What % of the species kept in captivity have you seen?

BerdNerd

BerdNerd

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
Out of curiosity, one day I searched up how many species of animals are kept in captivity worldwide. According to the website Zoos.Media, the existing 825 zoos worldwide display a total of 15,000 species of animals. Like a lot of you here, I keep a species seen list, and so far, I have 848 animals on my list. Knowing this, I have seen a measly 5.6% of all species currently kept in captivity. What are your percentages? I’m curious to see who has the highest!
 
EternalPigeon said:
Out of curiosity, one day I searched up how many species of animals are kept in captivity worldwide. According to the website Zoos.Media, the existing 825 zoos worldwide display a total of 15,000 species of animals. Like a lot of you here, I keep a species seen list, and so far, I have 848 animals on my list. Knowing this, I have seen a measly 5.6% of all species currently kept in captivity. What are your percentages? I’m curious to see who has the highest!
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I'm pretty sure there are way more than 825 zoos worldwide.
 
Zoos probably have the majority of megafauna in captivity, but in terms of other holders of animals, such as the bird, reptile, amphibian, insect, and aquarium hobby trades, as well as aquaculture for food, there are a lot of species in captivity that are not represented in zoos.
 
There are definitely more than 825 animal collections worldwide and probably way more than 15,000 taxa kept between them.

However, using the given numbers, I will have seen roughly 39.8% of taxa in captivity. I also will have visited 15.8% of all zoos in the world. In reality my numbers will be lower :p

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
There are definitely more than 825 animal collections worldwide and probably way more than 15,000 taxa kept between them.
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The passage on the website reads "The 825 existing zoos report their numbers to the International Species Inventory System (ISIS) and host a total of 15,000 different animal species." (How many animals live in zoos? | zoosmedia), so it is one of those cases where an author or journalist has just taken the number of member zoos from the ISIS site (the article was dated February 2018) and thought that was all the zoos that exist. It's like stating that the only zoos in the USA are those covered by the AZA.

Just as an FYI, Species360 currently says "1100+ zoos and aquariums" and "more than 22,000 species" for their coverage.
 
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My conservative estimate of the number of zoos and aquariums in the USA is ~870. That's with not counting places that are primarily farm animals, places that are just a few paddocks of bison/deer/elk, places with a few small fish tanks, most nature centers, etc.
 
TinoPup said:
My conservative estimate of the number of zoos and aquariums in the USA is ~870. That's with not counting places that are primarily farm animals, places that are just a few paddocks of bison/deer/elk, places with a few small fish tanks, most nature centers, etc.
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This is way too low - Shedd Aquarium alone has around 1500 species.
 
I saw over 800 mammal species and subspecies and over 1900 bird species and subspecies (not domestic) in zoos and human care. Plus much more in the wild.

From other groups I write down only more remarkable species.
 
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Joel Sartore estimates that there are ~15,000 species in captivity, and that he has recently exceeded 10,500 in his photo ark.
 
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