Animals at Taipei Zoo have been receiving specialized health examinations and meals since the facility closed on Wednesday last week for 10 days, zoo staff said.
Veterinarians have been performing health examinations, such as auscultation, and palpation, radiography, ultrasonography, computed tomography scan and clinical pathology tests, they said.
The zoo said it started performing regular health checks on all animals more than a decade ago.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Zoo
Previously the zoo was closed to the public only during Lunar New Year’s Eve, and exhibitions were closed in turns on Mondays for health checks and facility maintenance.
After examining the management of zoos in other countries, Taipei Zoo proposed closing for an extra period every year to conduct facility maintenance and allow the animals to rest and undergo health examinationa.
The proposal last year garnered 98 percent public support on the city’s i-Voting Platform and the policy was implemented this year.
Staff prepared customized meals for some of the animals, including Formosan wild boars, Formosan clouded leopards, mountain lions, Mongolian wild horses, gibbons and gray kangaroos, before they underwent health checks, it said.
Carnivores chew on bones and have high-protein diets, so many have teeth and kidney problems; primates like eating sweets, so they often have cavities or diabetes; many social animals frequently fight and sustain physical injuries; and some temperate-zone or desert animals have skin or fur problems due the hot and humid climate in Taiwan, the zoo said.
The zoo is to reopen on Saturday.
Visitors can purchase tickets with cash or Visa credit cards or buy tickets online via the city’s electronic payment system, pay.taipei, the zoo said.
They can also use EasyCard iPass, HappyCash or icash2.0 payment cards to enter the zoo without a ticket.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the