EXOTICS NEWS

The latest from the world of exotic animals

Illegal Servals Privately Held

Former dancer and backing singer to the singer Sinitta, Mr Warren Polydorou, 57, was fined for keeping a pair of servals without a licence on his friends land in Colby, Norfolk. The animals were spotted in an insecure enclosure by a thermal imaging camera attached to a drone. Apparently the animals, two year-olds “Nala” and “Simba”, were bought 18 months ago by Polydorou from a friend in London for £1,500 pair - as a favour, but “the paperwork did not follow” he said. He was fined £674 costs and £40 for evading a DWAA licence.

New Monkey Valley Exhibit

At ZSL London Zoo the Eastern black & white colobus monkeys were given access to the new “Monkey Valley” exhibit in the redeveloped former Snowdon Aviary for the first time in June via a tunnel which connects their new indoor housing with their redeveloped outside facility. With 1,347 new plants and trees, more than 800 metres of rope, multi-level sunbathing platforms and a 30ft waterfall to explore, the monkeys will be given six weeks to get used to their new domain. It is planned to add some African grey parrots to the mixed species exhibit in due course.

Three Sumatran tiger cubs were born to female “Gaysha” and male “Asim”.

She was originally bred at Pairi Daiza in Belgium in 2008 and is one of only 8 shoebills in European collections. She is being housed in the former scarlet ibis aviary at the zoo and hopefully may be paired up with a male from the EEP breeding programme in due course.

Orang Birth

U.K.`s First Elephant Browse Forest

Noah`s Ark Zoo Farm at Wraxall near Bristol has opened the first homegrown, natural, “elephant browse forest” in the U.K. A vast 5,000 square metre forest of Willow, Aspen and Poplar trees has been incorporated into their existing 20 –acre enclosure –which is not only the largest elephant enclosure in the U.K. and Northern Europe, it is the only facility for African bull elephants in the U.K. and it is currently home to “Shaka” and “Janu”. The zoo have been growing plantations of browse trees at various locations around the zoo for the last few years.

Shoebill on View

A female shoebill or whale-billed stork (Balaeniceps rex) has arrived at Exmoor Zoo in north Devon from a private facility in Cornwall. The bird, named “Abou”, is the first shoebill to be put on public view in the U.K. for many years and is the only example of its kind in the U.K.

At Dudley Zoo & Castle a male Bornean orangutan has been born to 30 yearold female “Jazz” and 33 year-old male “Djimat”. Upper Primates Section Leader, Pat Stevens, said: “The birth of one of the planet’s rarest animal species is so incredibly special and here at DZC we’re all thrilled with our wonderful new arrival. “Jazz, who was born here herself, is an experienced mum, having already reared our youngest female, Sprout, who is now 11 years-old and she’s once again already proving to be a doting parent”.

Keepers were able to confirm Jazz’s pregnancy with a urine test and have been closely monitoring her during her eight-and-a-half month gestation, upping her daily food intake and supplementing the new mum with specialist postnatal vitamins since the birth.

UK’s first Diabetic Giant Anteater

The UK`s first diabetic giant anteater has been fitted with monitor used for humans. Vets and keepers at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) are managing the first reported case of diabetes in a giant anteater at Edinburgh Zoo with a blood glucose monitor usually used on humans.

The female, named “Nala” appeared on the BBC Scotland series, Inside the Zoo, earlier this year exhibiting the same symptoms as people do before being diagnosed with the condition. Dr Stephanie Mota, resident veterinary surgeon at RZSS said, “Keepers first discovered something was wrong when Nala was losing weight despite eating the same amount, or sometimes even more, than usual. We carried out a full health check under general anaesthetic, running lots of tests and found that Nala has type 1 diabetes.” While the condition is known to occur in domestic cats, dogs and in tamandua in the wild, no other cases have been reported in giant anteaters. Stephanie continued, “Our keepers did an amazing job quickly training Nala to take an insulin injection every day but the challenge for us was how to continuously monitor her blood glucose levels to ensure she was receiving the perfect dose. Taking bloods daily was not an option, and we did initially start monitoring the levels through urine samples, but we decided to contact some companies who produced human glucose monitors to try and streamline the process, and find a way which would be the least invasive for Nala."

“Dexcom, leading providers of this technology, kindly donated the monitor to our charity and we were able to apply it during one of her training sessions, which now allows us to check her blood glucose levels through an app remotely. Due to her lovely personality, Nala is the ideal candidate for this technology which helps us, and her amazing team of keepers, manage her condition in the best possible way.” The RZSS team recently won a bronze award in the British Association for Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) awards for their efforts in animal husbandry, care and breeding for their work in managing Nala’s condition. The wildlife conservation charity also works internationally with Dr Arnaud Desbiez from the Wild Animal Conservation Institute (ICAS) on the Anteaters and

Highways project for the protection of giant anteaters in Brazil against road traffic accidents which pose a serious threat to the species’ long-term survival in the wild.

Zoo Help Release Crayfish

More than 200 native white-clawed crayfish were released into safe river sites in Somerset and Hampshire as part of a coordinated effort to boost the dwindling number of this endangered crustacean.

This species is the only native freshwater crayfish in the United Kingdom but it is at risk from non-native, invasive crayfish such as the American signal crayfish. The American signal crayfish not only out-competes the white-clawed crayfish, but carries a fungal disease, called crayfish plague, which is deadly to our native species. Invasive signal crayfish species also have serious economic implications. Their burrows destabilise banks and increase the chance of flooding, causing erosion and collapse and have decimated invertebrate and fish populations within our rivers.

As a result, the native white-clawed crayfish are listed as Endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

Bristol Zoo Gardens is home to a hatchery where hundreds of crayfish are bred and reared to adulthood each year, before being released into safe rivers and lakes, free from signal crayfish predators, to boost wild populations. Dr Jen Nightingale, UK Conservation Manager with Bristol Zoological Society, leads the South West Crayfish Partnership. She said: “We are building up populations using captive-born crayfish in the hope that we will prevent them becoming extinct. “Numbers are in decline and, without projects like this, white-clawed crayfish could disappear from south west England in the next 10 years.”

The crayfish have been released ready for the start of the breeding season. Bristol Zoological Society’s crayfish hatcheries are the only ones in England from where thousands of white-clawed crayfish have been taken to ark sites all over the country.

Dr Nightingale said research was taking place across Europe on invasive crayfish control methods, including investigations into curbing the reproduction of signal crayfish, to help ensure the survival of the white-clawed crayfish and other native European crayfish species.

Flexible exotic insurance for every budget. Get a quote at britishpetinsurance.co.uk or call us on 01444 708840

U.K - Bred Red Kites To Spain

Due to the incredible success of the red kite breeding and release programme during the 80s and 90s in the U.K. it was been decided to supply U.K.-bred birds to release into the wild in Spain. In cooperation with Forestry England, Natural England, Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, the RSPB and the Accion por el Mundo Salvaje (Amus) in Spain, the first batch of 15 juvenile birds haven been sent to Madrid, here they will settle in some holding aviaries and be fitted with monitoring technology before being released into the wild at Extremadura and Andalusia in South western Spain this summer. The birds hail from the forests of Northamptonshire.

The RSPB's Duncan Orr-Ewing said “30 birds will be released this year, with plans to release 30 more birds in each of the next two years. You need to find 90 to 100 birds to create a sustainable population in a given area. That should be sufficient to create a new breeding nucleus of the birds."

Red kites are found across Europe and numbers have increased overall in recent years, although there are still drastic declines in southern Spain, Portugal, and locally in Germany. The UK is now home to more than 10% of the world population of red kites.

Dr Ian Evans of Natural England went out to Spain in the 1990s to collect wild red kites for release in the Chiltern Hills. He said the ones returning this week may be of Spanish descent. "Those birds we took from Spain in the '90s have done really well in Britain - we're talking 4,000-plus pairs in the UK now, which is an incredible success story," he said.

In the 1990s, red kites in Spain were doing well in comparison to the UK, where years of human persecution, including egg collecting, poisoning and shooting, had pushed the bird to near extinction. While red kites in the UK have since boomed, populations in some parts of southern Spain have gone the other way due to a number of factors. The birds of prey are threatened in parts of Spain by factors including poisoning and a lack of food.

The world`s largest frog Spotted

The goliath frog – the world’s largest frog has been spotted for the first time in Equatorial Guinea in almost two decades by field researchers from Bristol Zoological Society. Goliath frogs are classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. They can grow to be as big as some house cats, measuring up to 34 centimetres in length and weighing more than three kilograms!

Collated and written by Paul Irven.