Not pademelon
Yeah I know, but I wanted to emphasize my thoughts on the pademelon
I'd probably take a wombat over a potoroo, but not sure when it comes to Koalas as I quite like them more than many other posters might.~Thylo
ZooChat Cup Group C: Columbus vs Plzen
- Thread starter CGSwans
- Start date
Yeah I know, but I wanted to emphasize my thoughts on the pademelon
I'd probably take a wombat over a potoroo, but not sure when it comes to Koalas as I quite like them more than many other posters might.~Thylo
Yeah I know, but I wanted to emphasize my thoughts on the pademelon
~Thylo
I’ve always thought sending koalas overseas was a bit unnecessary. If foreigners want to see permanently intoxicated, STD-infected Australians who sit around doing nothing all day they can go into any backpacker hostel on the planet.
but I purposely skipped kangaroos and wallabies because, while some species are rare, in general those animals are ubiquitous... and also I was tired
And yet you still listed the macropod species held by Columbus
Brushtail Possums are less commonly-seen in Europe than are koala
and outside the UK, which rather specialises in potoroo, aforementioned species is very scarce indeed in Europe.Yes, but you did say you deliberately omitted Plzen's macropods (which includes those pademelons) as generally common and not worth mentioning
Let's heat up the discussion a little for I am in a provocative mood:
@Giant Panda - tell us why Columbus deserves a clean sweep and Plzen merits no recognition at all.
@sooty mangabey - ditto, but in reverse!
for I am in a provocative mood:@Giant Panda - tell us why Columbus deserves a clean sweep and Plzen merits no recognition at all.
@sooty mangabey - ditto, but in reverse!
Ok...buckle up ladies and gentlemen, we are in for a long ride. I would suggest you find a comfortable chair, make some delicious beverage to drink as I'll try to shed a little bit of light on some things that were already mentioned here from the perspective of small mammals' keeper in Plzen. Mostly I'll be going against arguments from excellent critique by @lintworm. The only thing I missed there is what was the time of his last visit as I feel that it is a pretty important factor but I get to that.
Plzen and small mammals...a lot has been said and written over the years so let's put it together. We can all agree that the collection here is absolutely stunning. Our section features a plethora of rodents, marsupials and (I know they don't count but they have to be mentioned) prosimians + one carnivore species. Some species also belong under other sections either as a backup group or it is a practical decision so we don't have to waste time running around the whole zoo. This huge collection is a result of an unbelievable amount of work made by our small mammals and birds curator and main botanist in one person - Tomas Pes. I'm sure some of you already met him or at least heard about him. I don't want to make it too personal but I feel like this need to be said. It's mostly thanks to him that Plzen is now where it is - in both a good and bad way. He has an excellent knowledge of many fauna and flora species, which results in wonderfully themed exhibits in the whole zoo. He does have the "collector" vibe sometimes, but it seems like in the last 2 years or so, he actually hit some limit. May it be issues with lack of space, not enough staff, veterinary reasons, or a combination of all of these reasons, the collection of species in sections he is in charge of is actually decreasing...During last year/year and a half, the bird collection lost around 100 species, some rodents/marsupials are gone as well. Ok, he still occasionally does some "collecting" like when he brings us bunch of wild-caught mice from Czech wilderness or that Jerboa failure from the beginning of this year (but to be fair, everyone who bought them failed miserably), but otherwise he knows the limit our section has.
That brings me to the next point of critique - not adequate conditions. I want to object a bit here, as I feel this is more of an issue in other sections (birds especially), but not ours...If I go exhibit by exhibit - the big on show terrariums for rodents are fine, we got rid of that hideous wall for jirds, new exhibits for Naked mole rats and Etruscan shrew are perfectly adequate. In the off-show area, it's honestly a bit worse, some of the cages are just borderline ok. And terrariums for mice are fine if you can manage the groups in them well. That leaves us only with those atrocious plastic boxes you usually see used for laboratory mice/rats, BUT THOSE ARE GOING TO BE PHASED OUT IN COMING MONTHS, and hopefully, the only time when they will be used again are animal transports. In other sections - the enclosures for wallabies/kangaroos are fine IMO. The worst offenders are those small terrariums for rodents in every of the hexagon-shaped bird aviaries, but from 10 of these terrariums, only 4 are being used (and the empty ones doesn't look like there will be used soon). The species there are - Persian jird, Mongolian jird, Siberian flying squirrel and Striped field mouse. In my opinion, the terrarium for striped field mice is perfectly fine, for mongolian jirds it's ok, but persian jirds and flying squirrels are a no-go for me and they shouldn't be there.
Regarding the last point @lintworm issued - Plzen as the founder of captive population. I'm not a zoo-history nerd myself so I can't overwhelm you with raw data. But my feeling is, Plzen never really was the place for this to happen as some of the rarely kept rodents are established in private sector but not in zoos, and as been already discussed in other threads, their presence in zoos is only because of personal interest of curator/zookeeper. Majority of species we have there is breeding regularly, if we are founders of European population or not. And in the case of the few that don't breed, we are constantly trying new ways of keeping them in hope we find the ideal way and the breeding starts...
So this is my opening post to get the discussion going a bit, now to the scoring. 2-1 for Plzen seemed like a no-brainer...BUT, and forgive me for being so personal, I have to follow my heart and go with a clean sweep for Plzen
They say, that you never forget "the first one" and Plzen was the first that gave me the opportunity to fulfill my dream working as a zookeeper and I will by always immensely grateful for that. This year, it's the third summer I'm spending here and in those three years, I learned so many things and skills here, met some great people...it just felt wrong not to go with the full mark 
Ok, it was partly because after going through Columbus's gallery here, I didn't really saw anything so much better exhibitry-wise. (If someone can provide me with a bigger number of exhibit pics, I'll maybe reevaluate) and the few really great species I would love to be in charge of one day, aren't really enough to be the emotional value...so I'm going (so far) with 3-0 Plzen.
Plzen and small mammals...a lot has been said and written over the years so let's put it together. We can all agree that the collection here is absolutely stunning. Our section features a plethora of rodents, marsupials and (I know they don't count but they have to be mentioned) prosimians + one carnivore species. Some species also belong under other sections either as a backup group or it is a practical decision so we don't have to waste time running around the whole zoo. This huge collection is a result of an unbelievable amount of work made by our small mammals and birds curator and main botanist in one person - Tomas Pes. I'm sure some of you already met him or at least heard about him. I don't want to make it too personal but I feel like this need to be said. It's mostly thanks to him that Plzen is now where it is - in both a good and bad way. He has an excellent knowledge of many fauna and flora species, which results in wonderfully themed exhibits in the whole zoo. He does have the "collector" vibe sometimes, but it seems like in the last 2 years or so, he actually hit some limit. May it be issues with lack of space, not enough staff, veterinary reasons, or a combination of all of these reasons, the collection of species in sections he is in charge of is actually decreasing...During last year/year and a half, the bird collection lost around 100 species, some rodents/marsupials are gone as well. Ok, he still occasionally does some "collecting" like when he brings us bunch of wild-caught mice from Czech wilderness or that Jerboa failure from the beginning of this year (but to be fair, everyone who bought them failed miserably), but otherwise he knows the limit our section has.
That brings me to the next point of critique - not adequate conditions. I want to object a bit here, as I feel this is more of an issue in other sections (birds especially), but not ours...If I go exhibit by exhibit - the big on show terrariums for rodents are fine, we got rid of that hideous wall for jirds, new exhibits for Naked mole rats and Etruscan shrew are perfectly adequate. In the off-show area, it's honestly a bit worse, some of the cages are just borderline ok. And terrariums for mice are fine if you can manage the groups in them well. That leaves us only with those atrocious plastic boxes you usually see used for laboratory mice/rats, BUT THOSE ARE GOING TO BE PHASED OUT IN COMING MONTHS, and hopefully, the only time when they will be used again are animal transports. In other sections - the enclosures for wallabies/kangaroos are fine IMO. The worst offenders are those small terrariums for rodents in every of the hexagon-shaped bird aviaries, but from 10 of these terrariums, only 4 are being used (and the empty ones doesn't look like there will be used soon). The species there are - Persian jird, Mongolian jird, Siberian flying squirrel and Striped field mouse. In my opinion, the terrarium for striped field mice is perfectly fine, for mongolian jirds it's ok, but persian jirds and flying squirrels are a no-go for me and they shouldn't be there.
Regarding the last point @lintworm issued - Plzen as the founder of captive population. I'm not a zoo-history nerd myself so I can't overwhelm you with raw data. But my feeling is, Plzen never really was the place for this to happen as some of the rarely kept rodents are established in private sector but not in zoos, and as been already discussed in other threads, their presence in zoos is only because of personal interest of curator/zookeeper. Majority of species we have there is breeding regularly, if we are founders of European population or not. And in the case of the few that don't breed, we are constantly trying new ways of keeping them in hope we find the ideal way and the breeding starts...
So this is my opening post to get the discussion going a bit, now to the scoring. 2-1 for Plzen seemed like a no-brainer...BUT, and forgive me for being so personal, I have to follow my heart and go with a clean sweep for Plzen
They say, that you never forget "the first one" and Plzen was the first that gave me the opportunity to fulfill my dream working as a zookeeper and I will by always immensely grateful for that. This year, it's the third summer I'm spending here and in those three years, I learned so many things and skills here, met some great people...it just felt wrong not to go with the full mark Ok, it was partly because after going through Columbus's gallery here, I didn't really saw anything so much better exhibitry-wise. (If someone can provide me with a bigger number of exhibit pics, I'll maybe reevaluate) and the few really great species I would love to be in charge of one day, aren't really enough to be the emotional value...so I'm going (so far) with 3-0 Plzen.
My visit was in 2017 and I am glad to here things have been improving since then. It is good to hear that e.g. Kowari and Garden dormouse are not kept anymore in these hexagons. In the bounds of this competition that mainly leaves the Quoll area as a particular weak spot (if this enclosure is unchanged). I hope similar improvements are being done for small carnivores, primates and birds as this is were Plzen was imo the serial offender in squeezing too many species in tiny enclosures.
Interesting - the most recently-released annual inventory (covering the entirety of 2018) doesn't contain anything close to this many bird losses, which suggests a massive drop in the last 6 months or so. Any particularly noteworthy losses?
Care to elaborate, out of interest (via PM perhaps, so as to avoid pulling the discussion off-topic?)
Eastern Quoll are - for the time being at least - no longer kept in the collection.
So that was my opinion now to add some context/answer some speculations:
Aardvark is coming soon to Plzen as well, and to be precise we have Hyraxes - 2 species present already, thrid being eagerly wanted, subject to space availability.
Bat species present now: Straw-colored fruit bat, Egyptian fruit-bat, Rodrigues fruit bat, Pale spear-nosed bat, Seba's short-tailed bat, Pallas's long-tongued bat, Southern long-nosed bat
Owned by zoo but loaned elsewhere: Indian fruit bat, Gambian epauletted
Those are data from the latest annual report. Species in italics are already present in very low numbers, so they might not be in collection anymore.
I'm not sure if three can count as several, the lost species are - Quoll, Kowari and striped possum.
The "100 species down" was an official decision made director himself AFAIK, but if the annual report doesn't suggest this drop it's either a) phasing out is going veeery slow or b) as both curator and director can be pretty hot-headed sometimes, it was result of some "minor disagreement" between them and since that, they made peace and forget about it...and this seems like a very plausible option to me. (I think I can even very safely guess the reason of the conflict, I'll PM it to you as well)
Aardvark is coming soon to Plzen as well, and to be precise we have Hyraxes - 2 species present already, thrid being eagerly wanted, subject to space availability.
Bat species present now: Straw-colored fruit bat, Egyptian fruit-bat, Rodrigues fruit bat, Pale spear-nosed bat, Seba's short-tailed bat, Pallas's long-tongued bat, Southern long-nosed bat
Owned by zoo but loaned elsewhere: Indian fruit bat, Gambian epauletted
Those are data from the latest annual report. Species in italics are already present in very low numbers, so they might not be in collection anymore.
I'm not sure if three can count as several, the lost species are - Quoll, Kowari and striped possum.
The "100 species down" was an official decision made director himself AFAIK, but if the annual report doesn't suggest this drop it's either a) phasing out is going veeery slow
or b) as both curator and director can be pretty hot-headed sometimes, it was result of some "minor disagreement" between them and since that, they made peace and forget about it...and this seems like a very plausible option to me. (I think I can even very safely guess the reason of the conflict, I'll PM it to you as well)
sooty mangabey
Well-Known Member
My opinion in this one comes from my response to both zoos. It is very much a function of the way I like zoos, and is thus a wholly personal response that would not be shared, I am sure, by various ZC folk, such as @lintworm, @Giant Panda or @ANyhuis (although I am sure they’d have different reasons for disagreeing).Let's heat up the discussion a little
@Giant Panda - tell us why Columbus deserves a clean sweep and Plzen merits no recognition at all.
@sooty mangabey - ditto, but in reverse!
I love Pilsen - and in particular I love its collections of birds, and small mammals. There has been comment, above, denigrating the husbandry seen at Pilsen. I don’t know enough about the approach seen in the zoo, but I do not believe that any animal at Pilsen suffers from being there (with the possible exception of those Slender Mongooses, whose enclosure really was very small). Of course it is not fashionable to celebrate a so-called “stamp collector” mentality, but I unashamedly, and increasingly, cherish such an approach. I like, very much, the desire, evident at Pilsen, to hold as many different species as possible.
Columbus? It’s clearly a very, very good zoo. Its popularity is deserved. But when I visited a year ago, i found it all a little charmless. There was nothing there from which i came away feeling delighted. Rather, it seemed to lack personality or charisma - and it had elements which, for me, were deeply unattractive (that “Bob and Evelyn’s Roadhouse” nonsense detracts from some of the small mammal stuff, for example). One thing for which I would give credit: a very nice Manatee exhibit. But that aside - nothing that, for me, approaches the wonder of Pilsen.
Funnily enough, the Kowari terrarium was one of the bigger, also I forget to add - my info goes for zoo only, I don't know what is the current situation in Dinopark, I'll have to go check it one day...
As @TeaLovingDave already said, the Quolls are gone, their exhibit now houses Water rats, the part for pademelons is unchanged.
Unfortunately, I don't see it very optimistically...The main reason would be obviously funding, that is something zoo needs to really sort out. But in case of carnivores there is also a sort of "unwillingness" of keepers I feel. This is big advantage small mammals section has - amazing team of dedicated keepers, who are willing to do something more than only their classic duties, to compensate the animal life in sometimes sub-standard conditions. The carnivore keepers lack this a bit I feel, and that holds the section back...Primates and birds have great keeper teams as well, the issue in this sections are purely the old exhibits/off-show areas.
The "100 species down" was an official decision made director himself AFAIK, but if the annual report doesn't suggest this drop it's either a) phasing out is going veeery slow
Out of curiosity I just flicked through the 2018 inventory report, and a total of 36 species left the collection over the course of the year - largely the deaths of singleton passerines and the departure of waterfowl.
I think my overall message was garbled by my execution.
I was just providing a complete list from the thread @Chlidonias linked.
I'll grant you that point on the potoroo. Maybe @CGSwans or another Australian can back me up on this, but aren't brushtail possums a trash animal on that continent?
I didn't realize that pademelons were anything special or of conservation value (we don't have them in the US). If I'd known, I would've mentioned it. I just thought @ThylacineAlive had misread my post and thought I was dismissing them, when actually I don't know much about them to begin with.
Then again, I don't really know anything about potoroos either. My continent's marsupial collection sucks.
And yet you still listed the macropod species held by Columbus
I was just providing a complete list from the thread @Chlidonias linked.
Brushtail Possums are less commonly-seen in Europe than are koala
I'll grant you that point on the potoroo. Maybe @CGSwans or another Australian can back me up on this, but aren't brushtail possums a trash animal on that continent?
Yes, but you did say you deliberately omitted Plzen's macropods (which includes those pademelons) as generally common and not worth mentioning
I didn't realize that pademelons were anything special or of conservation value (we don't have them in the US). If I'd known, I would've mentioned it. I just thought @ThylacineAlive had misread my post and thought I was dismissing them, when actually I don't know much about them to begin with.
Then again, I don't really know anything about potoroos either. My continent's marsupial collection sucks.
Maybe @CGSwans or another Australian can back me up on this, but aren't brushtail possums a trash animal on that continent?
Well, so are koalas
I'm going 2-1 for Plzen. Basically, if I had to choose which of the two zoos I'd visit to see miscellaneous mammals then Columbus wouldn't even factor. There's really no contest there. But I don't want to leave Columbus out in the cold entirely so they get that third point.
One significant and sort of wierd loss I found is koel cuckoo...I know for sure she isn't present now, annual report doesn't list her at all, but according to zootierliste she was both signed and seen in May 2018...
One significant and sort of wierd loss I found is koel cuckoo...I know for sure she isn't present now, annual report doesn't list her at all, but according to zootierliste she was both signed and seen in May 2018...
Bit of a pity about that loss, as that's a species I haven't seen
but you are correct that the annual report fails to list the species whatsoever for some reason - despite the fact that as you note it was definitely present during 2018, and the 2017 annual report does list the species!I changed my vote from 2-1 Plzen to 3-0 Plzen because of HOMIN96's excellent explanation of some of their weak points, but mostly because of what Chlidonias said. If I wanted to visit a zoo because of their miscellaneous mammals, Plzen would be in the top 5 zoos for sure, but Columbus would not even be on the radar. Plzen, even with its outdated enclosures and collector-y vibe, is just a completely different league in this category.
I'm changing my vote to 3-0 for Plzen too. Plzen has long been in my top choices for "if I went to Europe which zoos would I visit" mental list, and the sole reason for that is their small mammal collection. On the other hand, I've never wanted to visit Columbus for any reason.
I'm still very interested to hear the opinion of @Giant Panda as he increasingly swims against the tide! 