just ripe for an exhibit, a nocturnal exhibit.

**The reptile curator did a study of the visitors touring the exhibit and was disheartened to find that the average person spent 7-8 on each exhibit and had left the building in 14". After probing further, he concluded that people came to the zoo to be with family and friends and "may not really care about our exhibits."

**Escape stories including one with then 3-year-old Bonnie and her tiny (now huge) son Kiko ending up on the Great Ape House roof!

**Even with the Great Ape House completed in 1981, there were as few as one or two gorillas until 1985 when Mandara and Kuja, unrelated, arrived aged 3 and 2, then in 1988 Mesou and Gus, 33 and 6. Tomako, 28 in 1990, was the silverback, and visitors--including me--assumed they were one nuclear family, but in fact were all unrelated. I remember them all, especially Gus as a silverback. Mandara is now 38, which must be at the upper limits of an average lifespan.

**I was wrong in an earlier post. At least in 1990, there were two rhinos living in that first stall from the left in the Elephant House. Perhaps they were rotated inside/out such that I only ever saw one. Later, when trying to squeeze a rhino yard into Elephant Trails, it was definitely only one, though.

**The zoo had Malayan sun bears! And a Reeve's muntjac that loped out of the zoo down Connecticut Avenue until it was found in a backyard! And a Barbery ape that jumped out of Monkey Island into a baby stroller and ended up in the basement of the restaurant!
**Ling Ling the panda was "nasty" and attacked her keeper!

**Sumatran tiger Kerinci, the wild-born, genetically-valuable mother of Soyono, had been imported from Indonesia just a couple years earlier in the late 1980s. She came from the wild and was very young--I wonder how they got around CITES Treaty regulations?

**PETA activists came every year on Christmas with non-alcoholic champagne for the keepers and fruit and nuts for the herbivores while singing anti-zoo Christmas carols! My, how things have changed!
 
Zoofan15 said:
This article explains how the National Zoo plan to deal with the sad but inevitable loss of Ambika (and their other senior females) in the future:

“Ambika is in decent health, despite some dental issues. But the zoo has been focused on such end-of-life issues because of the advanced age of its herd.

Aside from Ambika, the zoo has four other elephants in their mid-40s. The median life expectancy for Asian elephants in zoos is 46.9, the equivalent of about 77 in humans, Amaral said.”

Read the rest of this very comprehensive article here:

As the National Zoo's 'queen' and other elephants age, keepers make plan to deal with death
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:(According to this article I conclude that Ambika and Shanthi, two of my favorite elephants in America, are near death. With Shanthi areprobably just waiting for her health to be too serious. But it seems that Ambika is also very bad. Yet she is 72 years old and is therefore very old.
 
AmbikaFan said:
Mandara is now 38, which must be at the upper limits of an average lifespan.
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If she’s in good health; and with a high standard of care, I’d expect her to live at least another 10 years. 45-50 seems to be the average lifespan of a captive female Western lowland gorilla, with some exceptional individuals reaching 60. Frala gave birth to her ninth offspring at the Taronga Zoo at the age of 38 and is in excellent health.

AmbikaFan said:
Sumatran tiger Kerinci, the wild-born, genetically-valuable mother of Soyono, had been imported from Indonesia just a couple years earlier in the late 1980s. She came from the wild and was very young--I wonder how they got around CITES Treaty regulations?
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She was found in Sumatra as an orphaned cub and an exception was probably made on the basis there was no prospect of her surviving in the wild.

I found an interesting article which mentions her (and other big cats at the SNZ) here: Trailing the Big Cats | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
 
As if that disturbing article about preparing for the deaths of our five senior elephants weren't enough, the zoo has just repeated it in the weekly member newsletter. This has clearly been the zoo's strategy for some time, as I remember assistant manager Debbie Flinkman providing these very answers when a visitor asked 2.5 years ago on World Elephant Day. (If you want even further detail, the barn also has the now-standard hoist capable of lifting a fallen or expired elephant from the floor, and a special crane is planned to get the animal onto a transport vehicle.) I suppose this may be a concerted effort at complete and utter transparency in the wake of inevitable attacks by activist groups and may have some value for that purpose, but I still find it grotesque to be discussing the removal process in all its gory detail. These were beloved and beautiful
animals, not fascinatingly large inanimate cargo of some kind.
 
I didn't realize how old he had gotten and totally forgot he was born in NY. He seemed so sweet with keepers. I have no idea how old this beautiful picture is, but he has very clear eyes for a seal, who have notorious eye problems including thick cataracts. The strange death of sea lion pup Luna last year aside. NZP's pinnipeds have lived very long lives under their care. Sea lion Maureen and seals Gunnar and Selkie (parents to Kaya and Kira) all lived to almost 40 when 30 was considered to be the upper limit of life expectancy. I'll miss Luke.

I'll probably be shot down for this--and remember I love all of the pinnipeds AND how keepers have regularly shared stories so we can know the animals--but I'm reminded here how they are of least concern as to survival. Could this habitat support a pair of breeding walrus if two could be located? They already rotate animals on exhibit, and it seems whole species groups are rarely altogether in the exhibit at the same time.
 
AmbikaFan said:
I didn't realize how old he had gotten and totally forgot he was born in NY. He seemed so sweet with keepers. I have no idea how old this beautiful picture is, but he has very clear eyes for a seal, who have notorious eye problems including thick cataracts. The strange death of sea lion pup Luna last year aside. NZP's pinnipeds have lived very long lives under their care. Sea lion Maureen and seals Gunnar and Selkie (parents to Kaya and Kira) all lived to almost 40 when 30 was considered to be the upper limit of life expectancy. I'll miss Luke.

I'll probably be shot down for this--and remember I love all of the pinnipeds AND how keepers have regularly shared stories so we can know the animals--but I'm reminded here how they are of least concern as to survival. Could this habitat support a pair of breeding walrus if two could be located? They already rotate animals on exhibit, and it seems whole species groups are rarely altogether in the exhibit at the same time.
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Only if A, the holding was retrofitted, B, the walruses had access to the nearby sea lion pool, (they've been mixed successfully with California sea lions and even ASCOs in Seaworld San Diego) and C, underwater viewing was added to that secondary pool currently home to the grey seals and harbor seal.
 
Wyman said:
Only if A, the holding was retrofitted, B, the walruses had access to the nearby sea lion pool, (they've been mixed successfully with California sea lions and even ASCOs in Seaworld San Diego) and C, underwater viewing was added to that secondary pool currently home to the grey seals and harbor seal.
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Wow, I'm glad to see that the criteria of getting breeding specimens isn't the first concern. If that can be overcome, your conditions would be possible. It's exciting to hear that sea lions and walrus have cohabitated before! There IS a wonderful new underwater area in that habitat, so seeing both species would be dope. They just renovated the entire off-show building and pools; maybe there is space already and it just needs to be diverted to the SL pool. I highly doubt, however, that there will ever be an underwater viewing area for the seals, as the incline of the trail would require that an actual tunnel be built under the pathway. I'm sure if this were feasible, it would have been considered in the recent, pretty-extensive reno, when the underwater viewing in the SL pool was dramatically expanded. Still, if there were animals, this sounds possible!
 
AmbikaFan said:
Wow, I'm glad to see that the criteria of getting breeding specimens isn't the first concern. If that can be overcome, your conditions would be possible. It's exciting to hear that sea lions and walrus have cohabitated before! There IS a wonderful new underwater area in that habitat, so seeing both species would be dope. They just renovated the entire off-show building and pools; maybe there is space already and it just needs to be diverted to the SL pool. I highly doubt, however, that there will ever be an underwater viewing area for the seals, as the incline of the trail would require that an actual tunnel be built under the pathway. I'm sure if this were feasible, it would have been considered in the recent, pretty-extensive reno, when the underwater viewing in the SL pool was dramatically expanded. Still, if there were animals, this sounds possible!
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Assuming that the walrus obtained *are* breeding specimens, of course.
 
Walrus aren't american, though ;) As much as I'd love to see them, the zoo seems to stick pretty well to their themed areas, and I don't think they include Alaska in their target range for the american trail.

While I'd like to see walrus, they'd have to do a lot of changes to the structure of a very new exhibit to make it work, instead of (hopefully) working on some of the areas that really need it.

The one pinniped I can think of that isn't LC (most pinnipeds are) that would work is the northern elephant seal :) There's also the northern fur seal and Steller sea lion.
 
TinoPup said:
Walrus aren't american, though ;) As much as I'd love to see them, the zoo seems to stick pretty well to their themed areas, and I don't think they include Alaska in their target range for the american trail.

While I'd like to see walrus, they'd have to do a lot of changes to the structure of a very new exhibit to make it work, instead of (hopefully) working on some of the areas that really need it.

The one pinniped I can think of that isn't LC (most pinnipeds are) that would work is the northern elephant seal :) There's also the northern fur seal and Steller sea lion.
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Actually, walruses do live in Alaska (the eastern parts near Russia), although I do agree that adding them (cool as it would be) would be a stretch.
Another cool mammal to consider for the exhibit might be sea otters.
Another long shot would be to build a greenhouse with alligators or birds to represent the Everglades. Again a long shot, but cool to fantasize about
Of course, they may most likely find new harbor seals, perhaps from a rescue center, and I'd be just as happy.
 
iluvwhales said:
Actually, walruses do live in Alaska (the eastern parts near Russia), although I do agree that adding them (cool as it would be) would be a stretch.
Another cool mammal to consider for the exhibit might be sea otters.
Another long shot would be to build a greenhouse with alligators or birds to represent the Everglades. Again a long shot, but cool to fantasize about
Of course, they may most likely find new harbor seals, perhaps from a rescue center, and I'd be just as happy.
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... I know, that's why I said "I don't think they include Alaska in their target range for the american trail."

Sea otters could be interesting, but I'm not sure either pool has the viewing set up for them? They'd also need to do some changes inside for the species.

They already have areas for those ;) It would be nice if the trail focused on different areas!
 
TinoPup said:
... I know, that's why I said "I don't think they include Alaska in their target range for the american trail."

Sea otters could be interesting, but I'm not sure either pool has the viewing set up for them? They'd also need to do some changes inside for the species.

They already have areas for those ;) It would be nice if the trail focused on different areas!
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But even if they don't now, why not? They ARE American and are endangered and fascinating. They could be one of those big spokes-animals for conservation, as they're easily as rare for folks to see as giant pandas, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, etc. I know I've shared my disdain for using zoo space for domestic animals, and I'm willing to believe the many who say the interaction leads young folk to a more personal connection to, and appreciation for, exotics. However, the beavers and otters on American Trail and some deer that used to be on the opposite hillside have always seemed like a nod to the distant past when common American species seemed almost preferable to everything but bison. With the exception of the bald eagle and maned wolves, there have not really been a lot of endangered species. Walrus could easily share the SL exhibit; maybe they could even stock it with live fish like Columbus does for its polar bears, and we'd see really natural behaviors. Perhaps the small otter exhibit could be expanded a bit to accommodate sea otters? And prairie dogs were once so popular that there were two exhibits, one at the top of the zoo right where the panda store is on Asia Trail and one down across from the Lemurs. This small amount of space should be easy to find somewhere, and creating a level platform and the same 10'x 8' flat exhibit in between the S curves going down. the path could be something popular to stop at as you wind your way down to the valley! It would also be cool if somehow elk or moose--or AN elk or A moose could live on that opposite steep hillside! America is big, so why not exhibit some animals indigenous to far-flung areas that East-Coasters might never see. If there were walrus, an elk, sea otters, and prairie dogs, and maybe some bobcats or pumas high up.above the beaver and otter lodges, there would be a range of interesting species to offset the beavers. Someone was just reminding me that since the building of Elephant Trails, the lower exhibit frequently has one or two local wild deer! Why waste exhibit space on them! It would be great to see more interesting species, and I love the greenhouse gator idea and/or something from Hawaii. America includes a lot of different types of fauna. It would be great if the trail could reflect that, and there is some space near the road up to the vet clinic that could enable some exhibits.
 
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