Walrus currently in captivity

jwer said:
After seeing some of the walrus-exhibits in western European zoos that the animals have been kept in in the past (most notably Hannover), this looks pretty decent actually.
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Well, it cheers me up a bit :)

jwer said:
Great to have you on board of Zoochat Callorhinus, amazing to have so much information from Izhevsk :)
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Thanks. I'll try to be useful for this community.
 
Animal said:
Thanks for the photo! Why not open the exhibit and keep seals and walrus together? :) More space for everone.
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First of all, this photo is not mine, it's from zoo's official website. I usually shoot photos from inside... I see now it's a serious omission.

Now let's return to our animals. It was planned in beginning of zoo's work to "introduce" them to each other. They had much time to get used to each other while they were in the next inner rooms with the walls made of grill, and they could see who is in the next exhibit too. Walruses and fur seals all were still, and even touched and muzzled (vocabulary says it's the right word :)) each other through the grills. So we tried to place them into one exhibit. Our fur seals were quite timid at that moment so they didn't want to go to the unknown area. At the same time our two walruses were very curious, so they easily went to the seal exhibit. Fur seals were in panic and they didn't swim all the time walruses were in this exhibit, and walruses weren't interested in seals, they just swam. Next time we tried to arrange meeting in the walrus exhibit. Our walrus female moved to seals, and most of them rushed away, one of them didn't, and next several hours walruses and brave seal spent time in the different parts of pool.

It was worse with Neseyka. It was only time she met seal in the pool. She pursued seal very fast, much faster than our walruses usually move (that's why I wrote that we were afraid for her new neighbours). It was very surprising for us because she was very calm and even phlegmatic (excepting feeding time).

Of course we did many mistakes, and now we have enough experience to keep seals and walrus together in case of need (for example one of exhibits needs some works or cleaning). But there are some problems with it when everything goes as usual, such as necessity to move animals to their own inner rooms for the night time to feed or something else; our small shows also will become complicated. There is a problem with visitors: they often don't read signs, you know, and sometimes call walruses "seals", and think that fur seals are their babies. This misunderstanding will become usual if our animals live together. There are also problem related to water cleaning... In a word we don't plan now to keep walruses and seals together, at least while the design of exhibits remains the same.

I hope I haven't revealed a state secret :D
 
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Thanks, callorhinus for the explanation on the pinnipeds at Ihzevsk Zoo, Udmurtia.

IMO, it is one of the zoos in Eurasian region that is developing well. Quite regular news comes out lately on zoos in the region. :)

Best managed zoological collection here probably remains Novosibirsk.
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
Thanks, callorhinus for the explanation on the pinnipeds at Ihzevsk Zoo, Udmurtia.

IMO, it is one of the zoos in Eurasian region that is developing well. Quite regular news comes out lately on zoos in the region. :)
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Our zoo is one of the youngest in Russia, it is only four years old, most likely it is the reason. Yaroslavl zoo was opened at the same time, it has more land, and it's enclosures designed in modern nature style as it said on official website (unfortunatelly only map is available in English: http://www.yaroslavlzoo.ru/en/map.html). Сollection includes animals of various taxons and even plants. Our zoo houses mammals, birds and a small number of exotic fishes, but our animals more unusual for Russian I think.

Kifaru Bwana said:
Best managed zoological collection here probably remains Novosibirsk.
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It's hard to say definitely. Moscow zoo has also good collection, and they have good science work. These two zoos are the best in Russia to this extent.

P.S. It is something like offtopic. I have started new thread in the section of Russia so you can ask questions there.
 
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Perhaps I should have been clearer. I was speaking primarily about the Asian part of Eurasia and the zoos in the temperate regions around Izhevsk. Hence, I ignored any qualifications of those more westerly like a.o. Rostov, Moskva and Sankt Petrsburg.
 
My friend from Moscow corrected information I previously have given here. There are five walruses in Moscow. They are all pacific walruses and are kept in Moscow zoo.

Male: Odinnadtsatyi (this awful word means "11th"). Born in 1996 or 1997, arrived from Chukotka. He is the father of Olivia.

Females:
1. Dina. Born in 1996 or 1997, arrived from Chukotka.
2. Polosa. Born in 1996 or 1997, arrived from Chukotka. She is the mother of Olivia.
3. Olivia. Born in captivity in 2008.
4. Zhanna. Seven years old. No more data yet.

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Other cities.

One walrus, five years old male Gavryusha ("Gawrjuscha" by German and similar rules), lives in Sochi aquarium.

One male ("Puf") and one female ("Tosha") of pacific walrus live in dolphinarium of Gelendzhik. They are six years old.

There are many dolphinariums at the Black sea coast, and some of them have walruses. It is hard to count them all. Of course there are no science work and breeding work in these organizations usually.
 
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Very nice work. I think the data of Oceanografic in Spain are not right. The parc opened in the end of 2002, and on the pictures the animals were very young. So they can not be from the same capture as those in Moscow at 1996.
The pool in Spain is 4 meters deep and contains 877.000 liters of salt water.
Behind the scenes they have some boxes and a large pool. They display only 2 or 3 animals a time, then the other ones are behind the scenes.
 
Two walrus pups, both males, are now at the Indianapolis Zoo and New York Aquarium.
Indianapolis: 1.0, Pakak
NY Aquarium: 1.0, Mitik
 
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BeardsleyZooFan said:
Two walrus pups, both males, are now at the Indianapolis Zoo and New York Aquarium.
Indianapolis: 1.0, Pakak
NY Aquarium: 1.0, Mitkik
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Were these walruses found stranded near Barrow, Alaska in July 2012? If so, the second of them is "Mitik", not "Mitkik".
Do you know if these facilities want to find company for their new inhabitants?
 
callorhinus said:
Were these walruses found stranded near Barrow, Alaska in July 2012? If so, the second of them is "Mitik", not "Mitkik".
Do you know if these facilities want to find company for their new inhabitants?
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I believe so, they both came from the Alaska SeaLife Center. Thank you for correcting me on the name. I know Mitik is reccomended to breed once he gets older with Kulusiq. I don't know the situation with Aurora and Pakak.
 
BeardsleyZooFan said:
I believe so, they both came from the Alaska SeaLife Center. Thank you for correcting me on the name. I know Mitik is reccomended to breed once he gets older with Kulusiq. I don't know the situation with Aurora and Pakak.
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How old is Aurora? As I know she didn't breed with IZ males. Is that right?
 
In September 2007, there were 4 sub-adult walrus at Bangkok Safari World in Thailand. As they also had a group of belugas at the same place, I would assume that both species came from Russia and so the walrus are the Pacific form. After doing a bit of a search on the internet, there was still at least two alive in July 2012 and both had about 8 inch long tusks.
 
^^
This news has a very big lack of credibility.
The death of Boris it's a possibility, but not 100% confirmed yet.
Infozoos it's like PETA, sometimes they use one reason badly argued when they talking about zoos.
 
Their source are ex-workers. And at the other side, Oceanografic must have read this. If it was not true, they would bring out a message by their self.
 
KEEPER said:
^^
This news has a very big lack of credibility.
The death of Boris it's a possibility, but not 100% confirmed yet.
Infozoos it's like PETA, sometimes they use one reason badly argued when they talking about zoos.
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Does OV have Facebook page or something like that where actual information and news in English could be found? It looks like data on OV walruses from the first message of this thread is incorrect.
 
Put some historical pictures and newspaper-articles in the Gallery. They can be found in the following Gallery-threads:
London Zoo
USA- other
Los Angeles Zoo
Netherlands - other
 
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