The Taipei Zoo recently celebrated the birth of a Formosan wild boar, the first time the zoo has bred the animal, which is endemic to Taiwan, under a preservation program in cooperation with National Taiwan University to keep the purebred strain of the boar alive.
Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生) announced yesterday that the male boar, born on Feb. 21, was named “Tai An” (泰安) because the breeders hoped it would grow in a healthy and safe way.
It was also hoped that Tai An would be able to reproduce in the future, Yeh said, adding that it had become increasingly unusual to spot pure-blood Formosan wild boars in Taiwan’s mountainous areas, where the animals once thrived.
PHOTO: CHIU SHAO-WEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Some hog breeders living in the mountains have let their stock run around without fencing them in, raising the chances of cross-breeding between domestic pigs and wild boars, Yeh said.
Citing research findings, Yeh said there had been a lot of hybrid wild boars spotted in the mountains in recent years whose physical characteristics, such as fur color and the shape of the ears, are seen to be different from those of purebred Formosan wild boars.
Although the wild animal is not categorized as an endangered species in Taiwan, the zoo decided to launch its effort to preserve the strain. The boars live in groups in hilly and mountainous areas around the nation, Yeh said.
The Taipei Zoo has a pair of pure-blood Formosan wild boars and Tai An is their first offspring born under the zoo’s preservation program, the zoo said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS