Woburn Safari Park Woburn !

Oh, that's interesting. I had no idea about the Knowsley Drills.

The Drusillas animals lived in very small cages, I think the one holding Drills is now the Goeldi's monkey exhibit, only now it has several feet of substrate and a bush in it.
 
Oh, that's interesting. I had no idea about the Knowsley Drills.

The Drusillas animals lived in very small cages, I think the one holding Drills is now the Goeldi's monkey exhibit, only now it has several feet of substrate and a bush in it.

Nor had I but its said on here that they featured in a 1970's guidebook. I'm wondering where they came from.
 
Did Port Lympne hold Drill or Mandrill during the 1970s? I remember a guidebook listing one of them but I'm not sure which species. If it was the former that could explain a connection to Knowsley?
 
Did Port Lympne hold Drill or Mandrill during the 1970s? I remember a guidebook listing one of them but I'm not sure which species. If it was the former that could explain a connection to Knowsley?

I don't think Howletts/PL have ever kept Drills before the current ones. There may have been Mandrills but I don't ever remember any.

The last Drills I know of in the UK were an old trio in the old Monkey House at LOndon, and the single male at Drusillas. I don't know what happened to the trio at London- they didn't move into the Sobell pavilions though.
 
The 5.0 drill are now out of quarantine and are mixed in with the other monkeys and bongo, plans are to relocate 3 of the males and bring in some females.

That's a bit of a quick turn around- they've only just established them as a male group. Now they want to change them already. Also, there aren't many females available for them to do this easily.
 
What happened to the colobus? I thought they were kept in the same reserve?

They've been gone some time. Not sure what happened, I'm afraid.
 
ISIS are showing Woburn as holding a pair (1.1) of Cervus elaphus affinis, a sub species of red deer, also known as Wallichs deer or their local name is shou, this is according to ISIS anyway
 
ISIS are showing Woburn as holding a pair (1.1) of Cervus elaphus affinis, a sub species of red deer, also known as Wallichs deer or their local name is shou, this is according to ISIS anyway

I think this must be an ISISism. The Shou (I would go for C. e. wallichi) is virtually extinct, indeed it was thought to be so for many years until a small captive herd was discovered in Tibet in 1987.

The only example that I am aware of in a British Zoo was a male exhibited at London Zoo between 1912 and 1926.

That said, I'm heading for Woburn next weekend and I would love to be proved wrong! - deer taxonomy holds a strange fascination for me.
 
I was certainly sceptical when i saw and wondered if it could have been a pair of bactrian wapiti?
It just seems odd to register your herd of red deer and make an exception for 2 animals.
I remember reading about the Wallichs stag at London zoo recognised as one of the rarest animals ever represented at Regents park.
 
That said, I'm heading for Woburn next weekend and I would love to be proved wrong! - deer taxonomy holds a strange fascination for me.

For me too... all those different Red deer and Eurasian 'Wapiti' subspecies.

I hope you might be able to clear up the Woburn 'mystery' but anything very unusual like this might be hidden away from public gaze.
 
I hope you might be able to clear up the Woburn 'mystery' but anything very unusual like this might be hidden away from public gaze.

Or worse, hidden in plain sight among the hundreds of deer in the Abbey Deer Park like the Timor Deer!
 
Or worse, hidden in plain sight among the hundreds of deer in the Abbey Deer Park like the Timor Deer!

I seem to remember Woburn once kept a few of another of the obscure Red Deer races- I think it was Kashmir Hangul- and found they had to keep them in small grassless paddocks as they succumbed to parasites when kept on grass.
 
The Shou ISIS record pertains to a Kashmir stag/hangul. Whether they were ever maintained beyond a veritable doubt I have yet to discover. I love to see the records for these!
 
Deer at Woburn 100 years ago

Re. Cervus elaphus wallichi at Woburn (ISIS now say they are down to just one male!) must be an ISISism as Robmv said a few weeks ago. They should probably delete it. About 100 years ago Woburn was reported to have 45 species and subspecies of deer in the park but Cervus elaphus wallichi was probably not among them. By 1900 only a head had arrived in England! The 1912 London animal Rob mentioned was probably the first to arrive in the UK.

However Woburn did have the closely related Hangul back then. It was not recorded as breeding but as most of the 11th Duke of Bedford's deer were unfortunately allowed to interbreed there might still be some hangul blood in the mix to this day.

As for the 45 species and subspecies of deer at Woburn about 100 years ago, I have references to only 40. I realise that some of these have been 'lumped' and 'split' during the last century but I would still love to see a full list from then. What a collection!

*indicates that they bred there.

Reindeer*
Caribou
Scandinavian Moose
American Moose
Timor Deer*
Axis Deer*
Hog Deer*
Indian Sambar*
Malayan Sambar*
Barasingha
Fallow Deer*
Persian Fallow Deer
British Roe*
Siberian Roe* (released outside the park boundary)
Chinese Roe* (released outside the park boundary)
Chinese Water Deer*
White-tailed Deer*
Mule Deer
Pudu
Red Brocket*
Pere David's Deer*
Marsh Deer*
Musk Deer*
Tufted Deer
Pampas Deer
Prince Alfred's Deer
Canadian Wapiti*
Manchurian Wapiti
British Red Deer*
Eld's Deer
Kashmir Deer/Hangul
Barbary Deer
Yarkand Deer (One male sired only hybrids)
Calamian Deer
Reeve's Muntjac*
Indian Muntjac*
Dybowski's Sika
Manchurian Sika
Formosan Sika*
Japanese Sika
And nowadays I believe they have a breeding group of Vietnamese Sika

Incidentally according to ISIS San Diego has one male Cervus elaphus macneilli.
 
I wish they could retrace some of that legacy in a more focussed collection of deer towards endangered taxa. However, whether dry steppe/aridland deer like Yarkand or Bactrian and even the high altitude shou would be able to breed in an alien climate ...??? :confused:

The wallichi/affinis inscription in ISIS is a ghost entry.
 
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