Wildlife 'Encounters' in Zoo's

Eric

Eric

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
Simple question. What's the most amazing encounters you have had with natural wildlife not part of a zoological collection,you have had whilst visiting.

Have you ever had a birdwatching list while at a zoo.

Even if it's not a memorable encounter,what have you seen.

And, have you ever seen wildlife inside enclosures,sometimes taking risks,especially with predators (Recently I saw a web link of a polar bear diving widely aimlessly for a duck that settled in its enclosure moat and luckily missing it,)..?

I can imagine at the more tropical zoos seeing wild monkeys,tropical birds etc..?

--- I saw wild Muntjac deer at Whipsnade years ago. A Sparrowhawk catch a pigeon in a corner of the Rhino paddock at Marwell..Little Egrets at Birdworld,Wild Wood Trust,Wingham,London Zoo. Saw Aesculapian snakes years ago on the banks of the Grand union Canal outside London Zoo (but this don't count as its outside!),though this small population has presumably now gone locally extinct?
 
Two came to mind:

#1
I must have been 7 years old, maybe younger. I was at Minnesota Zoo with my family, when a Wild Turkey walked out onto the path right in front of us. It saw and flew away immediately, and landed inside a nearby enclosure. From the enclosure, I heard "Gobble, gobble, gobble", then a deep barking noise. I ran over to the enclosure and read the sign: "Mexican Gray Wolf". The ground was covered in turkey feathers, and the wolves were having a feast.

#2
I was a Special Memories Zoo, sitting on a bench on the edge of the Goldfish pond. A Northern Leopard Frog jumped into the water, and right into the jaws of a Common Garter Snake. That was really cool to see.
 
Eric said:
-- I saw wild Muntjac deer at Whipsnade years ago.....
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There have been free ranging muntjac at Whipsnade since it opened in 1931; they are officially part of the zoo's collection, so I don't think they really count for the purposes of this thread.
Eric said:
Saw Aesculapian snakes years ago on the banks of the Grand union Canal outside London Zoo (but this don't count as its outside!),though this small population has presumably now gone locally extinct?
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I have seen Aesculapian snakes along the banks of the Regent's canal inside the zoo too; to the best of my knowledge this population still exists (although I've not seen any of the snakes for sometime).

You might find the following threads of interest too:-

https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/which-wild-and-free-animals-live-in-your-zoos-grounds.471482/#post-1110291

https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/what-wild-mammals-have-you-seen-in-zoos.466733/
 
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Tim May said:
There have been free ranging muntjac at Whipsnade since it opened in 1931; they are officially part of the zoo's collection, so I don't think they really count for the purposes of this thread.

I have seen Aesculapian snakes along the banks of the Regent's canal inside the zoo too; to the best of my knowledge this population still exists (although I've not seen any of the snakes for sometime).

You might find the following threads of interest too:-

https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/which-wild-and-free-animals-live-in-your-zoos-grounds.471482/#post-1110291

https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/what-wild-mammals-have-you-seen-in-zoos.466733/
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Thanks very much for the links/ I should have checked through before starting a new thread with those still existing....And thanks for the canal name correction. Had seen the muntjacs both inside and outside Whipsnades grounds.
 
We get fairly regular "self-enrichment" at our sanctuary, usually with birds that come into a habitat to steal food and end up becoming food instead (the most common is when our bears catch ravens and magpies). The most intriguing, though, was with our ravens...

Being a non-breeding facility, we spay/neuter all of our mammals. That's not an easy process with birds, so we typically don't fix them. Since ravens typically won't lay eggs if they don't have a nest, we simply didn't give them any nesting materials.

They built a nest anyway.

It turned out that wild ravens were collecting nesting materials for our resident ravens, who were digging up cached food to "buy" the twigs, hay, animal fur, and such. They had actually developed their own system of commerce.
 
It's been years since I was there, but Dusit Zoo in Bangkok had a lot of water monitors just casually strolling/swimming around. It's not unusual to see them in south east Asia at all though.
 
For me it was an interesting site me and my friend got to see on the lake trail at Brookfield Zoo, we encountered a wild deer, after it noticed us it started running away, we encountered it a few more times until on the third time we carefully walked around where the deer was so that it would run closer to where the Mexican Gray Wolves are (during this time they still had the full pack).
 
Some of my best zoo/aquarium animal interactions were in walk-through exhibits; getting as close as possible to squirrel monkeys at the Phoenix Zoo's Monkey Village exhibit and feeding lorikeets at the Aquarium of the Pacific's Lorikeet Forest.
 
NVP said:
Some of my best zoo/aquarium animal interactions were in walk-through exhibits; getting as close as possible to squirrel monkeys at the Phoenix Zoo's Monkey Village exhibit and feeding lorikeets at the Aquarium of the Pacific's Lorikeet Forest.
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Read the thread starter. :D;)
 
Although not as cool as some of the stories that have already been shared when I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium last fall for my birthday, I was out on the back patio which overlooks Monterey Bay and I saw a wild sea otter diving for mollusks, when he'd came up with the prize he/she rolled on his/her back a broke it open by using a rock. I knew they did this from reading it online but it was cool to see it in person.
 
My zoo in ramat gan, israel has massive nesting flocks of glossy ibis and cattle egrets, I also see white throated kingfishers here and there.

I have two memorable encounters of wildlife in the zoo.
I saw two stellagamas hanging out on a tree inside a cassowary enclosure, surely it was risky for them.
In the second encounter I saw 30 or more hooded crows circling over something in the parking area, a few minutes later I saw one crow carrying a bird corpse and all the others chasing it, It was pretty amazing to see.
 
I remember one day back in 2016, I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There was a wild sea otter in the tide pool outside that just gave birth. I didn't witness the birth, but I remember the mother otter swimming around in the tide pool with the baby on its stomach. This event is apparently not very common, and I remember it was even broadcasted on the local news. Here's an article I found about it.

Video Captures Wild Sea Otter Giving Birth at Monterey Bay Aquarium | KTLA
 
I've had many encounters of this kind, especially in zoos in Latin America and as you point out encounters of this kind are frequent in zoos in the tropics.

At Sorocaba and São Paulo zoos here in Brazil I've seen wild agoutis, brown howler monkeys, egrets, herons, parakeets etc.

At Chapultepec zoo and Zoomat zoo in Mexico I've seen opossum, cacomixtle, hummingbirds, egrets, green iguanas, squirrels, amazon parrots etc.
 
St. Augustine Alligator Farm’s Native Swamp and Rookery immediately comes to mind. It’s basically a big area of natural swampland that has been fenced in and used to house a very large number of alligators. Hundreds of wild wading birds come here to nest every years, since the alligators discourage climbing predators such as raccoons, making it a surprisingly safe nesting site. It’s amazing to visit the exhibit during the peak breeding season and see the dozens of alligators down below the boardwalk and hundreds of spoonbills, wood storks, herons, and egrets tending their young overhead in the trees!

Less impressive, but I also remember going on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and seeing a large flock of swallow-tailed kites soaring overhead, which was cool.
 
I've encountered a lot of wildlife in European zoos, including red squirrel, grass snake, black-crowned night heron, great cormorant, common firecrest, green woodpecker, rose-ringed parakeet and kingfisher.
The coolest species I've seen was in the Plzen Zoo in the Czech Republic; a weasel!

Saw some cool wildlife in the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok, Thailand including a large flock of spot-billed pelicans, as well as black-crowned night herons, little egrets, Finlayson's squirrel, blue-crested lizard and water monitors.
Some Australian wildlife I've encoutered in zoos include Australian water dragon, noisy miner, Pacific black duck, dusky moorhen, swamphen, brush turkey and kookaburra.

Some species I saw in the zoo of San Jose in Costa Rica are variegated squirrel, green heron, russet-naped wood rail, blue-and-grey tanager, white-eared ground sparrow and melodious blackbird.
 
Colugos in Singapore...
Rosy boa in San Diego WIld Animal Park...
Low flying eurasian cranes in Rostock, which made zoo pair of white-naped cranes go mad.

Gary Robson said:
Being a non-breeding facility, we spay/neuter all of our mammals. That's not an easy process with birds, so we typically don't fix them. Since ravens typically won't lay eggs if they don't have a nest, we simply didn't give them any nesting materials.

They built a nest anyway.

It turned out that wild ravens were collecting nesting materials for our resident ravens, who were digging up cached food to "buy" the twigs, hay, animal fur, and such. They had actually developed their own system of commerce.
Click to expand...

I overlooked this message before. Pity that Gary was not seen on the forum for over a year. If this observation was well documented, it would be worth publishing as it is a very unusual discovery of animal behavior.
 
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