The Zoo Review
Insights into the World of Zoos and Aquariums
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Thursday, March 28, 2024
The Secret Lives of Prairie Dogs
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
What a Waste
Not that long ago, our zoo was hosting a special event which required an "all hands on deck" clean up effort. I was assigned to clean up a planted area, spacious, but not inhabited by animals for many years, towards the center of the zoo. It was right up against our food court and main visitor services hub. I was horrified. Not by the amount of trash I pulled - that I fully expected - but by the fact that, by the time that I was done, at least half of my bag was filled with photo strips from the nearby photo booth.
It was as if visitors were going in, getting their pictures taken, and then immediately dumping them in the bushes outside.
Today, I engaged in my annual ritual of getting food from our concessions, which I do exactly once per year. As I waited for my order, I watched in awe as patron after patron dumped mostly-full trays of food in the trash, purchased to placate hungry toddlers who then decided that they didn't want it after all.
I could sense the irritation of the parents. Zoo food ain't cheap.
So much of the zoo's messaging is about conservation, and so much about conservation is about sustainability - being mindful of what we use (or, in this case, don't use). I feel like whenever this topic comes up, you have people complaining about how this is going to involve all of us living miserably with terrible qualities of life, having to sacrifice everything on the altar of conservation.
Really, though, we won't. How much oil is consumed to make plastic crap that's thrown immediately away? How many acres of habitat cleared to grow food which is just thrown away? It would make a huge diverse to the sustainability of our planet if we would just produce what we actually need and not squander so much. That's a key lesson we should be trying to live by - and to share with the public.
Monday, March 25, 2024
(... and Aquarium)
There's an old "zoo man" that I'm friends with, someone in the mold of the old-school curators and directors of decades long past; I think we would have been perfectly at home working alongside Hornaday at the Bronx, or Mann at National. He's the sort of guy who's visited every zoo, seen every animal, and has an encyclopedic memory of all of them. He's also the sort of guy who retains strong opinions on how things should be properly done.
I had been talking with him recently after my visit to Sedgwick County Zoo, a facility that I enjoyed very much, when he cut me off after a bit and said, "It's a fine enough zoo. Of course, to be truly great it would need an aquarium."
I unpacked this a bit with him. His ideal for a zoo was based in the older European tradition, in which a truly great zoo was defined by its buildings. The Bird House, the Reptile House, a Small Mammal House (which might be a nocturnal house)… and the Aquarium. To his mind, a zoo could not be great without an aquarium. How could a park have "zoology" in the name and then cut itself off from the biomes that cover three-quarters of the planet's surface? (I've heard similar arguments made about the dearth of invertebrate exhibits in zoos... and made a few of those arguments myself). It's been a longstanding tradition in many European zoos, dating back to when the first public aquarium opened at the London Zoo in the nineteenth century.
In the United States, zoos and aquariums tend to be separate facilities. Sometimes they retain an association, as the New York zoos have with their aquarium under the umbrella of the Wildlife Conservation Society. In other cases, they are completely separate with no shared membership or management, though they may collaborate on occasion. Then there are the facilities that have an aquarium building as part of their main campus, and may even take on the name, "Zoo and Aquarium." Facilities that fall into this category include Point Defiance, in Tacoma, Washington (which has two aquarium buildings), Pittsburgh, Columbus, and, most recently, Kansas City.
The extent of the zoo-aquariums varies. None that I've seen so far has even come close to the size and comprehensiveness of the giant US aquariums, like Shedd, Georgia, or Monterey Bay. Sometimes it's as simple as a few small fish or jelly tanks situated around a stingray touch pool, or in association with a penguin or sea lion exhibit - in which case I feel like the zoo might just be giving itself airs (and by which theory Sedgwick could claim that it, too, has an aquarium, because it has fish on display in its rainforest building). I don't like the idea of tacking on aquarium just for the sake of saying you have one. Aquariums require a lot of expense, a lot of infrastructure and investment, and a lot of expertise to run properly. If you find yourself in possession of indoor real estate that can be devote to animals at your zoo, there's other things you can do with that space.
So, for most of my career, I've felt that separate and specialized is best. Zoos are best left to handle terrestrial animals, aquariums with the aquatic, with a little overlap.
I recently visited Memphis Zoo for the first time in well over a decade. Despite not doing so, the Zoo probably has a better claim than some others to tack on "and Aquarium" to its name. The aquarium in question is a fairly small building, located towards the west end of the zoo. It consists of a series of fairly small tanks - mostly freshwater in scope - situated around the perimeter of a small room. There are no sharks or sea turtles here, no grand vistas of coral reefs or kelp forests. The selection of animals was modest and well-suited for the size of the building. Another zoo might have cleared most of the tanks away for one, maybe two, room-sized tanks with one or two small side tanks, just to say that they had sharks, octopus, jellies, and sea horses, checking the boxes for what most casual visitors would want to see. Instead, most of the species chosen for this building were smaller, and more obscure, which actually made them more interesting to me than seeing the same exhibits that I've seen at a dozen places.
When I left to go back out to explore the rest of the zoo, I thought, "This was nice. A fun break, highlighting a diversity of species, and it would be a nice addition to the zoo on days when the weather was poor." Something like that I feel would be a welcome addition to many large zoos.
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Friday, March 22, 2024
ReSharking the Oceans
Sharks are among the most famous and popular of aquarium residents. As a group, they also represent some of the most endangered species in the oceans. Unlike many terrestrial species kept in zoos, many species of shark don't reproduce especially reliably. Fortunately, one of the species that does breed well is the endangered zebra shark. I recently learned about the organization ReShark, which is dedicated to rewildling the world's oceans and rebuilding crashed shark populations. The zebra shark reintroduction project in Indonesia is an exciting early project from this group.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Species Fact Profile: Ocellated Stingray (Potamotrygon motoro)
Ocellated Stingray
Potamotrygon motoro (JP Muller & Henle, 1841)
- Roughly oval-shaped. Robust tail ends with a venomous spine. Maximum length of 100 centimeters (more commonly 50 centimeters), weigh up to 35 kilograms (more commonly 15 kilograms). Tail of equal length to disc. Females usually slightly larger than males.
- Eyes positioned on dorsal surface of the head, providing 360 degree visibility. Possess electroreceptors, highly sensitive, that allow for detection of prey and predators. Also have well-developed sense of smell
- Background color is greyish-brown (very light, almost tan in some individuals, very dark in others), with orange-yellow dorsal eyespots, each surrounded with a black ring larger than the eyes. Coloration extends onto the tail\
- Pups are sexually mature at 20-44 centimeters in disc length, with females requiring a larger size than males to be deemed mature and captive specimens reaching sexual maturity at a smaller size than wild individuals (in males, sexually maturity can also be ascertained by the relative size of the pelvic claspers)
- Undergo cyclical migration patterns within freshwater systems, traveling up to 100 kilometers, cause unknown
- Major defensive mechanisms are camouflage, burrowing down into the river substrate, and the tail, which has a venomous spine at the tip. Primary predators are caimans, though may be consumed by larger fish species as well
- Also known as the peacock-eye stingray, orange-spot stingray, or the black river stingray. Some consideration that it may represent a species complex of closely-related freshwater stingrays
- Status is unknown throughout range, but not believed to be in danger due to widespread range, generalist dietary and habitat requirements, and little commercial demand
- One of the most popular freshwater stingray species seen in the pet trade. Husbandry considered fairly easy, but requires a large tank.