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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Zoo Review: California Academy of Sciences, Part II

Today, we'll continue our exploration of the California Academy of Sciences by visiting the second, and older, of it's animal attractions, the Steinhart Aquarium.


Befitting, visitors who enter the aquarium via the rainforest, as I did, will first be treated to a gallery of Amazon river life.  An acrylic tunnel leads through a blooded forest home of arapaima and other Amazon river fish, with an enormous habitat for green anaconda waiting just on the other side.  The aquarium itself is a split between large tanks - most impressive being the 212,000 gallon Philippine coral reef, which itself serves as a gateway to a gallery of coral reefs - and small galleries of smaller, single-species tanks.  Many of these ae grouped into the Water Planet gallery, where tanks are set against a backdrop of flowing blue that it quite soothing to watch.  Among the animals that I was happiest to see was CAS's most famous resident, the Australian lungfish Methuselah.  Methuselah is estimated to be over 90 years old, making him the world's oldest known aquarium fish.

If there's been one uniting feature of all of the California aquariums I've visited - and they have been legion - it's been their excellent displays of California coastal life, and Steinhart is no exception.  While not as large as the Philippine reef, the California coast display is still a beautiful habitat that does an excellent job of recreating the ecosystem that lies just off the shore.  Tide pools are one of the most enchanting features of the coastal environment, so not surprisingly those are recreated here as well.  These tide pool displays double-function as touch tanks, allowing curious visitors to have supervised up-close encounters with marine invertebrates.

As is often the case of aquariums, it seems that there is a suspicion that fish and invertebrates alone have limited power to hold the attention of visitors, and so it often falls to other species to carry the day.  Accordingly, there are several exhibits of reptiles and amphibians in the aquarium.  Foremost among these is The Swamp, a large habitat for American alligator, with a white specimen being the focus.  The alligator exhibit is also home to that other southern giant reptile, the alligator snapping turtle.  This is a species that often gets the short-end of the stick in zoo and aquarium exhibits in terms of size and complexity, so I always like seeing them exhibited with alligators because it generally results in larger, more complex habitats.  The viewing area for the gators and turtles also features smaller exhibits of herps of the southern swamplands.  Besides the underwater viewing area, the alligator exhibit also has an above-level viewing deck from the main floor of the museum.

Steinhart turned 100 years old (even older than Methuselah the lungfish!) the year of my visit, and the aquarium has quite the history.  I'm not sure if it was a temporary display for the 100th anniversary or a permanent one, but at the time of my visit there was a very interesting (if easily overlooked) gallery that displayed images and signage about the aquarium's storied past.  The facility really was a history maker in the world of public aquariums, with many incredible "firsts" to its name, both in terms of animal husbandry (for example, it was the first facility in the US to use brine shrimp, now a culinary staple for aquatic wildlife - to feed the collection) or breedings and exhibitions.  For example, I had no idea that Steinhart was the first US aquarium to house and then successfully release a great white shark.  Even the ring tank, a classic of US aquarium design which allows visitors to stand completely surrounded by fish, made it's US debut here (having first been developed in Japan).

If the California Academy of Sciences has a week point in its animal collection, I'd say it's the one exhibit in the main body of the museum.  Tucked away among the displays of taxidermized wildlife in the Tusher African Hall there is a colony of African penguins.  It's by no means the worst exhibit I've seen of this species, either in accredited or unaccredited facilities.   Compared to the many excellent other exhibits in the aquarium and the rainforest, it just seemed small, plain, and a little shoe-horned in (marine penguins not really meshing as well with the savannah and jungle species on display in the gallery).  I've always been mort impressed with large, dynamic penguin colonies, and while there is nesting and breeding going on in this one, it still seemed like a tiny cameo of penguin life, compared to the excellent exhibits I've seen at some other facilities.  If the CAS wanted a live African animal exhibit to supplement the gallery, I think the space allotment would have perhaps worked better for meerkat, or hyrax, or maybe some African reptiles.

All in all, I could easily have spent an entire day at the California Academy of Sciences.  As it was, I was limited in time and had so much I wanted to do in my day in Golden Gate Park, so I was forced to rush a bit, especially in the aquarium (because no way I was going to rush in the rainforest, on principle, after waiting so long to get in).  It really is a gem of a facility with amazing collections - living and otherwise - and a great history.

PS: Completely unaffiliated with CAS, but if you're in Golden Gate Park, check out the sprawling paddock that's home to a herd of American bison, located on the western end of the Park.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Zoo Review: California Academy of Sciences, Part I

On a brief trip to San Francisco in 2022, I stopped in at the Aquarium of the Bay, located on Fisherman's Wharf.  It was a nice enough attraction, located in one of the most famous locales in San Francisco, but I was surprised that such a big city with such intimate association with the sea didn't have a bigger, more complete aquarium.  As it turns out, San Francisco has another, older, larger aquarium, which I would go on to visit the next year.  That facility is the Steinhart Aquarium, which itself is part of the California Academy of Sciences.

Located in Golden Gate Park, the California Academy of Sciences is one of the world's largest natural history museums, as well as one of America's oldest.  It dates back to 1853, when California was barely a part of the country, and continues to be one of the leading natural science research institutes in the world.  It's present location is not the original one, as a combination of growth and natural disasters (both of which San Francisco has seen plenty of) have caused it to relocate several times.  The campus settled into Golden Gate Park in 1916, with the Steinhart Aquarium being added in 1923.  One of the most interesting features of the building is its living roof, with provides 2.5 acres of green habitat on top of the building and provides an attractive view of the park.

The facility features several exhibit galleries, including dinosaurs, taxidermy displays, and a planetarium.   Our focus, of course, is on the living animal collection, which is divided into two main sections - the aquarium, and the rainforest.

Many visitors first head for the Oscher Rainforest, a 90-foot tall class dome filled with tropical plants from around the world.  As impressive as the view is from the outside, the treat comes from going in. Note - on busy days, like the one in which I visited, there can be a bit of a wait to go inside.  The facility meters access to prevent the dome from becoming too crowded.    On the plus-side, you have a beautiful series of tidepools to walk over and peer down into as you wait in line.  If you're planning a day in Golden Gate Park, I'd recommended getting to CAS early, and going to the rainforest first.

Visitors take a series of ramps (or elevators) through the forest, working their way from the floor to the canopy, where they can observe a variety of butterflies and birds flying free.  There is relatively sparse animal life in the forest, and no mammals, so visitors who are expecting something like the big jungle buildings featured at many zoos may be disappointed.  The relatively light-load of wildlife here (and there's still a lot of birds here, they're just easily lost among the dense growth), however, means that the forest stays lush.  And, to be fair, as someone who has been in rainforests, this is a much more realistic experience.  I think all of my time in zoos spoiled me when I first went into an African rainforest and was confused and surprised by how few animals I saw...

Interspersed along the forest trail are different landing decks, each containing several large, well-furnished terrariums of reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates from rainforests around the world.  Included among these are some zoo classics, such as poison dart frogs, as well as many obscure species that I had never even heard of or seen before.  The Malagasy orb weaver spiders are a special favorite of many visitors.  At the top of the rainforest, an overlook deck provides a spectacular view of the forest, as well as being one of the best places to spot the various brightly colored birds and butterflies from.  An elevator then descends to the aquarium, located below the rainforest.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Spring Breakers

It's perhaps the most hectic week of the year.  On a rotating basis, that is.

Say what you will about summer crowds, they at least have three months to spread themselves out over.  And sure, field trips may bring crazy numbers of kids, but they are - nominally - supervised.  Spring break is, if you'll pardon me, an entirely different animal.  

After the first week of summer, I feel like most of the crowds are a little settled.  They've got weeks ahead to enjoy themselves are willing to pace themselves.  There's kind of a desperate, almost forced, panicky sense of wildness in spring breaks.  Like the crowds have to fit in as much excitement as they can before they go back to school.  And if they can't find excitement at the zoo, sometimes they'll make their own.  But what makes it especially rough is if you zoo happens to be located at the boundary of several large school districts.  Then, you have to wonder if it's worse to have two or three weeks of back-to-back-to-back spring breaks, or, in some cases, have them all coincide on one crazy week.

The hardest part of spring break, however is that, because it's still part of the school year, we're often still a little short.  We don't have our seasonal keepers, our interns, our volunteers - many of them will be unable to start yet.  So we face the crowds, but we largely face them alone and understaffed.

Right after the relative calm of winter, it can be an especially jarring transition.  It's almost enough to make you wish summer would just hurry up and get it over with.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Book Review: Chasing Giants - In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish

There have been plenty of times when I've been excited to read a book, only to find myself disappointed by it.  Far less frequent are occurrences when I pick up a book, not expecting much from it, and actually end up enjoying it.  Such was the case with Zeb Hogan's Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish.  Just glancing at it, I thought it was going to be simply a collection of sensationalized fishing stories about monster fish.  Still, I'd been interested in learning more about freshwater giants ever since my visit to the Tennessee Aquarium, so I decided to give it a go.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Dr. Hogan is  research biologist from the University of Nevada, which seems like a funny place to be from when your life passion is giant freshwater fish.  He frames his book around a very simple conundrum, inspired by a news story of a big catch that caught his eye.  We know what the largest animal (blue whale), land mammal (African elephant), bird (ostrich), fish (whale shark), and so on are.  Why do we not know what the world's largest freshwater fish is?  A freshwater fish, in this case, is defined as one that spends its entire life in freshwater habitats, as opposed to one which may live in saltwater and occasionally venture into brackish water.

The resultant quest takes him around the globe, often as part of a National Geographic film crew (Dr. Hogan hosts the popular National Geographic series Monster Fish).  A decent part of the book takes place in the Amazon, which will surprise absolutely zero people who spend any time in public aquariums - arapaima, arowana, pacu, and other South American river giants are extremely popular in zoo and aquarium collections, and, possibly (but not certainly) excluding native habitats, Amazon River displays are the most common geographic display of freshwater fish to be seen.  And those chapters are nice enough.  What I really enjoyed - and what I'd hoped to get out of the book - were the parts that dove into (pun intended) other freshwater systems that are less-commonly discussed.

Hogan takes the reader to the rivers of Western Europe, where wels catfish are one of the few giant freshwater species to expand their ranges, American bayous prowled by alligator gars, the steppes of Mongolia, home to giant salmon, and to the Australian Outback, where freshwater sawfish join crocodiles and sharks in the rivers.  For each of these species, the author explains not only the natural history of the species, but how it has related to humans throughout history and how it fares in the modern world.  Much of the book, however, focuses on the rivers of Southeast Asia and it is there that Dr. Hogan finds his true giant (the identity of which we'll keep secret here.)

Did the author document the world's largest freshwater fish?  Maybe.  It may very well be that, just downstream, there was a slightly larger fish of a different species.   And maybe a slightly larger fish somewhere else in the planet.  Who knows.  I would say that the important thing isn't so much finding and tagging one fish of one species and putting a "World's Biggest" ribbon in it.  Instead, the book (and the accompanying TV series, which I have yet to watch) can help call attention to an entire group of megafauna that most of us never even consider.  Many of these giant fish are in serious danger of disappearing, whether through overharvesting, pollution, or habitat loss.  At least one species that Dr. Hogan searches for - the Chinese paddlefish, spear-nosed cousin to our American paddlefish - is already likely extinct.  Without conservation efforts, more are likely to follow.

There are indeed monsters in the rivers that this book takes us to.  But they don't have fins or scales.  They have two legs.



Saturday, March 9, 2024

Close Encounters of the Gorilla Kind

 This incident actually happened last year, but it seems to have gone viral now, so I guess we'll share it now!  In a potentially disastrous event, two keepers at the Fort Worth Zoo were out prepping the gorilla yard, when their adult male gorilla, Elmo, turned out to still be in the enclosure.  Fortunately, the keepers both were able to make a break for it and get out unharmed, while Elmo was preoccupied with food.  The event happened while the zoo was open and was filmed by visitors, who were heard commenting as it played out.  Their video footage can be found here.


I've been a similar situation years ago (a bear, not a gorilla... but not sure if that's better or worse), so I can imagine how scared those keepers must have been.  I likewise had a newer keeper let a clouded leopard in on me by mistake (I'm being charitable in assuming it was a mistake).  It's good that the keepers were able to stay as calm as you can be when dashing for your life and took advantage of their chance to get out.  

Keeper error always sounds like such a judgy term, but the fact is that 99% of all potentially dangerous incidents in which keepers and animals come into contact are caused by mistakes on the part of the former.  Thankfully everyone here is safe and well, and hopefully it was a learning experience for everyone.  Except maybe Elmo.  He seems to know what's going on.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

The Blameless Ones

As the likely vector of the deadly chytrid fungus, which has imperiled amphibian populations around the globe,  you'd be hard pressed to think of an amphibian which has wrought more destruction upon the natural world than the African clawed frog.  Of course, there is its fellow invasive amphibian, the American bullfrog, which has spread across the globe devouring smaller creatures in its wake.  Oh, and the Cane toad, equally invasive, but with the added disadvantage of being very toxic.

For a class of animals that is generally considered to be highly endangered, some amphibians, it seems, are doing pretty well for themselves...

Efforts to control cane toads, for example (and let's not shy away from it, control = killing) are generally fairly uncontroversial.  Same for invasive insects.  Or snakes, such as the brown tree snakes of Guam, or the Burmese pythons in the Everglades.  But what about when that invasive threat is cute and cuddly... and perhaps answers to the name of Mittens?  

Feral and free-roaming domestic cats are an ecological plague on bird, reptile, and small mammal populations around the globe, having been implicated in many extinctions.  But when you tell many people that, they insist it isn't the cats' fault.  Either they excuse the behavior entirely as "natural" (never mind that domestic cats  aren't "naturally" found in the Americas, or New Zealand, or Australia, or...), or they agree it's a problem, but wrong to take action against the cats, because it's humans who are the real destructive species.

Well... duh.  I mean, it's not like the cats, or African clawed frogs, or brown tree snakes, built and manned ships that sailed the globe and invaded other ecosystems.  They were brought there and released, intentionally or otherwise, by humans.   They are OUR problem... which does still make them a problem.  If anything, it makes control of their populations outside of their range that much more our responsibility.

An African clawed frog that hatches out of an egg in California doesn't know it's any different from one that hatches out in southern Africa.  Both are just trying to survive, which means doing as at the expense of other creatures which are their prey, and, in the case of the California ones, potentially spreading diseases as well.  It's not the clawed frogs "fault" that their an endangered species.  I don't hold it against them, I don't want to suffer to "pay" for it, it's not a moral judgement.  

I just don't want any of them to live either a) outside of their native range, or b) if outside of their native range, in a carefully controlled environment, such as a zoo, where they are unable to impact native wildlife.  It stinks if you happen to be that frog or snake or cat that's collateral damage, caught up in an ecological crisis that you did not - knowingly - contribute to or cause.  But that's our responsibility for cleaning up our environmental messes.