ZSL London Zoo ZSL London Zoo News 2012

wenxue said:
well son you'll be moving in with Grandma, one young lass with an obsession for broccolli and another young lass that walks around with a blanket on her head and carries carrots between her toes.

Does anyone know when Jookie started with the blanket thing? Has she always done that or only since the baby died?
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I wish they would remove the silly (and inaccurate) reference on the signboard to Effie being the 'teenager' - she's nearly twenty which in Gorilla terms means a fully mature female (and from about 11 onwards!)

Mjuku carrying a sack is perhaps substitute behaviour for the baby. I can't remember if she did it previously. If she does breed with Kumbuka she may drop the habit again.
 
wenxue said:
Might be best if Kumbuka isn't told in advance about his new domestic arrangements - well son you'll be moving in with Grandma, one young lass with an obsession for broccolli and another young lass that walks around with a blanket on her head and carries carrots between her toes.
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Fingers crossed, he'll be so pleased to have company at last that he won't be bothered by minor details like these!

Maybe the girls should be warned to keep their heads down if he indulges in his Olympic standard stone/mud/whatever comes to hand throwing :D Is there glass around the enclosure ;)
 
The enclosure is about 60% surrounded by glass! This could be very interesting. As long as he aims well away from my camera and preferably at everyone who was calling all the girls "he" at the weekend.
 
If he relates to the females, his interactions with the public may lessen rather if he has other things to occupy his attention. But if he doesn't they're likely to continue at the present rate.

There are big viewing windows along one (covered) section of the outside, the rest is viewed over water, but the public viewing of the outdoor enclosure is more open-plan(& better!) than at Paignton and the animals seem closer.
 
wenxue said:
Bad enough they seem to have smuggled him out the back door with not a word to the world but to keep on using his image in advertising is a bit much.
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I doubt if there will be any publicity until Kumbuka has been mixed with the females - then, provided all goes well, there can be a 'good news' type story which the media will love. It may seem rather heartless, but ZSL needs good news from the gorillas.

Alan
 
gentle lemur said:
I doubt if there will be any publicity until Kumbuka has been mixed with the females - then, provided all goes well, there can be a 'good news' type story which the media will love. It may seem rather heartless, but ZSL needs good news from the gorillas.

Alan
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ZSL have had real shame with the Gorillas, the males in particular Bobby was the first, then Yeboah who at least had one offspring but it didn't survive. It was very unfortunate with Kesho who is now infertile. Hopefully Kumbuka will be more successful.
 
The bad news stretches back a lot further than that-to the mid 1980's when they blew their chance of forming a proper group by sending away the two young females born to Salome and Zaire, to Belfast Zoo. Had they kept them, as Chessington did in exactly the same situation, they could possibly also have had a flourishing group by now.

Kumbuka will be the 7th male they've had since the successfull(Chessington) Kumba fathered those babies in the 1980's.
 
I made a short visit yesterday (combined with trip to the olympics), the first for over 2 years.

For the first time i saw all the gorillas outside together, one of the older ones was exerting her authority & there was a lot of snarling & grunting at the others and chasing them around. Nothing too agressive though. It did strike me how much better the exhibit looks now that the planting has matured a bit more.

It was my first view of penguin beach, which i thought was excellent, and must now rival Edinburgh as the best i have seen in the UK. It was noticeable how clean the water appeared and gave good underwater viewing, paricularly given the overhanging trees,though they probably cause more of a problem at other times of the year.
Apart from the obvious building work for the tiger exhibit & the reindeer paddock(shame it couldn't have been used for something more interesting!), not much had changed. It was good to see the malayan tapir & okapi outside this time as last time both houses were closed and the species effectively off show.
Despite my lack of time i spent longer than usual in the old Clore, there was a sign saying new bushbabies had arrived from another zoo, didn't say which though.
Had a quick glance at the Mappins, but it only reminded me why i'd avoided it on my previous visit, i'm sure something better could've been done!
 
pipaluk said:
I made a short visit yesterday (combined with trip to the olympics), the first for over 2 years.

For the first time i saw all the gorillas outside together, one of the older ones was exerting her authority & there was a lot of snarling & grunting at the others and chasing them around. Nothing too agressive though. It did strike me how much better the exhibit looks now that the planting has matured a bit more.

It was my first view of penguin beach, which i thought was excellent, and must now rival Edinburgh as the best i have seen in the UK. It was noticeable how clean the water appeared and gave good underwater viewing, paricularly given the overhanging trees,though they probably cause more of a problem at other times of the year.
Apart from the obvious building work for the tiger exhibit & the reindeer paddock(shame it couldn't have been used for something more interesting!), not much had changed. It was good to see the malayan tapir & okapi outside this time as last time both houses were closed and the species effectively off show.
Despite my lack of time i spent longer than usual in the old Clore, there was a sign saying new bushbabies had arrived from another zoo, didn't say which though.
Had a quick glance at the Mappins, but it only reminded me why i'd avoided it on my previous visit, i'm sure something better could've been done!
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Could they possibly be the Edinburgh bushbabies?
 
Pertinax said:
Don't count on it! On paper, with his handraised background and not having seen females since he was born, he should be a disaster breeding-wise. Hope that's not the reality of course.;)
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I don't like the sound of this, however, for all concerned let's try to be optimistic.
 
Pertinax said:
Don't count on it! On paper, with his handraised background and not having seen females since he was born, he should be a disaster breeding-wise. Hope that's not the reality of course.;)
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Durrell's old male 'Ya Kwanza' wasn't that bad and he was handraised. However, he did have contact with females from an earlier age.
 
On the current ITV documentary about ZSL on Sunday, an elderly male diana monkey called 'Frank' was given vetinary treatment before being released into the former colobus cage (it looks as if a taller cage has been constructed for the colobus on the site of the 2 smaller cages that held the dianas).

Would this male, who only arrived at ZSL according to ISIS in the last couple of years, be the same 'Frank' who was at Drusillas briefly after living for many years at Colchester?

Other members stated on here that one of the reasons he left Drusillas was that he was very aggressive. He wasn't shown at ZSL mixing with the two females, does anyone know if he is mixed with them?
 
johnstoni. said:
On the current ITV documentary about ZSL on Sunday, an elderly male diana monkey called 'Frank' was given vetinary treatment before being released into the former colobus cage (it looks as if a taller cage has been constructed for the colobus on the site of the 2 smaller cages that held the dianas).

Would this male, who only arrived at ZSL according to ISIS in the last couple of years, be the same 'Frank' who was at Drusillas briefly after living for many years at Colchester?

Other members stated on here that one of the reasons he left Drusillas was that he was very aggressive. He wasn't shown at ZSL mixing with the two females, does anyone know if he is mixed with them?
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There were 2 cages marked colobus where the diana monkey used to be, not sure if they were new, both were tall, but not particularly big, the documentary stated they were moving to a bigger enclosure, but i wouldnt say the floor dimensions of the two combined looked any bigger than their old one!
I only recall seeing 2 diana monkeys yesterday, both female i would guess, not that there wasn't another i didn't notice.
 
Jordan-Jaguar97 said:
Durrell's old male 'Ya Kwanza' wasn't that bad and he was handraised. However, he did have contact with females from an earlier age.
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Ya Kwanza only ever mated and had offspring with one female at Jersey. He seemed to have problems with the others. And he was a male that had lived in a male/female group previously.

Another male that was formerly at Paignton (Awali) had a more similar background to Kumbuka(handraised/humanised-no females, male group). He entirely failed to breed at Barcelona Zoo and related to the keepers more than the Gorillas- he has since been 'banished' to a male group in France, in a seperate group but at the same zoo where Jersey's Ya Kwanza is.
 
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pipaluk said:
There were 2 cages marked colobus where the diana monkey used to be, not sure if they were new, both were tall, but not particularly big, the documentary stated they were moving to a bigger enclosure, but i wouldnt say the floor dimensions of the two combined looked any bigger than their old one!
I only recall seeing 2 diana monkeys yesterday, both female i would guess, not that there wasn't another i didn't notice.
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Okay, thats weird, those two small sobell cages may be taller, but I would think definitely overall both combined are smaller. So the 'new' enclosure they mentioned really wasn't new. Unless it makes such a difference to have height for the colobus, or if the growing group may need splitting, I don't see the point. The diana monkeys, with such an old male they've admitted isn't really capable of mating, aren't likely to be growing in number anytime soon.

On another note, after they castrated two young male colobus, is it standard practice to castrate a lot of males in captive groups of social mammals? I've often heard of ZSL castrating various animals, yet don't seem to have head of this happening in other collections.
 
Where did the Colobus' move from and to? I'm assuming they were in the first enclosure before the Gorillas, where are they now? I went a month ago but can't remember at all! And I'm positive Frank is kept on his own.

So London has given up all together on the Colobus' going in the Gorilla enclosure, do Bristol still mix theirs?
 
JamesB said:
Where did the Colobus' move from and to? I'm assuming they were in the first enclosure before the Gorillas, where are they now? I went a month ago but can't remember at all! And I'm positive Frank is kept on his own.

So London has given up all together on the Colobus' going in the Gorilla enclosure, do Bristol still mix theirs?
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The Dianas are now in the first enclosure on left, colobus in their 2 old enclosures outside the main exhibit.
I may be wrong but i thought it was debrazza mixed at bristol, & yes london appear to have given up on mixing colobus with the gorillas, the joining walkway has been removed too
 
johnstoni. said:
The diana monkeys, with such an old male they've admitted isn't really capable of mating, aren't likely to be growing in number anytime soon.

is it standard practice to castrate a lot of males in captive groups of social mammals?
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Its so depressing to hear this sort of thing.:( And it really isn't that difficult to source a new breeding male but apathy, logistics, red tape, studbook tardiness etc all seem to play their part resulting in these monkeys, which are dwindling in our zoos, being left unbred for years longer than they need be.

Newquay and Exmoor also have unpaired animals, while for some unexplained and curious reason Paignton's good breeding pair were split up and the male sent away to Europe with no replacement in sight yet. Only Edinburgh and(to a lesser degree) PL in the UK seem to be breeding them at present.

Woburn have a group of Castrated Drills, two of which recently went to Bristol.

Port Lympne have a castrated Drill in their group.

One of the Dutch parks has a castrated Gorilla and so did Belfast(from Holland) until he died.

Twycross have had a castrated chimp in the past- not sure if he's still there.
 
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