Worst Zoo Misses, Regrets and Gut Punches

Visited San Diego Zoo and Safari Park in 2006 before I really cared about zoos and their animals. So I just skipped Horn and Hoof Mesa because all I thought it had was goats, and I never took a picture of the Northern White Rhino at the Safari Park.
 
Missing pretty much all the birds at the San Diego zoo and Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum because I was not at the time into birds.

Apparently Toledo zoo has a mexican dwarf porcupine in their show? If this is true that's number 2 because I decided not to see the show on my visit.
 
I actually went to Monterey bay aquarium with my family a DAY before they decided to put the ocean sunfishes on exhibit in 2017. Never felt so angry over a zoo or aquarium in my life...

Except when I missed the harpy eagles in LA zoo since the birds decided to be no shows.
 
The Dallas World Aquarium not being able to the see Water Possum/ Yapok. I saw the exhibit and waited, and waited no show nothing.
 
A few years ago I went to the Antwerp zoo. I had a great time, saw some rarities and really enjoyed it. However, I was also limited for time. As such I skipped the species I deemed common/not worth it. One of those animals were the Western lowland gorillas, so I didn't bother going to the exhibit. This was back when both Victoria and Amahoro were both around. So yeah that was a pretty huge miss.
Also, I haven't really lived it down by a few members (you know who you are:p)
 
Worst ever (almost) gut punch was walking into the Rio Negra house at Duisberg and not seeing Baby the river dolphin anywhere. Took at least five minutes of anxious staring before he swam into view.
 
I somehow managed to miss the entire Creature's of the Wollemi exhibit at Taronga Zoo. I got home and was looking at the map when I realised.
 
Ah, the sting of regret. Something I know all too well.

One of the biggest misses I remember from my zoo-visiting days was not seeing the nine-banded armadillo when I went to Paignton Zoo. It was one of my main reasons for visiting - not long after Paignton went out of the species and now only two zoos in Europe house the species.
Honourable mention for a miss was when Colchester very briefly held an elegant crested tinamou - at the time the only one of the species in a UK zoo. I went to the zoo perhaps a week after it was spotted but despite my best efforts it eluded me and seemed to disappear completely from the zoo within a few weeks of its arrival.

In hindsight, another regret was that when I did work experience at Tropical Wings Zoo I was given the opportunity to handle either an albino striped skunk or a hand-reared marbled polecat. I chose the former, not knowing how rare the latter was. Since I found my real interest in small carnivores, this has become an increasingly sore regret.

Also, my first and only visit to Chester was when the zoo still housed Mauritius kestrel. I remember the aviary quite vividly but cannot bring the bird to mind. Not knowing whether I saw it or not is something that really bothers me.
 
DesertRhino150 said:
not long after Paignton went out of the species and now only two zoos in Europe house the species.
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Potentially not even that! Neither collection listed on ZTL is visited v.often so listings are often outdated.

DesertRhino150 said:
In hindsight, another regret was that when I did work experience at Tropical Wings Zoo I was given the opportunity to handle either an albino striped skunk or a hand-reared marbled polecat
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You numpty :p
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Potentially not even that! Neither collection listed on ZTL is visited v.often so listings are often outdated.
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Kiev has the EARAZA 2017 yearbook as source, so that should be reliable, the last source for the Italian holding is 2013 (Zoochat), so might be outdated indeed....
 
Ah, I remembered now another thing altough I'm not sure if it can fit in this thread. When I go to San Diego my goal is the zoo and every other biodiversity collection near the zone. I was just few kilometers away from where Vaquitas live! But by this time I didn't knew that it's endemic to northern California Gulf, and much less that will be completely extinct soon in front of our eyes. If I did knew that, I would have at least tried to cross the frontier to Mexico and take a whalewatching tour for try to photograph a vaquita!
And talking about whalewatching, in the same travel I did one, where a big miss or gut punch was the complete absence of blue whales. I was in the best time of year in a location where 50% of world population of blue whales pass the summer, and we only saw odontocetes, that are fascinating but are not blue whales...
 
I think I have had pretty good luck, but here are some disappointing incidents:
  • I went to Metro Richmond Zoo in hopes to see the new baby tapir. I had no luck. The keeper even tried to coax them out of their holding area, but mom was napping.
  • In 2014, I traveled to Cincinnati and Columbus and because of certain days or timing, I missed the cheetah run at both of the zoos (2017 I was able to see both of them).
  • I was hoping to see the Baird's tapir at the Franklin Park Zoo, but there were on an incline that had an almost impossible viewing. I was able to spot a nose.
  • I wanted to see the Southern tamandua when they were exhibited at the Virginia Zoo, but they were sleeping in their buckets all day.
 
oflory said:
Worst ever (almost) gut punch was walking into the Rio Negra house at Duisberg and not seeing Baby the river dolphin anywhere. Took at least five minutes of anxious staring before he swam into view.
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Same happened to me on saturday and my first thing (i have never not seem him early in the morning) was: oh noooooo. I actually captured a poor keeper and asked where he was with this hysterical glance in my eyes. The guy looked at me and said: ok, he is alive but still pissed off about the noise from yesterday, he is in the back tank.
 
SabineB said:
Same happened to me on saturday and my first thing (i have never not seem him early in the morning) was: oh noooooo. I actually captured a poor keeper and asked where he was with this hysterical glance in my eyes. The guy looked at me and said: ok, he is alive but still pissed off about the noise from yesterday, he is in the back tank.
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It's strange to think there will be ZooChatters (Europeans, the rest get a pass), who either never got around to visiting Duisburg before Baby died, booked a visit but he died before they got there, or joined after the unhappy event and then found out what they missed. Presumably there are plenty of current active members in the first group.
 
oflory said:
Worst ever (almost) gut punch was walking into the Rio Negra house at Duisberg and not seeing Baby the river dolphin anywhere. Took at least five minutes of anxious staring before he swam into view.
Click to expand...

SabineB said:
Same happened to me on saturday and my first thing (i have never not seem him early in the morning) was: oh noooooo. I actually captured a poor keeper and asked where he was with this hysterical glance in my eyes. The guy looked at me and said: ok, he is alive but still pissed off about the noise from yesterday, he is in the back tank.
Click to expand...

Funnily enough much the same thing happened to me initially when I visited in February; when we entered the Rio Negro house at opening time Baby was nowhere to be seen. However, as we knew about his off-display tank we tried to see if we could spot him there through the vegetation separating this area from the tortoise exhibit visible from a raised platform and *did* just about see him swimming back and forth. Having therefore confirmed he was still alive, we felt comfortable leaving the house and visiting the eastern half of the zoo before returning. On our return he was in the display exhibit and remained so for the rest of the day.
 
FunkyGibbon said:
It's strange to think there will be ZooChatters (Europeans, the rest get a pass), who either never got around to visiting Duisburg before Baby died, booked a visit but he died before they got there, or joined after the unhappy event and then found out what they missed. Presumably there are plenty of current active members in the first group.
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@FunkyGibbon please don't talk about Baby in the past tense like that, you got me worried! I'm booked to go to Duisburg in a few short, and incredibly tense weeks of daily Duisburg-thread-checking :confused:
 
I have never heard about Baby being in bad health so I am not particularly worried about him dying anytime soon.
 
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