Male cheetah , native of Toronto with good genes, seeks sleek, frisky female for rolls in grass and midday siestas. Must tolerate crowds and Philadelphia smog. Mr. Right with Ms. Right. To get the best match, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association has set up a continent-wide computer database containing biological profiles of thousandsof endangered animals in an effort to pair off mates before the animal dies or grows too old to breed. For the Philadelphia Zoo, this computer-dating system has created a bonanza of births.
Babies are big business for zoos, guaranteed crowd-pleasers and revenue raisers.
A tour of the zoo these days shows the results of the population program. Western lowland gorillas , orangutans , a Malayan tapir, and Micronesian kingfishers have been born recently in Philadelphia to animals once on the edge of extinction. The program, called the Species Survival Plan, has more than passing simularity to a dating service, except the result is not bolstering the family name. It's survival of the species. The zoos' precious and always finite exhibit space is carefully allocated to allow more room for endangered animals .