Today I took my annual birthday pilgrimage to the Bronx Zoo - highlighted this year with a visit to the very newly opened Madagascar exhibit, in the Zoo's historic Lion House. It's a fairly small exhibit that, of course, stars lemurs, but in addition to the very endearing sifaka who greets you as you enter and the incredible red ruffed lemurs who make the most incredible (and loud!) group calls within feet of you, other highlights included two really huge Nile crocodiles displayed in a really, really cool way and a beautiful fossa. Surprisingly missing were any chameleons, though today was a bad day for herps, apparently, many of whom got removed due to overzealous air-conditioning, so they might be part of this exhibit otherwise. There are a lot of photos and blurbs about the conservation work being done by WCS in Madagascar, though I would have liked to have seen more info on the biogeography and evolutionary relationships of these really neat animals. Read a more detailed review here.
6 comments:
Happy birthday Susan!
Technically, it was June 25th, but those pesky ASP meetings got in the way. Mark you calendar - you have 357 shopping days until my next one.
I checked out the zoo's website when I first heard about the exhibit about a month ago. I was delighted to see they had a profile about Henkel's Leaf-tailed Gecko, Uroplatus henkeli. However, the zoo staff was apparently misinformed by whomever they got their gecko from because, at the time, it showed a picture of U. lineatus. Presently, U. lineatus is clearly shown on the banner Susan posted (it's the stripped, tan gecko on the right side).
Also, after checking the profile page again I see they've made an attempt to correct their error. However, they've still fucked up. Now they have a picture of U. frimbriatus.
See for yourself!
http://bronxzoo.com/look-and-learn/animal-profiles/leaf-tailed-gecko.aspx
Good point Dan. From a herpetological perspective this is a pretty serious fuck-up. I think I was able to distinguish U. henkeli from U. lineatus and U. fimbriatus by the time I was 14. We need to call Jenny Pramuk on this, she's been curator of herpetology over there for a few years now. Seriously, you should drop her a line: "jpramuk@wcs.org"
A Madagascar exhibit with no chameleons?? That just ain't right.
Do they at least have an aye-aye?
I didn't see one - but of course they're nocturnal, so really hard to exhibit.
Just be glad you're not there now - 40 people are stuck in the gondolas - been there for >2 hours!
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