The Bronx Zoo has done some incredible work with the indoor "rain/tropical forest" exhibit's.
Courtesy of Allison
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Black Leopard Exhibit--Bronx Zoo
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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A Blog designed for discussion of topics related to, but not limited to, Circus, Zoos, Animal Training, and Animal Welfare/Husbandry. Sometimes opening up the dialog is the best starting point of all. And if for nothing else when people who agree and don't agree, get together and start discussing it, it will open up a lot of peoples minds. Debate and discussion even amongst themselves opens a window where there wasn't one before.
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3 comments:
Wade, this is a beautiful exhibit.
Black leopards are caused by a recessive gene and always breed true. which means that two black leopards will always produce black cubs.
On the other hand, black jaguars are caused by a dominant gene, whigh means that if even one parent is black the cubs will be black. The gene is incomplete dominant which means that jaguars with two black parents will be darker than those with only one black parent.
This has been discussed here in the past.
Mary Ann
These two female black leopards and their exhibit are part of Bronx zoo’s wonderful tropical Asia display.
The affable and hospitable Jim Doherty, then Bronx zoo’s General Curator, took me though it in 1997. The two black leopards were there then. Jim told me that they came to the zoo from the Feds who had confiscated them by seizing an illegal animal shipment. Had that not happened it is unlikely the leopards would be there.
Common leopards are not favored by zoos these days. The reason is that the taxon advisory folks encourage the keeping of rarer leopards like Persians and Amurs. The idea is that valuable exhibit space should be put to better use by keeping the rarer subspecies.
And there is no longer any focus on black leopards as there was 40 and more years ago. Back then, and before, the black leopard was considered quite a zoo or circus attraction even though it is only a color variant of the common leopard.
Blacks usually come from Southern Asia though there are occasional reports of them from Africa.
A check of the ISIS animal inventory shows that there are only 51 common leopards among the reporting zoos and animal parks in the USA. The inventory makes no distinction between black and regular spotted leopards. The two at Bronx are listed as females with no distinction as to their color.
By contrast, ISIS shows that there are now no less than 153 snow leopards in zoos and collections in USA. I never thought I’d see the day when snows outnumbered common leopards by 3 to 1.
RJR,
Good stuff. Thank you. I think the reason a lot of animals have fallen out of favor in the circus is because of what you have stated. They just aren't perceived as rare anymore or unusual as they once were. The Bronx's Congo exhibit is also world class.
Wade
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