Animal shows, yeah, I’ll tell you, you definitely need showmanship because they can be deadly boring or disinteresting if the person who’s on stage isn’t good at performing. This was reinforced by the now CEO of ZooTampa who said we need someone with an entertainment background to be on stage… Read More
Did I answer your question or did I miss part of it?… Read More
Okay. All right. Yeah. Read More
And by the way, the Omanis track these animals, they’re with them all the time in Jeeps, following them around. He went seven days in one direction looking for rain. And they tracked that, he didn’t find it. He turned around and came back to where he started. And that’s… Read More
But that’s been validated by the Omanis. So that was certainly one of the big success stories was doing that. There’s been California Condor certainly would be number two as far as releases into California and Baja California. And participated with the LA Zoo in that. And we supported it… Read More
So those are probably the two big ones. And then we attempted captures, giant Eland and Senegal. We were not successful with that for a variety of reasons. There’s been some bird importations that we didn’t necessarily participate in the capture. There’s been some rhino work, again, we didn’t bring,… Read More
So now next generation will know. Read More
Can you give us some examples both in San Diego and possibly Tampa of captive propagation and reintroduction?… Read More
Yeah, I think the big one in San Diego was the Arabian oryx. We were the clearing house for Arabian oryx going back to Oman in the Middle East for release into the wild, terribly successful program. We participated in that for 10 or 15 years and each subsequent release… Read More
What does a shoebill stork eat in captivity?… Read More
We feed them fish and there’s a certain amount of insects you’ll put into that too, you know, into the dish. And then mom will pick ’em up, and feed it to the chick, and then the chick eventually picks it up. But then these meatballs turned out to be… Read More
So on and so forth, but weren’t gonna take any chances. Anyway, successfully raised the chicken. And it could not have been happier with the results. Now, we have not replicated that. We’ve replicated egg laying but we have not had a chick since. So we have a different pair. Read More
You know, it’s the old birds you catch because they’re slow. I dunno, we don’t know. But the zoo is still working on it. So keep our fingers crossed. And what does a shoebill stork, I’m gonna get into the weeds just a bit. Read More
The old question is how did you catch ’em?… Read More
You know, and they were all hunkered down. They got through the storm just fine. The bird was nice and toasty and off we go. We also noticed there was a nutritional downturn and we think that mom and dad just weren’t getting enough fish into the chick. So our… Read More
You know, were we not putting enough fish out, were there or not enough fish to fish in the pond?… Read More
They kinda looked at the bird like, where were you?… Read More
And we posted a staff out there to watch about a week before we thought the fledge date was. And all of a sudden the bird just takes off and flies across the pond like it had been doing it, you know, forever. So it’s like, well, we worried about… Read More
And we were super nervous about this bird not making the night because of that cold rain. The good news about rains in Tampa in the fall, they rarely last very long, but they can come down pretty hard and cold. So I called a colleague and said help me… Read More
It’s gonna go into the water, what’s it gonna do?… Read More