Animal Influx: July 2017

Comings and goings at your Zoo in April and May.

Bird Hatchings

Bird hatchings included four California condors, five black-headed weavers, two blue-breasted kingfishers, a Cape thick-knee, a roadrunner, and three greater flamingos.

Reptile Hatchings

Reptile hatchings included a knob-tailed gecko and four phantasmal poison dart frogs. A litter of Yarrow’s spiny lizards was born.

Baby Mammals Spotlight

Many of our new arrivals came with hooves, including a second mountain bongo calf, four Chacoan peccaries, a Sichuan takin, four Tadjik markhors, five Nubian ibex, two bighorn sheep, a pudu, and a black duiker. But not all of them had hooves—two crested capuchin monkeys were also born.

Arrivals

A California condor in need of medical care arrived, as well as a number of new collection birds: two chestnut teals, a male sarus crane, and a pair of female ostriches, which have joined the male in a mixed-species exhibit that also includes lesser kudu and a yellow-backed duiker. A male California sea lion transferred in from Houston Zoo. Other arrivals included two addax antelope, six rock hyraxes, and four Indian gharials. A group of 22 poison dart frogs (some quite rare) were received, and they will eventually take up residence in Rainforest of the Americas. A group of invertebrates arrived for the LAIR—a desert blond tarantula, a giant desert centipede, and five desert hairy scorpions.

In May, an illegal wildlife confiscation at LAX brought a group of eight songbirds to the Zoo: a Bali starling, a black-collared starling, a golden-crested mynah, a golden-fronted leafbird, a Javan mynah, two red-billed blue magpies, and a yellow-breasted magpie.

Departures

Among the outgoing birds were two sacred ibises, a laughing kookaburra, a Ross’s turaco, an East African crowned crane, three Chilean flamingos, a wattled crane, and a Cape thick-knee. Reptiles and amphibians transferring out included four Catalina Island rattle-less rattlesnakes, one South American bushmaster, four knob-tailed geckos, six groups of splendid tree frogs, and two groups of Australian red-eyed tree frogs. Mammals moving to other institutions included a yellow-footed rock wallaby, two woylies (a.k.a. brush-tailed bettongs), a Prevost’s squirrel, a rock hyrax, a Chinese goral, a Sichuan takin, and a Nigerian dwarf goat.