I think my most happiest day I had in my life was when our gorillas bred. We had two gorillas born in a nine day period. We had front page for 14 days in the Cincinnati newspapers. We had volunteers involved. It was a fantastic day for the community. I… Read More
So what did they mean to your zoo?… Read More
They meant to our zoo, they meant bongo, they meant okapi, they meant Sumatran rhino. We were a zoo that had no money and they were a good financial resource and they were great to turn the turnstiles. We had some banner years the first years when we exhibited white… Read More
How did this affect the collection at the zoo during your tenure?… Read More
Well, I’ve been referred to as a collector. I won’t deny that. You know, I appreciate diversity. I think that’s the bottom line. I think anybody that even collects stamps appreciates the difference in a particular thing, and I’m very keen in terms of looking at a well-balanced collection, but… Read More
Zoos keep black jaguar. The Bronx Zoo was full of albino snakes. Read More
Why is a tiger any different?… Read More
We just got singled out because they thought we were taking up space, and instead of doing what they should have done from the very beginning, control them as a population, they didn’t, and they’ve now got into private hands and they’ve exploded and they’re all over the place. Read More
And who knows if it isn’t maybe a hidden reservoir?… Read More
They were always larger than the normal tiger. May have been a hidden reservoir for some beneficial factor. They were mutants, certainly, but they did, and they had survivability because they probably learned to hunt at night, so color wasn’t, you know, color wasn’t a problem. color didn’t ward off-… Read More
You can control it, but it’s a part of- What would you do if you had a highly endangered pair of animals and it had a white offspring in your Bengal line?… Read More
Would you euthanize it?… Read More
This I think came from directly from Yuli Seal or indirectly. He never approached me directly with this, but he, you know, he approached Bill Conway and Bill Conway came out and stated that white tigers were freaks, but Bill had a short memory because a few years before that,… Read More
They produced two white offspring, that were heterozygous and one orange or, or two homozygous white and one hetero. And we thought that the National Zoo was gonna give us an offspring and they chose not to, they kept them. But they said we could take, they had another white… Read More
Now I know white tigers have been criticized, but white tigers had been reported in the wild very frequently. In fact, in Nepal, I think that at one time there was probably 16 animals in the wild and these animals were shot off by the Maharajas. White tigers have occurred… Read More
Were you one of the first zoos to have them?… Read More
No. Komodo dragons were a highlight for our zoo. I was visiting Indonesia and became very good friends with the director, and I saw that they had a number of Komodo dragons and we worked out a situation and I asked if it would be possible for Cincinnati zoo to… Read More
And I says, apparently we know how to take care of them. And the first zoo, I guess National Zoo also had, and they were given as a presidential gift as a state gift, and they bred them first and we bred them the following year. The second brood was… Read More
Can you tell us the story of your white tigers and what they meant to the Cincinnati Zoo?… Read More
Can you give us a few that are kind of very memorable to you?… Read More