The Easter Ostrich

What with the price and eggs and all, and zookeepers not getting the best pay, an entrepreneurial keeper might be inclined to think outside the box this holiday weekend... or at least outside the Easter basket.  

I have, on a few occasions (and with management's approval, in the past) taken an ostrich egg home.  These were all infertile eggs (I could tell because we only had females) and there was no possibility of them hatching.  In most cases, I blew out the eggs because I wanted the shells, perhaps as gifts for folks (I used to give them as thank you presents on behalf of folks who had really helped out the zoo with special favors).  On one occasion, I decided to eat some, scrambling the egg.  It's true what they say, one ostrich egg is the equivalent of twenty-four chicken eggs.  Having one egg would seem to save you a bit on grocery bills then... if only they tested good.  I myself did not like it very much.  Way too much yolk, too little white.

But, and hear me out, what if you had an ostrich Easter egg?  

I know a guy who hard-boiled an ostrich egg for his kids - he said it took hours.  Once it was done, he cut slices off of it for their sandwiches, to the amazement of their friends at lunch in school the next day.  That would be a commitment, for sure, both boiling it and eating it.  I can also imagine ostrich eggs being fun to dye - being so much larger, there is so much more surface area for fun designs.  

And hiding them for Easter egg hunts?  That might be a little less fun for older kids, while making it easier for younger ones.  It's a lot hider to hide, and a lot easier to find, an egg when it's the size of your head.

Happy Easter!  

PS: Speaking of Easter eggs, the CEO of the San Antonio Zoo has hidden an ostrich egg, containing four free passes to the Zoo, somewhere in San Antonio's Brackenridge Park.  Happy hunting!

Zoo Review: Akron Zoo, Part II

Continuing through the Akron Zoo, we come to the three geographic-themed areas.  These areas all have three things in common.  First of all, they're fairly small, with two of them being represented by only three exhibits each.  Secondly, they are the newest developments in the zoo, all having been added in the most recent years.  And thirdly, all are anchored by a large carnivore.  

Just outside of Komodo Kingdom is Wild Asia (part of me wishes that Komodo Kingdom had kept strictly Asian theming, and then it could have been considered part of this complex).  There is an exhibit for red pandas, an almost obligatory species for zoos in the northeastern US, as well as a large indoor-outdoor habitat for white-cheeked gibbons.  The stars here are the tigers, which occupy two large yards, with a stone amphitheater situated to provide seating and viewing for training demonstrations.

Towards the back of the zoo is Pride of Africa which, as the name might lead you to suspect, is home to lions.  An interesting feature of the lion exhibit is a sort of... I don't know, what's the opposite of an alcove?  Any, a little section of the exhibit just juts out into the public area, in which the lions can often be found dozing, providing extremely close viewing for visitors.  The exhibit area also features a yard of Speke's gazelle and white storks (this exhibit stuck out in my mind for having the largest number of white storks I'd ever seen in a zoo - in the wild they do form large colonies, whereas most zoos exhibit them as pairs).  There is also a goat-petting corral.  This area is considered a Phase I of Africa, with plans calling for the addition of giraffes, meerkats, and possibly other species in the future.

Until then, the largest and most impressive of the three geographic areas is Grizzly Ridge, with no points going to whoever guesses what the large carnivore here is.  Besides the namesake brown bears in their big, well-furnished yard, visitors may also encounter red wolves and coyotes, bald eagles, screech owls, and river otters.  The otter exhibit is equipped with an enclosed slide for young visitors that carries them through the otter pool, providing brief underwater views of the animals (though conventional underwater viewing is also available).  The exhibit that zoo professionals will best know this exhibit area by, however, is its aviary.  In most zoos, North American bird collections are focused on waterfowl and raptors, but there has in recent years been a much stronger focus on North American's rapidly vanishing songbirds.  The Akron Zoo aviary has an elevated viewing platform from which the birds can be observed.

A few small aviaries, including one for a breeding pair of snowy owls, also dot the campus.  There are a few garden spaces, as well as a carousel and train for younger visitors.

Akron, in its current form, is a small zoo, and I'm not sure how much larger it really will have the chance to be.   I liked some of its unique touches, such as Legends of the Wild (though the area could use a refresh) and the North American songbird aviary.  Some of the other areas, like the Asian and African areas, were perfectly fine, but seemed a touch generic.  Perhaps it's because their all still so relatively new, that building materials and visitor areas just seemed a bit stark and raw, too glossy, too angular, not faded into the landscape.  I thought about that a bit as I read about the planned addition of giraffes to Africa, and what it might mean for the character of the zoo.

Akron Zoo is less than an hour from the much larger Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.  I think both communities deserve their own zoos, but in the shadow of a much bigger neighbor, I'd like to see Akron develop its own identity and celebrate its own uniqueness.

Zoo Review: Akron Zoo, Part I

Lost among the mega zoos of Ohio - Columbus and Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo - the relatively diminutive Akron Zoo could easily be overlooked.  It opened its gates in 1953 as a Mother Goose-themed children's zoo managed by the city, later privatizing and diversifying into a full-fledged zoo.  Though still a fairly small zoo - easily knocked out in a half-day - it has grown considerably in recent years, adding new and innovative exhibits which have helped this small facility carve out a niche of its own.

Directly inside the entry building, an imposing structure of wood, stone, and glass, is Penguin Point, home to a flock of Humboldt penguins.  It's an attractive, fairly simple exhibit, part of an unofficial water-bird complex that starts off the visitor experience.  Also included is a lagoon of waterfowl, including trumpeter swans, as well as a yard of Chilean flamingos.

Perhaps the most unique exhibit complex - though one which is starting to fade, it seems - is Legends of the Wild, which opened in 2005.  The exhibit area was based around the concept of animals in the role in legend and myth around the world, and features a diverse cast of species, including snow leopard, white-naped crane, ring-tailed lemurs, and Andean condors.  The respective animals are paired with signage that tells the story of the animals from their home countries; among the indigenous peoples of the Andes, for example, the condor was considered a messenger of the sun (which helps explain its role as the national bird of several South American countries).  It's a refreshingly unique take on exhibit design in an age where everything seems to be geographic in focus, and I was aware of no exhibit complex like it in the country.  When you visit as many zoos and aquariums as I do, uniqueness is always something to be appreciated and sought after.

This was the exhibit area that I was the most interested to see, but I will admit, the theming felt a little weak, diluted by changes to the collection over the years (which is strange, because the neat thing about this theme is that it should free a zoo up to work with a wide variety of species, free from geographic or taxonomic constraints).  Some of the exhibits seem a bit dated and are in flux; what was a jaguar exhibit when I visited last year, set next to a capybara exhibit in a predator-prey display, is now in the process of being repurposed for another species, yet to be announced (the jaguar exhibit wasn't great, but it's still an unfortunate loss for the area, few species being a better example of the role of animals in legend than jaguar).  The area includes two buildings - one for the lemurs, one nocturnal building for bats, snakes, frogs, and slow loris).

Outside Legends is Komodo Kingdom, the largest indoor exhibit in the zoo.  For a zoo of such small size, Akron has a surprisingly large aquatic collection, including jellies, an electric eel, and small sharks.  This was explained to me as being a result of the closure of the Ohio SeaWorld park in nearby Aurora, OH; many of the staff, I'm told, took jobs at Akron Zoo and brought their aquatic expertise with them.  As the name would suggest, the building houses an indoor habitat of Komodo dragons, along with Galapagos tortoises and several smaller reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates (not enough that I'd call the building a true reptile house, but still the nexus of their small collection), as well as a small South American rainforest mixed species exhibit, with small primates and birds in the trees over fish and turtles.

In the next post, we'll look at the additional areas of Akron Zoo.

Akron Zoo

Darkness After Sunset

I really don't want to spend too much time on this blog talking political issues.  I started writing because I wanted to share stories about zoos and zookeeping.  But sometimes political issues touch our world and are too great to ignore.  One such bomb - one of an endless stream, it seems - dropped the other day.  Donald Trump's latest Executive Order of questionable legality calls for sunsetting all environmental regulations.  These include the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty act, and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

What does this all mean?  It means that, unless people work to protect these safeguards, the laws and regulations that have been responsible for saving so much of America's wildlife heritage - including, I don't know, OUR NATIONAL BIRD, which went from the brink of extinction to now being a reasonably common bird - will cease to be.

The President, to be clear, cannot just opt to end a law.  That takes an Act of Congress (we still have one of those, right?).  But as we've seen on several fronts in recent weeks, telling the current admin that they legally cannot do something seems to be something they take as a personal challenge.

I can already hear the papers being filed for the lawsuits that will challenge this vile act.  All the same, it never is a bad time to make your voices heard to your elected officials.  Enough is enough - and we are all way past enough.

Elephants vs Earthquakes

Even the world's largest land animals can get rattled when the earth itself starts to shake - but an earthquake is no excuse for not looking out for the youngest and most vulnerable members of your herd!  When the San Diego area was struck by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake, their African elephant herd at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park immediately formed a protective circle around their calves.  It's a fascinating video clip which has captured the public's attention in the day since the quake happened, serving as a reminder of how intelligent and compassionate the animals can be.

 

Ferrets on the Edge

Speaking of the more important things that conservation dollars could be going to rather than pseudo-science dire wolves, a very real, live (at the moment) endangered species could stand to have some support.  Sadly, there are some folks in power - including the Secretary of the Interior - who don't seem to see the value in saving iconic American species such as the black-footed ferret

Dire Straits for Conservation

Years back, a Chinese zoo earned well-deserved mockery by painting two dogs so that they could be passed off, unsuccessfully, as giant pandas.  Now, imagine taking the basic premise of that scam, making it much more expensive and complicated, and then bragging to the world about it.

Just in time to have missed April Fool's Day, the American biotech company Colossal claimed that they have brought the dire wolf back from extinction through cloning.  It's a story that the media has been fascinated with and which has garnered a lot of attention and speculation.

Counterpoint: No, they really haven't.

The animals that they produced are nothing but (slightly) genetically-modified wolves.  There isn't a trace of actual dire wolf DNA in them.  There is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a dire wolf is in pop culture, which is probably not helping the situation.  A dire wolf is not a made-for-fiction animal, that is essentially a big gray wolf as seen in Game of Thrones (actual, the species is often shown as being larger in fiction than it was in real life).  It wasn't even in the same genus as modern wolves under recent classification - it was an entirely separate canid.  The fact that they made a point of making them white - which there is no evidence that they were, but seems to have been an aesthetic choice to match the wolf "Ghost" from A Game of Thrones - makes it even harder for me to take this company seriously.

Even if this was a real "de-extinction," I'd consider this a foolish endeavor.  If we actually had this technology, it would best be used with species that recently went extinct due to human causes, and which could have a chance to be re-wilded.  Dire wolves went extinct thousands of years ago.  Their niche is gone, taken over by other species.  Even if something genetically identical to one were brought back (which this in no way even approaches), we'd have no place for it to go, as well as no idea if it would even be behaviorally competent or ecologically viable.  Instead of conservation work, these people have essentially created a designer carnivore, of as much ecological use as a white tiger.  

What's worse, some tech and political figures (including US Vice President J.D. Vance's patron, Peter Thiel) are hailing this as the future of conservation.  Who cares if species go extinct?  We can clone them back later!  Or at least something that vaguely looks like what we think they should be.

Colossal has been one of the companies vocally claiming that they are going to bring back the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger).  With this being the example of the work they've produced so far, I'm not holding my breath for what come out of the lab.

Experts dispute claim dire wolf brought back from extinction