The Zoobender

I'll never hear about a proposal to relocate a zoo and *not* think of this scene from Avatar: The Last Airbender.  I suspect the folks at Sacramento Zoo could only wish it would be this easy...

 

On the Move

There are three major zoos in California's Bay Area.  San Francisco Zoo has the history.  Oakland Zoo is on the rise.  And Sacramento is... well, it's Sacramento.  For years, the zoo of California's state capital has chaffed at the limits imposed upon it by its borders and its infrastructure.  As is the case of many city zoos, it has steadily shed species over the years, acknowledging that its facilities don't adhere to current standards of animal care.

Sacramento Zoo will relocate to Elk Grove

All of that is about to change.  The city council of neighboring Elk Grove has voted, and the zoo has officially be cleared to move to a new location in that neighboring city.  They'll get the chance to do what so many zoos have longed to do - start fresh, from the ground up.   I know of several zoos which have, with varying degrees of seriousness, contemplated such a move before.  Few have actually followed through (Miami and Nashville being two examples, the later being one of the most recent).

It's an exciting opportunity to create animal habitats as they could ideally be, rather than try to build around what is already there, or engage in expensive, disruptive demolition.  Right now, I'm torn.  Do I hurry back to the Bay Area and try to see Sacramento's current zoo while it's still there?  Or wait a little bit, and let myself be surprised?

Single and Ready to Flamingle

As popular as they are as zoo animals, flamingos pose some significant challenges for zoo management.  The care of their feet, as noted in an earlier post, is definitely one.  Managing their diet, so that they maintain their expected pink coloration, is another.  And yet another is their reproduction.

With some birds, breeding is as simple as putting a male, a female, and suitable nesting materials together... and some will even forgo the nesting materials.  For flamingos, courtship and breeding are a community affair.  You can't get a pair of flamingos to breed in a zoo.  You also can't really get two pairs to do it either.  You need numbers - and the more flamingos you have in the flock, the more likely they are to breed.  A pair of flamingos, which is what many early zoo exhibits consisted of, won't experience the stimulation.  Shove flamingos together like chickens in battery cages and they'll be delighted.

There's a biological rationale for this.  Flamingos in the wild have very specific requirements for their nesting sites, and since there aren't so many of those sites around, they tend to get pretty crowded as birds cram into them.  If a flamingo pair is by itself and doesn't see other birds around, they may think there's something wrong or unsuitable with the site.  If the place is crowded with birds, then it must be a good place to breed, in their minds.  Besides, flamingo nesting grounds are popular haunts for various predators.  A lone flamingo pair has little chance of defending their eggs or chicks, so why bother even laying?  A flamingo in the middle of a vast flock has much better chances of safely raising young.

I've seen some pretty good-sized flocks of flamingos in zoos - some numbering near 100 birds - which is more than enough to encourage breeding, but nowhere near the size that flocks can get in the wild.  Zoos and aquariums looking to breed flamingos have resorted to various methods to encourage their birds to breed.  Some zoos can mix different flamingo species into one flock (I commonly see Chilean and American flamingos housed together) to give the numbers needed to make a bigger flock.  Some zoos will even surround their smaller flamingo flocks with mirrors, creating the illusion that the actual birds are standing in the middle of a flock that stretches to infinity.

Species Fact Profile: Lesser Flamingo (Phoenicoparrus minor)

                                                                  Lesser Flamingo

                                            Phoenicoparrus minor (G. Saint-Hilaire, 1879)

Range: Sub-Saharan Africa (and Yemen), with disjunct populations on coastal Madagascar.  A smaller population exists in South Asia (eastern Pakistan and western India).

Habitat:  Alkaline and Salt Lakes, Wetlands, Mudflats.  Prefer lakes with high levels of sodium and potassium salts, as well as calcium and magnesium ions

Diet:  Microscopic blue-green algae (such as Spirulina, Oscillatoria, and Lyngbya), Small Aquatic Invertebrates

Social Grouping: Flocks of up to 1,000,000 Birds

Reproduction:  Courtship behavior is initiated by males in ritualized group displays, which may occur year round but increase during the breeding season (typically October through February).  These consist of head and neck movements, walking forward in an erect posture, snapping their bills, vocalizing, and giving wing salutes.  Females may copulate with several males during a single breeding season. Single chalk-white/blue egg (rarely two) is laid in a conical-shaped, flat-topped mound built of mud, rising 15-20 centimeters out of the water.  Flamingos nest colonially, with nests typically 1-2 meters away from one another.  They may defend the area immediately around their nest from other flamingos.  Both parents incubate the egg for 28-31 days, taking turns going off to forage.  As the chick hatches, parents will call to it to help it imprint.  Chicks weigh about 50 grams at hatching.  Fledge at 70-90 (usually 75 days)

Lifespan: 25-30 Years (over 40 Years in Zoos)

      Conservation Status:  IUCN Near Threatened.  CITES Appendix II

• Smallest of the flamingo species.  90-125 centimeters tall (this includes the long neck – the typical standing height is 80-90 centimeters) with a wingspan of 1-1.1 meters.  Weight 1.5-2.7 kilograms, with males being heavier and taller than females.  The feet are fully webbed. 
• Both sexes look alike.  Plumage is pinkish-white, the result of photosynthetic pigments in the flamingos’ food, some darker markings on the back and wings.  Chicks are born with a gray natal coat (paler on the underside) that is replaced with a courser, browner coat at about two weeks of age.  Eyes are gold with a purple ring around them.  The legs are red
• The curved black bill (with dark red towards the tip) is specialized for filtering algae near the surface of the water and is outfitted with up to 10,000 microscopic lamellae
• Although found across a very broad range, the species primarily breeds in the Rift Valley lakes of East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania), with smaller breeding congregations in West Africa, South Africa, and South Asia.  The species has a network of potential breeding sites throughout its range and responds to environmental stressors by shifting from one to another
• Vagrants may be found as far to the northwest as Morocco and Spain; vagrants from the Asian population may be found as far west as Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.
• Migrates from feeding grounds to inland breeding colonies where it gathers in the thousands upon thousands, often in association with the greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus).  The timing of the breeding season depends upon the rains (flooding is necessary to isolate the breeding site from terrestrial predators, as well as to provide mud for nesting); sometimes years may pass without a population being able to breed.  
•  Upon fledging, chicks join crèches, which may number over 100,000 individuals.  These crèches are supervised by a few adult birds who will guide them to freshwater, a trek (on foot) that may reach over 30 kilometers.  Once they are old enough to fly, they will follow adults to the feeding grounds.  
• In rough water, they have been reported to congregate and form dense feeding flocks, which encircle a small body of water and help to calm it, facilitating feeding for birds at the center
• Several predators, including canids and felids, hyenas, honey badgers, baboons, marabou stork, and African fish eagle.  Chicks and eggs may be also preyed up by vultures
• Chicks may face additional mortality from the development of balls or rings of crystallized soda around their ankles, which may become heavy enough to weigh them down and drown them
• Still the most abundant of the world’s flamingo species with an estimated population of 2.2-3.3 million birds, of which approximately 650,000 are in the Asian population and the majority in the Rift Valley.  However, the population can be difficult to monitor due to the large-scale movements of the birds, capable of traveling over 450 kilometers in a single day.  Some migration has been observed between Africa and Asia
• Breeding sites are threatened by development, such as soda-ash mining (especially at Lake Natron, the most important breeding site) and proposed hydroelectric development.   These sites may be contaminated by heavy-metal poisoning, killing birds.  Some breeding sites have been lost
• Introduction of invasive brine shrimp can decrease the availability of algae the flamingos feed on
• Other threats include water pollution and collision with electrical lines
• Earliest records in North American zoos are from the late 1950s, the first successful captive reproduction did not occur until 1989 at SeaWorld San Diego
• Minimum flock size recommended for zoo populations is 20 birds; sometimes housed mixed with other flamingo species to form larger flocks for better breeding success 

Look Good, Be Good?

Reading yesterday's editorial about flamingo welfare, there was one line that stuck out in my mind.  "Flamingos do not live on lawns outside of children's books."  

I've seen greater and lesser flamingos in the wild, albeit from a distance, in Lake Manyara in Tanzania.  They appeared mostly as a shimmering pink haze in the distance on the edge of a muddy, rather foul smelling lake.  And looking at pictures of flamingos in the wild, Manyara actually looks like one of the lusher places they inhabit.  From the salt pans of the Great Rift Valley to the high altitude grasslands of the Andes, flamingos often seek out the harshest, least pleasant places to live in order to raise their young in peace.  Despite their association with the tropics, these are not birds that are going to putter around on a touristy beach under the palm trees, or stroll across the grassy lawns past the cocktail bar, like the equatorial version of Canada geese.  And yet that is the image that we seem hellbent on recreating in zoos.

Why?  Because in these cases we aren't recreating the animals' habitat as it exists.  We're recreating what the visitor thinks the habitat looks like.  And in this case, that's incorrect.

It seems kind of silly to me now, but it was an epiphany when I realized this - that there can be a major difference between what we think of as natural and what really is.  In some cases, what actually is best for the animal might, to a visitor, appear inappropriate.  Flamingos on a grassy lawn ambling around a shallow pond probably looks a lot more appealing that flamingos on mud.  It probably would smell better, too.  I could easily imagine visitors, comparing the two habitats, leaving with the impression that the birds in the grassy habitat were happier and better cared for, while those in the muddy yard were dirtier, sadder, and perhaps less healthy... you know, because of the dirt.  I know for certain, however, which yard the flamingos would opt to be in.

I was reminded of this again the other day when I visited a zoo in which a pair of macaws were perched in front of a lush green backdrop - one which they had no access to.  Their flight feathers were clipped and they were largely confined to their perches, called "parrots on sticks" within the field.  Visitors expressed admiration that the birds were "free" (for so they seemed to be, not being in a visible cage), even though they had less room to roam and less opportunity to express natural behavior than a macaw in a reasonably-sized enclosure would have had.   Or perhaps it's the mentality that causes some facilities to put solitary or incompatible individuals together so people don't feel sad that the animals don't have "friends."

One of the most important things I've learned about animal welfare over the years is that sometimes there's a difference between what looks good and what is good.  When there is, always chose the later.  I'd rather have to explain an ugly enclosure than explain poor animal care practices.

The Pink of Health - Rethinking Flamingo Welfare

Our definition of animal welfare has evolved over the years.  It used to be taken for granted that, if an animal can be kept alive, in reasonably good health, and ideally breeding, the welfare must be ok.  In recent years, however, our standards have risen, and we continue to re-evaluate these standards.  Surviving isn't good enough - an animal can be kept alive for much longer than its natural lifespan even in suboptimal conditions.  The goal should be thriving.

We Don't Talk About Flamingos: Why Do Flamingos in Human Care Remain Such a Challenge?

I really enjoyed this article I cam across by Christopher Benjamin Kent, examining the welfare of one of the most common groups of birds in zoos.  Flamingos are a group of birds that, historically, we all seemed to think did just fine... with a few caveats.  One of those was that they were prone to foot issues, but the prevailing lore was that bumblefoot was just something one had to accept as a fact of life in caring for these birds, one to be treated as needed but largely inescapable.  Kent calls that into question, inviting the reader to consider how the natural history of these birds is at odds with their usual exhibit design, and how that leads to foot issues which can compromise their health and welfare.

Flamingos are a great case study, because they're a group of birds so widely held in zoos around the world.  It makes one consider what other welfare problems have been out there for far too long which we've all taken for granted that we just have to deal with... but which could, with some critical thinking and fresh insight, be addressed.

Rarities on the Rise

Until 1971, the Chacoan peccary was considered an extinct species, known to the outside world only as a fossil.  Before 1996, none were to be found in North American zoos.  Today, they are a reasonably common species in American and European zoos.  I've seen them at about a dozen US zoos, most recently just a month ago.  From "not known to still be alive" to "fairly common zoo animal" in the space of a little more than 50 years.  Not too bad of a turnaround, really.  I know see this species more often than I see the once-ubiquitous collared peccary, which is native to the US.

Zoo enthusiasts have a tendency to grouse about how the diversity of species in zoos is going down.  And yes, it largely is.  It's somewhat disappointing that we can't see as many animals as we used to, but it really is, for the most part, probably for the best in many cases.  A lot of those species that we used to see were never really common themselves, only held in a tiny number of facilities, perhaps imported from the wild, and a lot of the living conditions left a fair bit to be desired.  Now, we see more emphasis on larger enclosures, larger social groups, and more sustainable populations.  Other species seem to have fallen out of favor, for one reason or another..  Macaques, for example, are shunned by many zoos due to fear of herpes viruses, while some zoos got out of exotic venomous snakes due to the expense of antivenin.

It's worth noting, however, that sometime it works the other way.  There are species that were extremely rare in zoos when I was young that are now very common.  Komodo dragons were once the ultimate rarity, found only at a single US zoo.  Then it became three zoos.  Now, I feel like I see them in the majority of AZA facilities I go to... and even in a few non-AZA.  When I saw my first fossa at the Dallas Zoo in 2008, I almost swooned I was so excited.  I took a lot of really bad photos but didn't care, because I was convinced I'd never see one again and I needed to have proof to myself that I hadn't dreamed it.  Now, they too are fairly common.

Panamanian golden frogs didn't occur in zoos at all until the early 2000s, and now are among the most popular of zoo amphibian species (within AZA only).  Titicaca frogs, a species that I'd once thought of as something impossible to keep and that I'd never see, are catching up with them rapidly.  I saw the only California condors on public display at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2000; I've been to five zoos with that species since COVID.  

Yes, the trend has largely been in the opposite direction, and there are some taxa which have been hit harder than others.  Even some big name, extremely popular species have been in decline.  Despite being what feels like a professional zoo-goer some of the time, visiting dozens of a facilities a year, I didn't see a polar bear last year until October.  Still, it's nice to realize that, even as we lose some species in our facilities, we still occasionally gain new ones, even ones that would have seemed very unlikely not too long ago.  I wonder sometimes what surprises we will get in the future. 

Accidental Enrichment

 "A Nat Geo train wreck for my daughter's birthday, thanks Juniper!"

That's how the mother who took the above video captioned her post, in which Woodland Park Zoo grizzly bear Juniper jumped and scarfed down some ducklings that flew into her enclosure.  Things like this, unfortunately (or, if you're the predatory animal involved, fortunately) happen from time to time in zoos, perhaps more often than most visitors suspect.  A lot of times we find the damage done when we come in the mornings; perhaps even more often we don't find anything, because the prey animal involved was such a small snack that the predator left no evidence.

I've seen kookaburras and hornbills with snakes, snow leopards with squirrels, lions with groundhogs, and, in one incident when I still don't quite understand, wolves with the remains of a great horned owl.  For some visitors, watching such an incident is a horrifying, traumatic experience, something akin to the killings in the Coliseum of Rome.  For others, it's a fascinating display of natural behavior.  I always take the position that it's perfectly possible for it to be sad for the prey animal and an excellent opportunity for the predator at the same time.  

Woodland Park Zoo put out a very brief Facebook statement on Juniper's behalf.  It said, in summary, that while the zoo does what it can to discourage ducks from flying into the bear pool, but it can't always be prevented, and when it does happen... well, bears will be be bears.

Species Fact Profile: Chacoan Peccary (Catagonus wagneri)

                                                              Chacoan Peccary

                                            Catagonus wagneri (Rusconi, 1930)

Range: Northern Argentina, Paraguay, southern Bolivia, southern Brazil

Habitat:  Hot, semi-arid grasslands and forests

Diet:  Cacti, Flowers, Roots, Seed Ponds

Social Grouping: Mixed-Sex Herds up to 20

Reproduction:  Give birth once per year.  Young are most commonly born from September through December, but can be born year round.  Gestation period 150 days.  Births appear to be linked to abundant food and rainfall.  Average of 2-3 (range 1-4) per litter, with females leaving the herd to give birth, then rejoining later.  Young are precocial, able to run within hours of birth.  Sexually mature at 16-24 months.

Lifespan: 15 Years

      Conservation Status:  IUCN Endangered.  CITES Appendix I

• Largest peccary species.  Approximately 96-117 centimeters long, 52-70 centimeters tall at the shoulder, weigh 30-40 kilograms (males and females roughly equal in size).  Pig-like appearance with well-formed rostrum with tough, leathery snout.  Differs from other peccaries with longer ears, snout, and tail.  Have three hind toes, whereas other peccaries have two (lacks the dewclaw on the hind foot that the other two species have). 
• Differ from pigs in having upper canines that are small and point down, rather than long and curved upward and outward.  Very small feet allow for maneuverability among spiny plants
• Bristle-like fur is brownish-gray in color, with a dark stripe running across the back and white fur on the shoulders.  No sexual dimorphism.  Juveniles are grizzled tan and black with a tan shoulder color until about 3-4 months of age.  
• Most active by day, especially in the morning.  Gradually circle through home range.  Range is marked with a milky, odorous substance secreted from a gland on the back and spread by rubbing.  Also defecate at designated stations.  Sleep in groups, using a sleeping spot for 2-3 nights in a row.
• When confronted by predators (puma, jaguar), form a wall, standing shoulder to shoulder, grunting and chattering teeth.  This posture, effective against natural predators, makes them vulnerable to human hunters, who can shoot them easily
• Rub cacti on the ground, rubbing off the spines, or pull spines off in their teeth and spit them out.  Specialized kidneys break down acids from cacti, while two-chambered stomach allows for digestion of tough foods.  Act as seed dispersers.  
• Seek out salt licks for minerals, will also eat leafcutter ant mounds.  Obtain most of their moisture from their diet.  Occasionally scavenges, eats small animals.
• Name references both the Gran Chaco region of South America, characterized by arid conditions and dense vegetation (known colloquially as “the green hell”) and peccary, a Brazilian Tupi word which means “animal which makes many paths through the woods.”  Native name is tagua
• Only living member of the genus Catagonus, which contains at least two other extinct species
• Approximately 3000 in wild.  Population decreasing
• Genus originally described from subfossil remains.  Species was identified through fossil remains in 1930, thought to be extinct until made known to western science in 1971 (previously known to local peoples) by Dr. Ralph Wetzel in the Argentine province of Salta, making it one of the most recently “discovered” large mammals
• Species is in decline due to a combination of habitat loss and fragmentation, as habitat is converted in ranchland, hunting (primarily for meat, though also for hides to a much lesser extent compared to other peccaries), and diseases.
• Founder group of 10 was exported by Paraguayan government (captive-bred stock) to Phoenix Zoo in 1996, with first births taking place within days of arrival in the US.  Population has grown steadily since then, with animals being exported from the US to establish population in Europe

To Post, or Not To Post?

It sometimes seems like it's a rare occasion when there isn't some sort of life-or-death drama going on behind the scenes at the zoo.  Maybe it's a neonatal animal struggling through the first few days of life, or having to be hand-reared.  Maybe it's an animal combatting a disease, or recovering from an injury.  Maybe it's the delicate introduction of potential breeding partners, with the potential for either the next generation of a species being born... or a violent, potentially fatal, interaction.

Even those members of the staff who aren't directly involved in the goings-on usually find out about it pretty soon, sometimes through an email in which the curator tries to see how many times she can fit the word CONFIDENTIAL in a single sentence.  It never takes too long for the news to percolate to the folks who handle our social media, at any rate, which leads to the inevitable question:  When can we post this?

Opinions vary from zoo to zoo, from those that would never share any negative information - nothing ever died, at one zoo I worked at, if you listed to our guest services folks - to those who like to put everything out in the open.  I generally favor things being out in the open, to the extent that it will not compromise animal welfare.  For example, if you have a beloved, popular animal that is battling illness, it can be distracting to have reporters constantly calling you up, people trying to interpose themselves (maybe even sneaking behind the scenes) to see what's up, stuff like that.

People are more inclined to support a zoo or aquarium if the trust it, and that means being confident that the people who work there are really doing their best to help the animals be as happy and healthy as possible.  If an animal is going to die, it may be for the best that the public understands the Herculean efforts that went into to saving it, rather than just being caught off-guard by the bad news when it breaks.    Let the public mourn with us when things go bad, and celebrate with us when they go well... and hold our breath with us at all the dicey moments in between. 

Reunited, And It Feels So Good

There was a time - no so long ago, really - when the birth of any great ape in a zoo was such a rare, tremendous occurrence that the baby was deemed too delicate and precious to be entrusted to the mother.  Parenting, the thought process was, was too important to be left to amateurs, and baby gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees would be whisked away to be raised by human caretakers.  This had a regrettable tendency to result in behaviorally-incompetent animals that were not, in turn, suitably prepared to raise their own young when the time came, causing those offspring to be hand-reared as well.  And so the cycle went on...

Today, great apes, like almost all mammals, are left with their mothers whenever possible.  Sometimes, situations play out in such a way that the baby must be removed for one reason or another.  At Busch Gardens Tampa, for example, female orangutan Luna had to undergo a caesarian section, and her infant had to be removed while she recovered from the surgery.  The park was very open with the public about all of this (and yet still managed to see dozens of comments along the lines of, "But why isn't it with it's mom?"... read the caption, people!), as well as the fact that their end goal was getting the mother-child duo reunited as soon as possible.

"As soon as possible" turned out to be fairly fast, and mom and baby are once again together, and the bonding has begun. 

   

These stories don't always have an ending that's so happy - recently, a baby gorilla was born at Fort Worth Zoo, but the mother wasn't able to provide care.  A few decades ago, the Fort Worth keepers would have just raised the baby on their own, and I'm sure it would have been an absolute rockstar of an animal celebrity at the zoo.  Instead, the decision was made that the baby needed a proper social group more than Fort Worth needed a social media boost, and the baby was packed off to Cleveland, where a surrogate mother was found.

Every situation is different, so every outcome is different.  What's important is finding an outcome that provides the animal with the best chance of having a happy, healthy, properly-socialized life.

Aesop, You Aren't

Since ancient times, people have used animals as allegory to tell stories and share morals.  When it's ancient lore being passed down - think "The Tortoise and the Hare," it comes across as charming, timeless, and insightful.  For some reason when people write crud like this in modern times, I just find it extremely annoying, like a whiny plea for people to recognizing how "deep" the author really is, and then we're all expected to clap at the end of story (I mean, who actually talks like this?).  I wonder if folks thousands of years ago felt that way about Aesop.

Also, don't throw rocks at the animals.  A better ending would be, "And then a zookeeper came up behind them and tipped both of them into the lion exhibit.  By the time the gun team arrived, it was obvious that it was too late to save them, so no actions were taken against the animals.  Thirty witnesses were on hand to say that the wife had pushed the husband in, and he pulled her in after him.  Case closed."

Archetypal Animals

 "I hope that you're the one - if not, you are the prototype."

- OutKast

Visitors go to the zoo to see animals, but with a few specific exceptions, they aren't too particular about what exact animals they see.  For example, you might ask someone what animal they're more keen to see, and they might say "monkeys."  They probably don't care too much about what monkeys they see, whether they're spider monkeys or macaques or guenons.  There are some animals that, while being monkeys, might not be "monkey enough" for the visitor, such as night monkeys or marmosets.  Similarly, they want to see parrots, but for the most part don't care as long as they are "parrot enough" - the key requirements being loud and colorful.

A trend that I've noticed in a lot of zoos is that you get zoo directors and presidents with less direct experience with animals, who are mostly brought in to run the business and drive the gate.  These are the folks who are often making decisions about collection planning and new exhibits, and that includes selecting animals.  They want animals to satisfy the visitors, and look for species that fill the niches that visitors are looking to see.  The thing is, for all of these niches of animal, there's inevitably one or two species which become the most popular by virtual of their visitor appeal (color, strange appearance), ease of care (cold hardiness, simple diet, compatibility with other species), or some other reason.

The result is that many zoos start holding those same few species, resulting in diminished diversity in species across zoos.

Visitors love crocodilians, for example.  Almost every zoo I've ever been to has a crocodile or alligator.  Of all of the world's crocodilians, there's none which probably makes a better exhibit animal than the American alligator.  They grow big, making an impressive animal.  They are tractable and ease to work around.  They are one of the most cold-hardy crocodilians, able to be outside for a great part of the year than tropical species.  Everyone's heard of them; they're cultural icons to a degree few other reptiles are.  Also, they're native to much of the US, and as such work in displays of native wildlife.  It's no surprise that so many zoos favor them.  If a zoo director wanted a crocodilian for display, why pick an small, obscure, delicate, or otherwise more difficult species, like a Philippine crocodile, when you could have an American alligator and the visitors would be just as happy? 

The more zoos work with that one (or handful of) species, the more set their husbandry become, and the more established it becomes in everyone's mind that this is the easier animal to work with, everything else starts to seem more difficult by comparison, and more zoos opt to work with those common species,

The scenario, or similar ones, plays out for penguins (African penguin), lemurs (ring-tailed lemur), waterfowl (mandarin duck, white-faced whistling duck), antelope (bongo, addra gazelle), and a host of other taxa.  The result is zoos that start to look a lot like one another - which maybe visitors don't mind too much.  The end result, however, is that we can support fewer species and have fewer assurance colonies of endangered or threatened species in our care.  

Some zoos, I feel, just need to start being willing to be a little more risk-averse and open to working with species that other zoos aren't working with and to do and be husbandry leaders, not just followers.

From the News: The San Francisco Zoo will receive a pair of pandas from China

The San Francisco Zoo will receive a pair of pandas from China

When China announced that new giant pandas would be coming to the US soon, it set off a flurry of speculation as to which zoos might be the beneficiaries.  San Diego Zoo was an obvious front runner, and I don't think anyone is expecting the National Zoo not to resume its work with the species.  But who else might join the panda program?  

I can honestly say, I was not expecting the answer to be San Francisco.

Despite being such a major US city, San Francisco has, for as long as I can remember, been a zoo that's squarely in the middle of the pack.  It's not famous for its exhibits or its collections in the way that many zoos in less prominent cities (Omaha, Columbus, Fort Worth) are.  There's been more than a little criticism of the zoo's governance in the press lately, and it's perhaps most famous for the fatal tiger attack (the only case of a zoo visitor being killed by an escaped animal at an AZA zoo that I've ever heard of), pushing 20 years ago.  

On the other hand... why not San Francisco?

The city has a long, storied history of association with China and Chinese culture.  The climate is favorable to notoriously heat-averse pandas (Mark Twain famously said that the coldest winter he'd ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco).  And maybe the bears will give the zoo the rejuvenating energy to launch itself to a new era.

It's funny, but I've been to San Francisco twice, and still haven't made it to the zoo, though not for lack of interest.  Perhaps when I swing back next time, I'll make it over there and see giant pandas in my fifth US zoo.

Extinction in Black, White, and Pink

The photo below was taken by David Seth-Smith in 1926.  It's a shame that it's in black-and-white, because I imagine the scene was quite vivid in color.  The birds pictured are pink-headed ducks, a species of waterfowl found in South Asia.  Note the use of the past tense.  Though the IUCN still technically lists the species as Critically Endangered, in truth they have not been seen for decades (since 1949, to be exact), and are almost certainly extinct.

Like the quagga, thylacine, and Carolina parakeet, as well as the famous passenger pigeon, this species survived long enough to be housed in modern zoo collections.  I wonder if the duck had been able to hold on just a little longer, if just a few more birds had made their way into zoos; considering the era, actually, private waterfowl collections, such as the UK's WWT or the US's Sylvan Heights, may have been a better bet.  If enough birds had been kept with serious efforts to breed them, maybe the species could have been saved.  The odds would have been stacked against it, but other endangered species have bounced back from equally dire odds.

Again, the pink-headed duck technically still is an endangered species, not an extinct one, though a formal change in status seems to be only a matter of time.  As another Earth Day passes us by, we can look back at our questionable, rather mixed record in saving endangered species, and try to promise ourselves - and our descendants - that we'll do better to save the next one.  And the one after.

That's OrangUTAN to You!

We're all busy people in the zoo field, and we can't be expected to waste a lot of time of idle chit chat (I type as I listen to many of my coworkers who are, indeed, engaged in idle chitchat at the moment).  We need to keep conversations moving, as as such we need to be brief.  As a community, our lingo is full of acronyms, from AZA to ZAHP, some of which can overlap confusingly with more conventional uses of those same acronyms (a BFF is a black-footed ferret, not your best friend forever, though I suppose they could be the same, while a PDF refers not to a type of file format, but to a poison dart frog).

We also use a lot of short-hand with animals, abbreviating either their Latin names or their common ones.  Many of these have seeped into common usage, which is why many of our guests will speak of chimps, not chimpanzees, rhinos, not rhinoceroses, and hippos, not hippopotamuses (hippopotami).  

But there is one commonly-used short-hand for a popular zoo animal which we should not be using.  Recently, I came across a statement from the Orangutan SSP (itself several years old, but I just saw it for the first time now) explaining why, for reasons of linguistic accuracy and respect for Malay culture, it is not appropriate to call orangutans by the common nickname of "orang."

Orang-u-slang: Why "orang" is no substitute for "orangutan," by Rachel Davis

One commenter on the original post replied with an eye-roll emoji and said "There are more important things to worry about, like deforestation and poaching."  Yes, that's true.  If I had to pick between a world where orangutans were thriving in the wild but called "orangs" and one in which they were extinct, but everyone used the proper term, I know which one I would choose in a heartbeat.  That being said, stopping poaching and habitat loss is going to be an expensive, difficult, years-long struggle... whereas all the SSP is asking you to do is tack on two syllables to the name.  C'mon...

PS: After reading this, I did make a point of going through the blog and changing every use of the word "orang" to "orangutan" - or at least every one that I could find.  If I missed any, please feel free to let me know!

Caring and Community

Even counting for the changes in standards and animal care philosophies over the past few decades, there's no shaking the fact some of the zoos that are now considering some of the best in the country were once pretty awful, even compared to their contemporaries.  Audubon Zoo, Zoo Atlanta, Central Park Zoo, and Oakland Zoo were once nationally famous - or infamous - for how bad their conditions were and how poor their animal care and facilities were.  

Sometimes there was a specific incident which triggered attention and outrage (a comment on the Oakland Zoo review I wrote reminded me of a fatal incident involving an elephant and a keeper at that facility).  Sometimes the general decline and decay finally just became too bad to be overlooked any longer.  In the case of Zoo Atlanta, a specific animal, Willie B the gorilla, became the rallying focus for the need to fix the zoo.

In these cases, there were always calls to shutter the zoo in question.  However, in each case, the community rallied around the zoo and helped rebuild.  I sometimes wonder, if such a list of bad zoos in major US cities were to come out today, how our communities would respond?

There's a tremendous loss of sense of community in many aspects of American life these days, resulting in weaker civic connections.  People don't seem to experience the same pride and attachment in their cities that they used to.  I see some people who share a tremendous amount of pride in their city zoos.  I see plenty of people who seem determined to find fault in every part of their community, the zoo being no exception, with a constant barrage of complaints that their local community can't do anything right.

Zoo Atlanta, Audubon Zoo, and the others are now excellent facilities with admirable standards of animal care and demonstrated commitment to conservation and animal welfare - but this didn't happen in a vacuum.  Turning around a zoo doesn't need complaints.  It needs resources and community support.  One could say that in many cases, a community has the zoo it deserves.

Zoo Review: Oakland Zoo, Part II

Continuing through the main body of the Oakland Zoo, the majority of the exhibit space is given over to the African Savanna exhibits.  

Like California Trail, this area tends to be skewed to the megafauna (but what zoo African area isn't?), though with the inclusion of a few smaller species as well.  Fauna doesn't come much more mega than African elephants, which inhabit one large (six acre) yard.  Since my visit I believe I'd heard that there was going to be something of a shuffling of elephants, with some older animals being sent out to a sanctuary, with the possibility of a breeding herd being established.  I'll have to see what transpires.  Next to the elephants is a very attractive hillside yard for lions, and well as an open paddock for giraffe, and side exhibits for warthog, spotted hyena, and plains zebra.  Part of the region has an African village motif, with one hut housing a small collection of African reptiles, with meerkats scurrying outside another.  A meshed-in enclosure holds a troop of delightful red-tailed monkeys, one of the most handsome of African primates, while two aviaries hold a variety of African birds (including Madagascar sacred ibis, a first for me).

One African exhibit is worthy of a little extra attention because of its curious story.  Separated a little bit from the other displays is a habitat of hamadryas, a desert-dwelling baboon from North Africa and the Middle East, with a spacious grassy yard sprawling out in front of a rocky cliff face.  At the dawn of this millennium, Oakland was on track to try and obtain that most beloved of zoo animals, the giant panda, and this exhibit was built to be the panda exhibit.  Pandas never came, alas, and so the baboons moved in.  Few if any animals match the star power of giant pandas, it is true, but I will say, I think a social group of active, engaged primates makes a better display than a perpetually sleeping (unless its snacking) black and white bear.  So in my mind it all worked out for the best.

As one might expect, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Children's Zoo is largely made up of domestic species, with petting opportunity for kids to interact with goats and sheep.  If domestics aren't your area of interest, however, I'd still recommend swinging through - there are enough "zoo" animals to make it worth your while as well.  A cliffside habitat houses a troop of lemurs, while North American river otters twirl about in front of underwater viewing windows.  There is a surprisingly diverse invertebrate collection in the House of Bugs.  A small collection of reptiles and amphibians can be seen in excellent terrariums in one building, with larger species - American alligators (with a giant mock-fossil croc skeleton nearby) and Aldabra tortoises - seen in outdoor enclosures.  Perhaps the most surprising - and exciting - feature of the children's zoo, however, is the bat exhibit.  A large colony of flying fox bats occupies a towering outdoor flight cage.  Visitors aren't able to walk in with the bats as they are in some indoor rainforest exhibits, but it's still extraordinary to see the large bats out and active in the sun.  (Not part of the children's zoo, but kids will probably want to take a trip to the rides area, located near the gondola station that leads to the California Trail).

The final area is Tropical Rainforest, which I found to be the most uneven of the exhibit areas.  It features fairly standard island habitats for white-handed gibbons and siamangs, a few small aviaries for rainforest birds and small primates, and a fairly ugly, over-engineered chimpanzee exhibit.  There is also a tiger exhibit which, while nice enough, pales compared to the lion and jaguar exhibits elsewhere in the zoo.  The last exhibit I saw in this region, however, was the real showstopper. 

Once a common species in US zoos, sun bears are now increasingly rare, being phased out to make room for the other tropical bear species, which seem to be more sustainable in numbers.  Most of the sun bear exhibits I've seen have been fairly meh.  Oakland's was gorgeous - huge and lushly planted, viewed from  an elevated pavilion that provided a treetop view of the enclosure.  I almost didn't see the bear, the exhibit was so big and dense - it was, in true sun bear fashion, clinging to a tree, mostly obscured by the trunk, and resting completely at ease.  Sun bears are fading out of the US fairly quickly now, with most of the remaining animals being quite old.  I wonder what will happen to this beautiful exhibit when it is emptied - a different tropical bear species, a primate, who knows?

Oakland Zoo is yet another example of a zoo that, in a surprisingly short amount of time, has managed to turn itself around from atrocious to quite good.  Many of its exhibits are of a stellar quality - particularly those of California Trail  - and it doesn't have any that I would really call poor (though certainly some that I would tinker with, given the chance).   I'd also love to see smaller animals get as much attention as the larger ones - the bird and herp collections are fairly small.  Still, it was a beautiful zoo with an interesting collection that was well-cared for in appropriate exhibits.  The commitments to conservation and animal welfare were highlighted throughout the facility.  I was glad to have visited - though I still need to go back to continue my sweep of the Bay Area facilities.

Zoo Review: Oakland Zoo, Part I

A tricky decision - only time to hit one zoo on a visit to the Bay Area, so which one to do?  After a bit of hemming and hawing between the three options (none of which I'd been to before), I decided to visit the Oakland Zoo.  It was a close call, I admit, but I'd heard some pretty exciting news about this once easily-overlooked zoo, especially their signature new exhibit, and decided to check it out.  While I'm always prone to major FOMO, and will definitely be back to check out San Francisco and Sacramento, I'm glad that I did take the chance to see this excellent mid-sized zoo.

Like many zoos, Oakland originated as a children's zoo - it actually was once called the "Baby Zoo" - being the pet project of two big game hunters who liked to catch their own animals for the exhibits.  As with many zoos, it squandered and sank into mediocrity until, like so many other city zoos, it found itself on an "America's Worst Zoo" list put out by the Humane Society of the United States.  And, as was the case with so many of the zoos that were similarly named and shamed, Oakland pulled itself together and rebuilt itself as an excellent zoo.  Now sprawling over 100 acres in Knowland Park, the zoo occupies a towering location over the city, providing sweeping views of the Bay Area.

The quality of the exhibits is set immediately upon entry with the flamingo exhibit.  Many zoos have a flamingo exhibit as their opening act - a display of activity, color, and noise with a recognizable species to get visitors excited about their journey.  Oakland's exhibit differs from many in being a completely enclosed aviary, which, while perhaps not as aesthetically pleasing as an open pond, allows their birds to be fully-flighted.  The lesser flamingos share their lagoon with African spoonbills in an attractive, bustling, if slightly malodorous (as flamingos tend to be) scene that will delight visitors as they get their bearings and decided where to set off to next.

Much of the recent growth has come from the opening of the 2018 California Trail.  This massive expansion is accessible via a sky gondola, with visitors riding cable areas across a vast, grassy valley to the entrance of the trail.  (The gondola ride is free for visitors - there is actually a separate skyride within the zoo that does charge admission, but is not required in order to see animals).  The animal experience begins before visitors even touch the ground - from the gondolas, they are given an excellent view of a large herd of American bison which grazes the valley below them.  Upon landing, they can embark on a looping trail that passes a series of enormous habitats, most of them the largest I've seen for animals of their species.  

Two giant aviaries hold two iconic raptor species of California, the bald eagle and the California condor.  This is the fourth zoo that I've seen California condors at, and this aviary was easily the most spectacular.  Adjacent to the aviary was a viewing pavilion that featured excellent exhibits on the conservation of America's largest (and perhaps most endangered) bird, including how zoos have been involved in its conservation.   There are open habitats for gray wolves (surprisingly to me, not of the Mexican subspecies), American black bears, and grizzly bears, the later being especially impressive when seen eye to eye through the viewing windows of their pool, towering over visitors.  Covered habitats feature puma and jaguar.  The jaguar habitat was especially beautiful, a recreation of the chaparral habitat that these big cats once inhabited in the land that Oakland now sits on.  The puma exhibit also caught my interest, even though I didn't actually see one out.  Oakland serves as sort of a clearing hour for orphaned mountain lion cubs, which are brought to the zoo for emergency medical care and rearing, then dispersed to other zoos for permanent housing.  The trail ends with a gorgeous overlook of the bison and the Bay Area, before gondolas sweep visitors back to the main zoo.

I was a bit surprised to see that this is all that California Trail offered, and as incredible as they exhibits were, I think that they could have stood to be complemented by some of the Golden State's smaller inhabitants.  It would have been great to have had a walk-through aviary of California's smaller birds, such as quail, passerines, and waterfowl, or a reptile house/aquarium/invertebrate house, or maybe a small nocturnal building.  Something that would make the exhibit a little more along the lines of Oklahoma City Zoo's Oklahoma Trails. I love native exhibits, but I think they work best when they also include the smaller species that call a region home.  California Trail features a grand total of eight species - three of which are extinct in California (except for the odd vagrant) and one of which was extinct, was reintroduced, and is now found only in very limited patches of the state.  Still, the quality of the exhibits was incredible and the scenery was gorgeous.

The main zoo may lack the panache of California Trail, but still features some excellent exhibits (as well as a few less excellent ones).  It's divided roughly into four regions - Africa, Tropical Rainforest, Australia, and the Children's Zoo.  The Australia area I was forced to miss out on - it was actually closed at the time of my visit, because it was only accessible via a train ride.  I'm been told that it houses emus and wallaroos.  Tomorrow, I'll recap the other three regions of the zoo.

Oakland Zoo  

Trust No One

Excellent advise from an expert source - and which I can relate to.

I once was taking care of a jaguar exhibit on my first week at a new job, when the pool clogged.  A keeper who had been there longer than me responded to my call and come to help me fix it.  We'd been looking at the drain for a few minutes when suddenly he jolted upright.  He realized that, answering my call, he'd walked into the jag exhibit with me - without confirming that the cat was safely locked away.

Immediately, he ran to the holding building to confirm that she was secure before coming back out.  I mean, if she hadn't have been, it would probably have already been too late for at least one of us.

He brushed it off later, joking that he told tell right off the bat that I seemed reliable enough to have locked the cat away before inviting him in.  Still, it did teach me not to take it personally when people want to double check on what I say I've done for their own safety - and that I should never hesitate to double check on them.

Knowing Normal

After many years spent in the company of wild animals - enough to at least finally convince myself that I'm not an expert - I've come to the conclusion that the most important skill for a zookeeper is to be able to define "normal."  There are two parts to the definition - knowing normal for a species, (say, American black bear), which will come from having worked with/around multiple individuals of that species, and getting a baseline for what normal black bear behavior is, so that if you were suddenly given a new bear into your charge, you'd be able to know if it's normal or not.  The other is normal for an individual, say one specific bear.  This comes from knowing that particular animal and what is normal for them.

(It's worth noting that these two definitions of normal could be pretty divergent.  It's funny that we accept that with domestic animals a lot more readily than we do wild ones.  If one person says that their dog is super high energy and likes to go for runs and play active games all day, and another person says their dog is a little couch potato and just wants to curl up for belly-rubs, no one finds that strange.  Try telling a keeper that your bear, or big cat, or primate deviates from species "normal" and the immediate assumption is that there is something wrong with it.)

The better you know normal, in and out, the more easily you will be able to identify when something is not normal.  Now, just because something is abnormal doesn't necessarily mean it's bad - if an animal's normal is in some ways undesirable, such as being aggressive or anxious, a change from that could be good, and might be something you can build on.  An animal that is pregnant may likewise deviate from its normal.  But even if the change is a bad one - a symptom of illness, or injury, or behavioral problems - your best bet to catch it and treat it early is to notice a deviation from your animal's norm.

The only way to really know that norm is to spend a lot of time with your animals.  This is where the interplay of the keepers, curators, and veterinarians becomes integral to animal welfare.  By virtue of their (usual) tenure in the field, curators and vets have often worked with a larger number of individual animals of a given species than keepers.  To pull an example, I've worked with just over a dozen individual spider monkeys (of two species) in the course of my career.  When I was animal manager at a particular zoo with spider monkeys, I was able to use that knowledge to form a baseline of normal spider monkey behavior - what foods and enrichment they typically liked, what their cold tolerance was, how best to furnish their enclosure, and so on.

At this point in my career, I wasn't taking daily care of the individual four monkeys at the zoo as much - some of them I didn't really know as individuals.  For that, I was more dependent on the keepers, who new those animals as individuals.  Maybe many spider monkeys loved a certain food item, but our male hated it.  Maybe spider monkeys I worked with elsewhere were habituated to going outside at a certain temperature, but our older female found it too uncomfortably cold.  If I had seen our male rejecting what I considered a favorite food item, or the female refusing to shift outside on a day that was, in my experience, perfectly acceptable for spider monkeys, I might have seen a problem where there actually wasn't one.  

I'm increasingly of the opinion that, when it comes to animals, almost no one is actually an expert... but most people involved with the animals have some form of expertise that they can offer.  We should be willing to listen to all sources of that expertise to help best inform the decisions about our animals.

Book Review: West with Giraffes

The San Diego Zoo is easily one of the most famous - if not the most famous - zoos in the world, so it's hard to remember that there was a time when it was a younger, newer zoo, without all of the animals it has today.  Those animals all had to come from somewhere, and each of the species in the zoo has a story of how that first individual arrived.  Few species had a more dramatic arrival to the zoo than its first giraffes, which rode a deadly hurricane into New York City harbor in 1938, under the shadow of the looming World War.  From that chaotic entry, they made their perilous way across the country by truck (and this was before the interstate system was developed, mind you) on their way to California.

That much really happened, and would be a fascinating story on its own.

Author Lynda Rutledge tweaks and dramatizes the odyssey in West with Giraffes, a fictionalized story of the giraffes crossing Depression Era America from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Interspersed with news articles, letters, and other communiques, West with Giraffes follows three unlikely human companions who join the giraffes on their quest.  The crusty-yet-caring zoo manager ends up picking up a homeless Oklahoma drifter, one of many such wandering young men of the era, as well as a young woman who is desperate to make a life for herself as a photographer and sees the giraffes as the story of her lifetime.  Together, they deal with dangerous roads, natural disasters, and scheming rogues who would steal the priceless, delicate animals away.  Adding to the drama is the very significant injury that one of the giraffes has suffered during the stormy arrival in New York, and the race to get them safely to San Diego.

West with Giraffes reminds me very much of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen's tale of a Depression Era circus and its elephant, which was made into a major movie a few years ago.  (Readers of Gruen's book who may have been turned off by some of the violence against animals in it can rest assured that this book is tamer on that score).  Both stories offer a beautiful tale of the bond that can develop between animals and caretakers, as well as those that can form between people united by their love of animals.  It helps that it also takes place at a time when the vast majority of people in the US had never seen a giraffe.  Today they are one of the most common of all zoo animals.  Back then, they were almost mythical, their presence largely limited to a few elite East Coast zoos.

Rutledge's book jumps occasionally to the modern day, where the narrator's memory is called back to the 30's and its giraffes after he hears a news story mentioning how giraffes are silently going extinct.  I appreciate the recognition of this conservation crisis which, compared to elephants, rhinos, and tigers, has largely been overlooked by the world.  For the most part, however, it follows the trip from coast to coast.   That was the only part of this story that hampered my enjoyment.  

With each state that our protagonists - human and giraffe - crossed into, I knew that we were that much closer to the end of their journey... and ours.

West with Giraffes at Amazon.com