Category: Zoos
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I had heard that the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans was a really great zoo. The people who told me this (not zoo aficionados) were never able to say what was great about it. They didn't mention rare species, successful breeding programs, or brilliant enrichment schemes. It was just really great. I recently got to…
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The experimenters were trying to enliven the lives of zoo animals while simultaneously gathering data. As often happens, not all the data they gathered was in the categories expected. As Hal Markowitz recounts in Behavioral Enrichment in the Zoo, date (1981), he was trying to set up a game for mandrills (Papio sphinx) in a…
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Update on the SF Zoo's tool-flourishing aye-ayes: I recently got a short tour of the normally-closed nocturnal house. This now houses an elderly mouse lemur and a thriving aye-aye family. Sabrina and Warlock produced a son, Dobby, who looks just as eccentric as his elders. He is only the 2nd second-generation aye-aye born in the…
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Afternoon at the zoo. Fake savannah, real giraffes. Fake rocks, real plants. In a real crevice on top of a fake cliff, real weeds growing in real dust. Child: “That giraffe is sleeping on the rock!” It did look as if the giraffe had approached the simulated sandstone cliff and laid her head along the…
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As far as we know there are fewer than half a dozen Yangtze giant soft-shelled turtles left in the world and only one is female. The Yangtze giants (Rafetus swinhoei) are hard to overlook, since they get to be more than a yard long and can weigh a couple of hundred pounds. That means they've…
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