Customer Reviews

Wild Mammals in Captivity: Principles and Techniques

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This long awaited volume updates Crandall's long standing and now out-of-print classic "Management of Wild Mammals in Captivity." Contains a total of 48 separate contributions from 76 different authors covering a huge variety of topics including: Basic Husbandry; Feeding and Nutrition of Herbivores, Carnivores, and Omnivores; Exhibition Techniques; Behavior; Reproduction; and more. An essential reference for anyone maintaining mammals in captivity. Illustrated with some b/w photos & drawings, numerous graphs and tables, and five appendices. This book comes in a paperback as well as a hardcover edition.

I picked this book up in the gift shop of the San Diego Zoo, one of the few of substance they had. Even for me, a casual, but intelligent zoo visitor, this was worth $30.00. There is much more to animal captivity than I realized. Every zoo has two sides: the happy, visitor side, and the business/breeding side. Everyone knows about the happy side of a zoo. This helps lift the curtain on the other side of animal management and makes me even more appreciative of the huge expense and efforts of countless thousands of dedicated people who toil in the background. Articles on anesthesia of large animals, ethics of zoos, breeding, all are informative, basic information that the informed animal lover should know about. Although this is written for other zoo professionals, I recommend it to the average Amazon browser who wants to dig a little deeper into life and its mysteries. Because these are articles from technical journals, they can be read in any order and used as a reference book. There is an excellent bibliography after each chapter, although for the layman it is doubtful if they would be read. At any rate, I'm glad I bought this book.

`Wild Mammals in Captivity' is an in-depth and comprehensive text book looking at the various aspects of animal life in captivity. It looks at a wide range of animals and topics and the main parts cover Basic Husbandry, Nutrition, Exhibitry, Population Management for Conservation, Behaviour, Reproduction, Captive Mammal Research and five appendices. The book is large and relatively heavy and the font is quite small, this is definitely a book to use for studies rather than to read purely for enjoyment. Although the information on offer was also very enjoyable to read! There aren't too many pictures and what one's there are are in black and white. There are also some graphs and charts explaining various points raised. Each chapter is extensively referenced and the information on offer is precise and scholarly. This is recommended for participants of the `Advanced National Certificate in the Management of Zoo Animals' and would be invaluable reading for just such a course. Plenty of information on offer to assist with your animal care studies, well worth considering.

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took a little long with shipping but book is what i was looking for and in great shape