Build Me an Ark

"So never mind the darkness, we still can find a way,

'Cause nothin' lasts forever, even cold November rain."

- Guns n Roses, November Rain

There's all sorts of natural disasters which a zookeeper has to cope with, some of which I've never had to deal with (at least a major one) - fire, earthquake - others I have - blizzard, severe storm, drought.  Perhaps the natural disaster I've dealt with the most often, and which stresses me out the most, is flooding.  Flooding poses the same risk of damage and loss of life - human and animal - as the others, of course.  It also has a heightened risk of escape.  Storms and earthquakes can also damage cages and allow animals to escape, it is true, but floods have an inconvenient ability to fill in moats and raise and overflow the water features of exhibits.  What once was a barrier keeping the animal in its enclosure suddenly becomes a highway that leads the animal out of its enclosure.

I'm a pretty poor swimmer, and drowning has always been a possibility that scares me.  That's something I think a lot about when I'm running around a zoo in shin-deep water.  It's something I really think about when I find myself sharing water with an animal and I know that animal is definitely in its element whereas I am not.  On dry land, even a fairly large alligator or crocodile is pretty easy to work around safely.  When all of the dry land in its exhibit is now drowned beneath the rains, suddenly the odds aren't quite in your favor anymore, and it's amazing how little water it takes even a very large alligator to hide in.  Leaving said alligator alone, unfortunately, was not an option for safety reasons during the flood.

In one of the most startling flood incidents I had, a sudden rainstorm flooded the (normally dry) moat of our capybara exhibit.  I ran to check on them and couldn't see any of them in the habitat.  Panicking, I hopped the fence and splashed into their moat, chest deep on me (not my better idea).  The second I did, the capybaras all surfaced in the water all around me, bobbing to the surface just feet away.  They seemed to be loving their pool.  I wasn't loving the fact that the surface of the water was now level with the top of the moat.  Had they been so inclined, they could have hopped right out of the moat, walked across the path, jumped into the nearby creek, and swam off into the distance.

That creek, however, was also a natural component of a few hoofstock exhibits, and in its swollen state those animals found themselves standing on vanishingly small islands in their now-flooded paddocks.  After careful discussion, we decided to open the gates to the paddock and let the animals that couldn't be caught up and relocated just roam the zoo at large (the perimeter gates were closed) and move to higher ground.  When the waters receded, we were able to use food to coax them back to their exhibit.

The more I look back on it, it seems like we actually had a lot of crazy floods at that zoo.  Floods that the old timers there said had once been once a decade were now occurring two or three times a summer.  I'm sure that there's no possible climate change implications in that, of course...

The Hunger Song

Same, guys.  Same

 

Species Fact Profile: Sarcastic Fringehead (Neoclinus blanchardi)

                                                         Sarcastic Fringehead

                                           Neoclinus blanchardi (Girard, 1858)

Range:  Pacific Coast of North America, from central California south to Baja California

Habitat: Sandy or Muddy-Bottomed Coastal Waters, up to 75 meters deep

Diet: Plankton, Crustaceans, Squid Eggs

Social Grouping: Solitary.  Territorial

Reproduction: Spawn from January through August.  Female lays about 3000 eggs in a sheltered location (generally the shelter of a male), which are guarded by male until they hatch

Lifespan: 6 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Up to 30 centimeters long, weigh about 300 gram.  Slender build with large pectoral funs, small pelvic fins.  Loose folds of skin on the face are fringes of the common name.  Largest member of the blenny family
• Skin is largely scaleless.  Body color varies from warm brown to gray with dark blotches.  Blue eyespot on the dorsal fin
• Males can open their mouths extremely wide, revealing brightly colored interior (blue with yellow lining) with some fluorescence.  When the mouth is open (expanding its apparent size four-fold), it serves to intimidate both rival fringeheads and potential predators
• Often found in crevices, with only their heads exposed (will readily take shelter inside man-made objects, such as bottles and cans).  Females may select males based on the quality of their shelter.  Very protective of shelters and will often fight over access - an unsheltered fringehead is very vulnerable to predators
• Feed by charging from their burrows and sucking down small prey - the large gape of the males is actually an impediment to effective feeding
• Largely ignored by fishermen due to small size and aggressive nature, will readily bite if handled (their common name refers to the original meaning of "sarcastic," from the Greek for "to tear flesh" - the mouth has several needle-sharp teeth)

The Gentleman Zoologist

I have a friend who is one of the most well-read people that I know, to say nothing of an absolute expert on the subject of zoo and aquarium history.  I have him to blame for the overflowing "To Read" list on Goodreads; many of those are books that I have since read and reviewed on the blog.  One book that I recently finished, on his recommendation, was The Living Air, the memoir of the French ornithologist Jean Theodore Delacour.  I enjoyed it very much.

Delacour's life was a long one, but not an easy one, and it marked with repeated tragedy and loss - not just of family and homes to the two world wars, but also the repeated devastation of his animal collections.  Still, it's hard not to read parts of his biography and feel washes of envy.  

He describes sitting in his comfortable study, walls lined with shelves of valuable books about the natural world and curiosities from his many travels, while working on some project of personal interest at his desk - maybe a monogram on pheasants, or a treatise on waterfowl, or catching up on his vast correspondence.  Then, perhaps feeling his legs getting a bit stiff, he saunters out for a walk on the grounds of his estate and admires the animals of his private zoo, stopping here and there to hand out a treat to a particular favorite, to see how a newcomer is settling in, or check on how an ailing patient is recovering.  The zoo is his and his alone - it has only the animals that he wants, and is arranged according to his tastes, without concern for what a public might want instead, or what trouble they might cause.  For part of year, he may travel abroad, secure in the knowledge that some of his many friends will keep an eye on things for him, as well as his trained devoted staff.  Animals that are exceedingly rare in our day were more common and more easily seen in his.  While abroad, he is free to collect additional specimens, by trade or by capture, in this pre-CITES world when the world's wildlife didn't seem so scarce.

It seems idyllic.  And it probably was, assuming that you were a white man who happened to be born into the aristocracy and didn't have to worry about income or any such other piddling concern.  To be so wealthy that you could build a zoo and gardens and an estate, have it bombed into oblivion, and then be able to rebuild it... twice.

It's unattainable to all but the very richest (and some of the modern changes are for the better, particular the part about the trade in wildlife), but it's still easy to read his books - and those of other gentleman (and gentlelady) naturalists of the era - and not feel a pang for missing out on something (even if I suspect I would have been lucky to have been a groundskeeper back then, not lord of the manor).  So I try my best to recreate what I can.  At home, I've created a little nook for myself, centered around my desk.  I have my bookshelves of animal books, and the walls are lined with animal paintings and prints and photos of animals, and it's a few steps away to a small garden, where I can see what birds are coming in to bathe or feed.

The illusion is enhanced when I go to work.  There, when I have a chance, I like to walk through the grounds early in the day, before the gates are open and while the animals are just beginning to stir.  For a few minutes on rare, quiet days, I can sometimes pretend that they are there just for me, and that the entire world consists of the animals and me.

Humor: Winter in the Zoo

Things have been a little grim and grumpy lately, so I thought folks might enjoy this old German cartoons that I found depicting winter in the zoo.  Pardon the poor translations, Google translate did the best it could when I typed the captions in.

"As the Zoo Director's wife, you have to come to terms with the heating oil prices these days."

"It's too cold for him outside now, so he helps us punch the tickets inside."

"Paul once again makes shoveling snow easy for himself."

"Hello, Meteorological Institute?  Snow depth at the moment is 1.6 meters."

All Creatures Great and Small

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

                                                                

                                                                -     Mahatma Gandhi (apocryphal)

It's not surprising that most of the hot-button topics of the culture wars relate to children.  Whether it's what books children should be allowed to read to how schools should handle transgender children to whether people should be allowed to take steps to prevent themselves from having children, the entire subject of children is fraught with emotion.  There are very things more personal or insulting than criticizing (or being perceived as criticizing) someone else's parenting... as I am reminded of every time I (nicely!) ask parents to tell their kids to stop climbing fences, throwing rocks, etc.

Close behind that, people also feel very strongly about their pets and animal care practices.  There's a reason J.D. Vance said "childless cat ladies," and why it struck such a nerve with so many people.  There's a reason that (false) stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs caused such a whirlwind of news coverage.   Animal issues were barely mentioned on the campaign trial, but pets still resonate strongly with people, with animal abusers facing almost as much (well-deserved) vitriol as child abusers (also well-deserved).  But even though you didn't hear Donald Trump or Kamala Harris give any speeches on the subject of animal welfare, there are still massive cultural controversies and divisions about how we relate to non-human animals under human care... and that's not even touching the hot button topic of animal agriculture.

Two recent stories which come to mind...

First (and featured to a small extent in Trump rallies), there's the saga of Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon, illegally-kept pets by a wildlife enthusiast in southern New York.  The Instagram-famous pets were seized by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, after which the rodent bit an official, and as a result was euthanized for rabies testing.   The backlash has been severe, with critics claiming that it was a massive case of government overreach resulting in the unnecessary death of the animals.  I'm firmly opposed to the idea of people taking wild mammals and raising them as pets - but I can't help but think that there was a better way that this could have been handled that would have allowed the animals to live out their lives under human care in other circumstances.  This was a teachable moment that turned into a tragedy.

States in which it is legal to own a raccoon:

I'm a hell of a lot less conflicted about what happened at Louisiana State University.  For generations, the mascot of LSU has been Mike the Tiger.  Tigers are popular mascots for sports teams, but most campuses don't have an actual tiger living on campus, as LSU does.  Historically, the big cat was paraded out to home games.  The practice was phased out, and now the tiger (actually a succession of "Mikes") can be seen living in a rather nice habitat on the campus.  This peaceful situation was disrupted when Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry decided that he wanted the tiger present at an LSU-Alabama game.  The school vet, and the tiger's keepers, said that it was a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and that they would not produce the tiger for the game.  Snubbing their advice, but realizing that it blocked him from using that tiger, Landry arranged to have a tiger driven over from Florida (the animal owned by a character with a somewhat spotty USDA record) and driven around the packed, thunderously-loud stadium in a cage about the size of a mattress, surrounded by screaming fans.  

In each of these cases, I feel like the problem is people viewing animals not as sentient beings, but as props.  I'll cut Peanut's former caretaker some slack for good intentions, especially in the face of NY's overly heavy-handed response.  I see no possible justification for Landry's more with the tiger.  I could understand thinking it might be an interesting idea and asking about it, but when everyone you ask essentially tells you that it's a bad idea and tantamount to animal abuse... maybe don't keep asking until you finally get someone to say "yes" to your idea.

Animal welfare seldom makes the political mainstage, mostly because it's usually seen as a local issue, rather than a federal one.  I have a hard time seeing it ever being a dominant political issue in the manner that immigration or abortion will.  Still, it easy to see that these are issues that people feel very strongly about (sometimes violently so, judging from the amount of death threats that swirl around whenever these stories make the news), they shouldn't be swept aside as filler stories or light news.  (Most) people care very much about the wellbeing of animals, and the question of how they should be treated are topics that are worthy of serious discussion, if only to help us as a society improve our collective empathy.

Book Review: Many Things Under a Rock - The Mysteries of Octopuses

A person wishing to know what it would be like to encounter extraterrestrial intelligence could do much worse that meet an octopus.  The eight-legged cephalopods are among the most intelligent creatures on earth, and yet theirs is an intelligence so different from ours.  Whenever I encounter an octopus, I'm struck by how they manage to be so similar and yet so different from us at the same time.

Biologist David Scheel had spent much of his earlier career studying mammals on the plains of East Africa, so transitioning to the study of the what is probably the world's most charismatic invertebrates in the icy waters of Alaska is quite a change.  Scheel brought an informed outsider vantage point to his study of these creatures, providing a lot of interesting insights into the challenges and rewards of studying these often-cryptic animals.  His resultant book, Many Things Under a Rock, takes its name from an indigenous Alaskan name for the giant Pacific octopus, the species that the book is primarily focused on.  

As the title implies, there is a heavy indigenous influence to Scheel's book, which I very much enjoyed.  I suppose I tended to think of most underwater creatures as existing almost on a separate plan of existence from humans, at least until people began venturing under the surface with SCUBA gear and what not (ignoring the fact that octopus can leave the water, something the vast majority of fish and other marine creatures can't do).  The truth is that people have a millennia-long association with octopuses, both as sources of wonder and fear (Scheel has a chapter devoted to the cryptozoology of octopuses), but, more practically, as a source of food.  Likewise, I suppose on some level I knew that octopuses were animals of the northern oceans, but I never had really thought of them as Alaskan wildlife before.

In this exploration of octopus behavior and anatomy - how social are they?  how do they use tools?  how do they reproduce? - Scheel spends much of this time diving among them in waters around the world.  He also features captive octopuses in his work, and even maintains a small aquarium at his university to allow his students to have hands-on experience with the creatures.  The Seattle Aquarium and Alaska SeaLife Center are also highlighted here.  Sometimes Scheel's work even comes home with him, and he describes an octopus that takes up residence in the fish tank in his living room.  These stories are particularly enjoyable, because, with more prolonged, regular encounters with the same animals, we really get to see their personalities - from affectionate to mischievous - shine through.

Octopuses are easily among the most popular of aquarium animals, and their eight-legged grip on pop culture and science have been evident for many years.  At a superficial level, it seems like many folks just think of them as scary sea monsters.  It's easy to see how they could be considered frightening, being so eerily different from us, and yet so recognizable.  Beyond that first impression, however, there is a creature that is so remarkably intelligent, sensitive, and charismatic as to install enchant any human lucky enough to have met them.

Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses at AbeBooks.com