Your 2018

1: Seeing the wee polar bear at HWP
2: Whipsnade's tigers hitting it off instantly and producing some lovely cubs and the sun bear cub at Chester ... nothing else really strikes me at the moment
3: Personally disappointed in my lack of drive to visit more collections
 
1. Visiting Artis & Blijdorp, seeing Hamish at HWP

2. Long list coming up and in no particular order;

New developments at Edinburgh
Chimp eden at Twycross
Mishmi takin birth at Port Lympne
Tropical house at Marwell
Javan ferret badger at Brno
White headed vulture hatched at Hawk conservancy
Aye aye born at Denver
Borneo earless monitors hatched at Prague & Moscow
Komodo dragon at Birmingham WP
Spix macaw, Bulwer's pheasant and BOP's at PairiDaizi
Sun bears born at Usti & Chester
Maleo at Walsrode
Ussuri brown bear at YWP
Giant hornbill hatched at Zlin
Douc langurs born at Chleby
Kiwi hatched at Avifauna
Bear cuscus born at Wroclaw (DNS)
Andean flamingo eggs at Slimbridge
Black faced spoonbill and Shoebill at Jurong
Shoebill at ACTP
Fairy penguin at Weymouth
White throated guenon at Monkey world
Gaur born at Zoo Berlin
Goliath heron hatched at Sigean
Pairi Daizi announcing fairy penguins and gaur arriving
Longleat's koala and wombat import
Hamerton's growth

Cup kinda full guy me

2.
Death of Nico at Longleat
Al-Wabra closing
The death of 2 elephant calves and the fire at Chester
 
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1.There are so much! TEN new zoo/aquarium this year is my record, and I've manage to get some lifetick from old ones! I would say the dugong in Toba as the best, but there are a lot of honourable mentions.

2. Platypus is going to San Diego


3. The volcanic rabbit is a noshow in Nagoya

4.(I don't know it's favourite or disappointing)
Okapi to China
 
  1. Our 10-day, 10-zoo trip to the Netherlands started with a wedding anniversary day trip to BestZoo, where we were lucky enough to be shown behind the scenes and meet two woolly opposums. The rest of the trip was amazing, but nothing came close to this!


  2. The birth of Chester Zoo’s sun bear cub and the unusual species that keep on arriving at Hamerton, including the wombats!


  3. All Chester Zoo related:

    The elephant calf deaths: Watching the 2 young calves playing and looking happy on Secret Life of the Zoo, knowing their fate is truly heartbreaking.

    Monsoon Forest fire: I saw most of the affected animals a few weeks before the fire. I was in awe of the sheer number of Grosbeaks starlings - I hope some survived.
 
1. Seeing the mindblowing Penguin Conservation Center at the Detroit Zoo
2. The unveiling of Cincinnati Zoo's master plan - sparking one of my most popular videos.
3. Again at the Detroit Zoo, the world famous Arctic Ring of Life was closed without prior warning.
 
1. Spix's macaws and Bulwer's pheasants at Pairi Daiza.
2. I don't follow zoo news very much (and much less "normal" news"). I think I remember more the most fresh ones than the greatest ones. The changes in programs for saving the Javan and Sumatran rhinoceros may be part of this, as well as the few positive notes in the generally bad context of the Vaquita, such as the discovering that they can breed once a year instead each two years.
3. The not-showing bear cuscus at Pairi Daiza and the very bad luck (both in hidden unseen rarities as in general context (raining, running, loosing bus stops, etc)) at Zie-zoo.
 
1. It probably has to be finally seeing Bruce the Echidna at Paignton Zoo!

2. Hearing about the arrival of the wombats at Hamerton (and then seeing them - could have spent the day just watching them.)

3. The two pieces of news which have most upset me this year have been the fire at Chester and the elephant calf deaths there.
 
Chester features so much in the worst news, been a hard year for them
 
1. At Drayton Manor (no less), when a brown lizard climbed a branch in the Reptile House and suddenly turned blue!
Neon blue dragon

Neon blue dragon

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Reptile House, Drayton Manor, 11th March 2018

2. The sun bear cub at Chester.

3. Not directly zoo related, but getting only one half-decent photo when a thresher shark jumped out of the sea several times while I was on a dolphin-watching trip (and we didn't see any dolphins either).
 
1) Got to be a three-way tie between seeing Baby at Duisburg, meeting up with various zoo enthusiasts at the IZES meeting at Hamerton, and my travels around Berlin and Magdeburg with @ThylacineAlive and @ShonenJake13
2) The cavalcade of new species at Hamerton, and the UK first breeding of sun bear at Chester
3) The last tarsier in Europe dying just before I visited the Netherlands.
 
1) Taking a trip to San Diego and visiting the Zoo and Safari Park and seeing so many new species; the best of which were koalas, Tasmanian devils, red pandas, pygmy hippos, and #1 seeing a Matchie's Tree-kangaroo for the first time.
2) The Platypus likely coming to San Diego.
3) Missing so much of Sea World San Diego because I was stuck with a group from school! I missed out on the polar bears, sea turtles, walrus, beluga whales, and emperor penguins!!!
 
kiang said:
Chester features so much in the worst news, been a hard year for them
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Very true but let's not forget that they've had some fantastic developments as well! Plenty of wonderful bird arrivals (hopefully those in Monsoon are ok), Malagasy arrivals/development of what will surely be a fantastic Madagascar exhibit, the breeding of several of their endangered/harder to breed species.

~Thylo
 
1) Three-way tie between having visited 45 brand new collections, bringing my total to 111 and adding three to my Top 5 in my most successful zoo year yet; getting to meet so many wonderful ZooChatters for the first time such as @DavidBrown, @fkalltheway, and @ShonenJake13 among others and getting to reconnect with some friends from past travels such as @jayjds2, @TeaLovingDave, @zoogiraffe, @Nisha, etc.; getting my shoulder scratched open by a particularly wonderful bucketlist mammal (if you know, you know).

2) All the Hamerton and Chester arrival news.

3) Tie between a behind the scenes tour of a zoo I've always dreamed of visiting being cancelled during the middle of my visit day of, and finding many of my target species either off-display or hiding at Magdeburg Zoo.

~Thylo
 
TeaLovingDave said:
I can only think of the two - jackal and mongoose. Any others?
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Variegated Squirrel, bee-eater, francolin, and agouti would be the others. The two you listed and the squirrel are the largest disappointments. At least I have the polecat to keep me warm, though :p

~Thylo
 
Ah yes, forgot all those were lifers for you :p though you did vaguely see the francolin I recall.

The bee-eater and mongoose were the big blows for me.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Ah yes, forgot all those were lifers for you :p though you did vaguely see the francolin I recall.

The bee-eater and mongoose were the big blows for me.
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That was @ShonenJake13 I believe, I never even got a glimpse unfortunately. Similar situation with the yellow-toothed cavy at Plzen. I managed to miss that species at five collections if memory serves.

~Thylo
 
kiang said:
It's that time of year again folks, time to reflect on the year past, so here we go......

3 LITTLE QUESTIONS TO ANSWER ON YOUR 2018

1. PERSONAL ZOO VISIT HIGHLIGHT

2. FAVOURITE PIECE OF ZOO NEWS

3. BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
Click to expand...


1. I went to a lot of new zoos this year, so this one is tough!! But getting to feed cheetahs is definitely #1.
2. All of the cheetah cubs born this year, and the possibility of hyenas coming to Delaware.
3. Bronx.
 
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