Nashville Zoo’s ongoing dedication to animal conservation is on full show because it welcomes the arrival of a clouded leopard cub and one banded palm civet package. Each newborns could be seen on the Zoo’s HCA Healthcare Veterinary Middle and on-line with their nursery digital camera.
The male clouded leopard cub was born on July 18 on the Oklahoma Metropolis Zoo and dropped at Nashville for hand rearing and eventual introduction to a mate. As a nationwide chief in clouded leopard breeding and care, Nashville Zoo was chosen by the Affiliation of Zoos and Aquariums’ (AZA) Clouded Leopard Species Survival Plan (SSP®) to supervise the cub’s upbringing and eventual pairing. The Clouded Leopard SSP® helps to make sure genetically various populations of this species in human care.
“We’ve been breeding and elevating these cats since 1991 and have realized rather a lot about this course of,” stated Dr. Heather Schwartz, the Zoo’s Director of Veterinary Providers. “We hand rear our cubs as a result of it permits this usually nervous species to turn into acclimated to the sights and sounds of human interplay, typical in an exhibit surroundings.” The cub will keep within the Zoo’s Veterinary Middle nursery till he’s sufficiently old to be moved to a beer habitat on the Zoo’s property the place he’ll ultimately be launched to an acceptable mate.
“Clouded leopard males could be very aggressive when they’re launched to females,” says Nashville Zoo President and CEO Rick Schwartz. “This may trigger critical, even deadly damage to the females. Hand rearing this species lowers aggression and will increase the possibility of profitable mating.” Because of Nashville Zoo’s information on clouded leopards, the AZA’s SSP now recommends hand rearing for all cubs of this species.
Clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa) are native to the tropical lowlands of Southeast Asia in international locations corresponding to Nepal and Bangladesh. They’re thought of susceptible to extinction based on the Worldwide Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a consequence of deforestation, poaching and pet commerce. Exact information on clouded leopard inhabitants numbers shouldn’t be recognized, however researchers estimate there are round 10,000 clouded leopards within the wild. Particular populations could be troublesome to trace, because the clouded leopard is among the many rarest of the world’s cat species and some of the elusive. The lowered variety of pelts encountered at unlawful markets and lowered sightings of clouded leopards by individuals inside its vary recommend the species is in decline.
The Veterinary Middle nursery additionally just lately welcomed a child (package) banded palm civet born on August 12 at Nashville Zoo. The male package was eliminated to be hand-raised as a consequence of insufficient milk manufacturing by the mom. The new child shall be raised within the nursery and ultimately educated to be an envoy animal, educating the general public about his species and native surroundings.
Banded palm civets (Hemigalus derbyanus) are small nocturnal mammals native to the rainforests and jungles of Southeast Asia and are categorized as close to threatened by the IUCN as a consequence of habitat loss, as a consequence of deforestation, agriculture, and plantations in addition to water damming, looking and logging. Roughly the scale of a home cat, banded palm civets are carefully associated to weasels and mongooses. Nashville Zoo has been efficiently breeding this species since 2015.