Lots of people were in today that asked great questions
about our animals and how we look after them.
Many people ask whether our cats will have cubs, especially Nahla and
Charlie Brown our African lions. The
answer I give is no: most of our cats are elderly, too old to breed and none
are eligible to be studbook registered for conservation breeding purposes. We
therefore do not allow our cats to breed nowadays, although many tiger cubs
were born here back in the eighties. The role of our big cats now is as
ambassadors for their species, helping us to get visitors interested in the
conservation of their wild cousins.
Breeding programmes are managed by experts, usually from the
zoo community, who are in charge of the 'stud book' for a particular species of
animal. The captive breeding population for each relevant species is managed as
one population, even though the animals may be distributed in zoos across
Europe or even the world. Breeding programme managers have all the history of
each individual animal then recommend which animals are most suitable to breed
together for maximum genetic diversity. Arrangements can then be made for
travel between zoos etc. All very
interesting stuff!!
We do have animals on breeding programmes here at the
zoo, mainly Malagasy species including mongoose lemurs Soa (the female) and
McLovin (the male), who was originally caught illegally in Madagascar and sold as
a pet. Many years later he was given to a European zoo and put into the captive
breeding programme because his genes are fabulous!! No babies yet but we live
in hope! Thank you for reading my blog,
I'm here every Monday!!
No comments:
Post a Comment