grouse, otters, and penguins

Calgary Zoo

GREATER SAGE-GROUSE
2014. "Minister Aglukkaq has announced a $2.1 million contribution for the Calgary Zoo’s new captive breeding and rearing program for the Greater Sage-Grouse."
2014. "Of 13 hatched birds, only two survived to the age of seven months."
2016. "Controversial move comes despite calls from American legislators to keep avians on U.S. side of border... The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission voted 3-1 to relocate 40 greater sage grouse hens this year across the border to Alberta, where an estimated 100 to 120 of the birds are left.
2016. A new breeding facility. "Fewer than 400 of the endangered birds estimated to exist in Canada today"

CRITICAL HABITAT: "Sage grouse now occupy only about 7% of their historical range in Canada... A multi-species action plan involving Greater Sage-Grouse in Saskatchewan is currently under way, and an action plan specific to Alberta will be developed in the future." (link)

Some time in the future.

LOGAN THE OTTER DROWNED
Zookeepers gave him pants.

HUMBOLDT PENGUINS DROWNED
Seven penguins found dead.

And Kakinga died at age 37.
The median life expectancy of gorilla in captivity is 31.1 years old.

chow chow

Maybe this isn't so odd. (China zoo under fire for disguising dog as lion)

Foo Dog/ a barking African lion

Foo Dog/'lion'

If 'guardian lions' are chow chows... that accompanied Mongolian armies... ('Teddy bear'/Teddy Roosevelt bear was modelled on Queen Victoria's chow chow puppy). Chinese emperors in the Tang dynasty kept 50,000 chows for hunting.

Luxury dog ‘with lion’s blood’ sold for $2 million in China (link)

Wikipedia: Chow chow (1915)

In China, lions and dragons are mythological. Chows are likely a Tibetan mastiff/Samoyed cross.

gorilla town

There is something strange going on with the gorillas at the Calgary Zoo.

gorilla, with a knife

A keeper was fired this year because, after accidentally leaving a knife in the western lowland gorilla enclosure in 2009 (that's how that one got a knife). He also left the kitchen door unlatched and in March the male gorilla beat him up. Now, with a new keeper, it just happened again, twice in less than a year that the western lowland gorillas got in the kitchen.

CTV: Animals moved to higher ground

I'm not sure what's so difficult about using a proper latch for a kitchen. Then, there was the big flood. Almost all of the animals were safely evacuated, including the hippos, even though they nearly went downstream as wild,wild riverhorses in a new river zoo.

Flood-ravaged zoo nearly lost hippos canoe.ca

Mama mia. Dr. Jake Veasey: “There was the potential of hippos swimming out of the building and into the flooded Bow River” and concern about the big cats. Plan: In holding cells at the Calgary Court Centre.

stupid pandas{5yrs}, p-bear, toronto {hogtown}, jasmine junkets

A new little orphanish polar bear at the Toronto Zoey: "The three-month-old cub is the only survivor from a litter of three that was rejected by their mother at birth." pizzaville source

Junket: "Hogtown has been thrown into a state of panda-monium since a report surfaced that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s trip to China next week would include an announcement that a pair of pandas would be coming to Toronto." when the tigers leave pizzaville.ca source

More stories: 7 big topics for Harper's China trip (including pandas), How panda diplomacy became bear-knuckle haggling, China's panda loan could signal cuddly new relations Pandas, pipelines top PM's China trip

Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flowers):
the symbol of Chinese Music

On censorship, pruning jasmine:  "Chang started to tell CNN from New York, but then the gym’s TV screen went black. CNN switched back on 30 seconds later and a Hong Kong-based anchor bid Chang thanks and farewell, leaving at least one jogger in the U.S. hotel joint venture with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wondering what had been said."  mr sloth source, costa rica

More stories: Revolution' Coverage Censored in China, Jasmine Becomes Contraband in China, AFP: China web users call for 'Jasmine Revolution', After Jasmine Revolution Video, U.S. Envoy to China Hunstman's ..., Why J-A-S-M-I-N-E is censored ? - China Watch, China Censorship Watch - Filed under 'Jasmine, China detains, censors bloggers on 'Jasmine Revolution

Nyage Sonamdrugyu (Sopa)

Itinerary: "Harper is expected to hit at least three cities during his nearly week-long trade mission to China — his second official visit as prime minister — including the capital of Beijing, southern trade port of Guangzhou (near Hong Kong) and the southwestern hub of Chongqing." netflix source

Tibet: "His case is a special one because he was considered a bodhisattva, a "living Buddha": monks considered revivals of great masters of the past." cathay pacific source

more knut, the dreamer & a winning design

I like this one more than the one with the hollow guts.

Read more.

knut, siku, human zoos & sculptures

Knut, 2007

Siku, 2011

Knut proponents are riled up about Siku at the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, Denmark. Siku is cute, but it's not Knut. ('The new knut' whose mother had not enough milk is not really an orphan.) Knut fans are mustering a memorial tribute with voting until January 8, 2012 on 42 entries: Pick a knut memorial sculpture. Be prepared, some of the submissions are underwhelming.

Footballer turned curator.  Lilian Thuram's 'Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage' --- "traces the history behind circuses, stage shows and 'zoos' in which people were the exhibits, dating it back to 1492 when Christopher Columbus displayed six 'Indians' at the Spanish royal court" (Daily Mail article). The exhibition is at Paris' Quai Branly, France, from Tuesday 29th November to Sunday 3th June 2012.
See more, including a video and the museum's website. Following his retirement in 2008, he established the Lilian Thurman Foundation.

In politics, Thuram made headlines during the 2007 French elections by calling out the institutionalized racism of Nicolas Sarkozy. (Article: France World Cup player Lilian Thuram now fights racism, November 11, 2009.)

Speaking of, there was a nazi encounter with swastikas and death threats on Christmas Eve for a biracial couple in Newmarket, Ontario. The man, from Nigeria ('nigger'), and the white woman ('whore'), are considering moving. The couple has already spent $6000 repairing damages. It isn't the first time.

An Occupy sculpture was hauled away from an encampment in Calgary, Alberta.

You can sign the Petition: Keep the “Heart of the Beast” sculpture as a permanent part of Olympic Plaza.

Knut the polar bear RIP and mysterious zoo deaths

Like Knut at the Berlin Zoological Garden, who was born in captivity and suddenly died on 19 March 2011, convulsing and drowning in front of hundreds of people, there have been a lot of recent deaths at the Calgary Zoo. Before this, there were only sometimes mass butterfly problems, due to heating failures in the old conservatory. It started with the cownose stingrays, which sadly succumbed to something mysterious - even the police investigated - that turned out to be poor oxygenation in the tank of the popular new exhibit (May '08), most likely. I don't know what happened to the second batch after the 1 died in shipping. One day the kids love the critters, in the next days the critters are dead. The capybara (one of my favourites!) was crushed accidentally; they are big rodents, like giant guineau pigs or cavy-deers.

Better days: Knut and Thomas Dörflein (1963–2008)

A baby elephant, a hippo, a wild goat, four gorillas and 41 stingrays. Next, at first unpublicized, a couple of spider monkeys, four feather-tailed sugar gliders, several mule deer, dozens of sebas and pallas bats, woodland caribou and muskox. Injured: African wild dogs and other animals. Since then, an endangered zebra, some Siberian tiger kittens, and 2 engangered whooping crane eggs that froze in a spring blizzard at the zoo's Devonian Wildlife Conservation Centre south of the city. It used to be lousy at catering and a better zoo.

It does seem strange now, over the last 15 years: very restructured and very involved in the special events and banquets, new buildings that are architecturally lovely, and interactive displays that make a lot of noise with crowding on the walkways and Mrs. Harvie's ghost in a Children's Zoo that went missing with the snake & bird building. I'll miss the beautiful old conservatory - many of the plants and little ecosystems didn't make it either. See: Zoocheck

Thomas Dörflein, 44, the Berlin zoo keeper who raised Knut from cub to full maturity,
was found dead in mysterious circumstances in a friend's Berlin apartment.