Anybody keep mawii(mawui)

mike taylor said:

Sorry Will my bad . ( Slaps self in forehead )

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mike taylor said:

Yeah , I was trying to be funny .One of my down falls . Knowing you it's only a matter of time before you're building a turtle house for your new mawii Turtle . But I did read it like that . Don't know why but I did.

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mike taylor said:

Sorry Will my bad . ( Slaps self in forehead )

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Will said:

@mike taylor what's wrong with you man, this thread is about Cuora, softshells that are unidentified, spinosa and just about every other species that are not the central American river turtle? Serial man!

Last year there was at one point going to be a speaker at the TTPG regarding D. Mawii, but they did not present. When I left Philly there were some 20 specimens there, now 12 years ago, I can't imagine they are all still in tanks in the basement (one or two on display). Some were destined to be surplussed to other zoos. As far as privates go, none genuinely legal unless USFWS confiscated some and turned them over the privates since 2003. They were on the original ESA list of 1972/1973 as an 'endangered species' so would require a permit from that point on the bring into the US. The confiscated animals that began the colony at Philly were illegally imported by some academic in Texas, who had to turn them over to USFWS. The then curator, Kevin Wright (RIP) seemed to be the only person in the AZA CAG who thought they would be cool, so sought them out. We later acquired a female from a zoo in Europe that had been there some 20+ years.

I may have accidentally seen some in a private collection in a small city a bit north of NYC about 10 years ago, but I can't be sure of that. I never found any specific rational for there listing on the ESA. They are not particularly attractive or interesting, so I can't imagine they would ever be sought by the mainstream pet trade. Even specialist like we have on TFO, would probably not be so inclined to keep them, they have funky needs as I mentioned earlier in this thread.

John Polisar(sp) did a graduate thesis on them where he studied gut content and ova development based on market animals sold for food. Harold Carty who I mentioned in the BTFO posts, went to collect some from one of the range states just before the ESA went into effect, for himself and the Columbus zoo. They had all perished by the time I was at Philly in 1994 when they acquired theirs.

TSA jumped on the bandwagon to set up captive breeding facilities in a small shadow created by Kevin, I do not know of that effort's current status.

Their diet and nutrition seemed to overwhelm some reasonable smart people at Philly, They get gas easy and so them float based on that gas, sometimes to the right, left or face down. When in that face down position they can drown. I still have contact with one keeper there, maybe someone here is closer, go check it out. The turtle guy at the Philly zoo now, who was there when I was there, has a collection that would make most of you loose a load (yeah I said that on TFO), he'd know.

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