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July 16, 2012

Match.com System for Animals in American Zoos?

By Tanya Palta, TMCnet Contributing Writer

It’s not just humans that crave love and attention from a soul mate, and if certain zookeepers are to be believed, the animal kingdom hankers for the same! No, there is no animal version of Match.com on the Internet (yet), however there is something similar. According to a recent news item, zoos in America are not averse to the idea of finding suitable mates for their inhabitants online.



The idea here is not romance, but something more primitive, which is mating. Zoos all across the United States are now using a databank to match their animal inhabitants with appropriate mates, so that they can procreate and keep the numbers up.

“We’ll look at who has the most valuable males and females and try to get them together as long as they are not related to each other,” director of the Chicago-based Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Population Management Center, Sarah Long told Buzzfeed’s Reyhan Harmanci.

The system started way back in 1981 and was part of a captive breeding program called the ‘Species Survival Plan’ in order to accelerate matchmaking between all the zoos in the country. In 2000, the Population Management Center came to existence and its primary task was to update electronic studbooks, by the American Zoo Association. Before making the perfect match, matchmakers study species’ behavioral patterns, geography, and even the habits of the individual animal, which are all listed in the online database.

While the zoos are pretty satisfied with their setup, some experts like Jeffrey Hyson, are not convinced. Hyson said,  it is “a tough line to maintain when, in fact, you’re talking about captive populations that are, in many cases, generations removed from the wild, and also animals that only in a few very isolated cases stand any chance of being reintroduced to their habitat.”

However, there are already successful examples of the process working; case in point, the Oakland Zoo in California, which mated a 12-year-old male river otter Heath with Ginger, a 5-year-old from the Massachusetts zoo.

“We felt pretty confident after the initial introduction between the two was successful, but until the babies are born, you are never completely sure,” Margaret Rousser, the zoo’s manager, said. The zoo set up a camera to spy on Ginger at night. One day, they noticed two little brown balls of fur. ”I thought they were pinecones — she likes to play with pinecones. But then I went, ‘Oh my gosh!’ ” Andrea Dougall told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was speechless. Elated. I called my boss and my voice was shaking.



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Edited by Brooke Neuman
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