Sporcle Quiz: Sporcle at the Zoo - Northern Raven

Kicking of 2025 with the next entry in the Sporcle at the Zoo series, this time focused on one of the most cosmopolitan, intelligent, and adaptable species in the world, the northern, or common, raven!

Sporcle at the Zoo - Northern Raven

Necessary Work

I confess that I am utterly, 100% tired of hearing about fire alarms.  Not tired of *hearing* fire alarms - though I suspect that would get pretty old, pretty fast if they were going off all the time.  But hearing *about* them.  It seems like our zoo has been getting fire alarms installed since... well, since the invention of fire.  Every day we have contractors going around working on the project, which has been lasting for years.  I have no idea when it will be over.  I have no idea if it will ever be over

Not particularly wanting to die in a fire myself - and certainly not wanting any of the animals to go up in flames, should one break out after hours, I can certainly appreciate the importance of the project, even if I had no idea that it was so... involved. I suppose on some level I'm impatient for it to get finished so that we can move on to other projects, projects which I freely admit hold a lot more interest to me.  Upgrading behind-the-scenes animal facilities.  Exhibit renovations.  Building new exhibits so we can bring new species in to the zoo!  Pretty much, anything that directly pertains to the animals. 

It's exhausting - but inescapable - how much of the work that goes on at the zoo - how much of the time and money and labor spent - goes towards things that are not directly related to animals, but are instead part of the nebulous infrastructure.  In the end, all of it benefits the animals by improving the safety of the facility and our ability to care for them, but it's hard to get past the basic impatience with it and want to move on to the more fun, interesting projects.  Nor is the feeling exclusive to the staff.  It's not that hard, at the end of the day, to raise money for a new exhibit for a cool, exciting new animal... but what your zoo might really need is to get some work done on your sewer lines, or needed electrical work, or maybe repave your paths so you don't have potholes that swallow wheelchairs, golf carts, and anything else that goes down them.  All important work, but less likely to attract the attention of a deep-pocketed donor.

After all, most donors want something that their name can be slapped on in gilded letters.  An aquarium?  A rainforest building?  A savanna?  Great!  A compost facility?  Less appealing.  Trenchwork?  Even less so.

Much like the staff, a lot of the work that goes on at zoo takes place quietly behind the scenes.  Some of it unglamorous.  Some of it, quite frankly, is boring.  All of it is necessary, because all of it, in one shape or another, contributes to maintaining the zoo and supporting its mission.

Rewilding Cats... Planned and Otherwise

For the past few decades, many zoos have whole-heartedly embraced the symbolism of the modern ark, with the dream of maintaining populations of endangered species under human care and, someday, restoring them to the wild to help repair natural ecosystems.  Such reintroduction projects are the most celebrated of zoo conservation stories (sometimes I think we hype them to such as extent that the public has a hard time seeing the conservation value in literally anything else we do), but they remain challenging and elusive.  Perhaps the most challenge species to reintroduce the wild are the species that most capture the public imagination - apex predators, especially big cats.

This past week, there have been two very different stories about the restoration of cats to the wild, in each situation the largest cat native to a respective habitat.  Both took place in parts of the world that many of us would not necessarily think of as "cat country," and are emblematic of ongoing efforts to rewild those ecosystems.  Apart from that basic similarity, the two stories have been dramatically different, in terms of their conception and their outcome.

Kazakhstan's last tigers disappeared decades ago.  Now, they're back

First of all, there's Kazakhstan, the sprawling former Soviet Republic in Central Asia.  A century ago, the steppes and forests of this land were hunted by the Caspian tiger, the westernmost subspecies of the world's largest big cat, now regrettably extinct.  Recently, a pair of captive Amur tigers (the subspecies that was deemed most similar, and as such the best fit for the Caspian tigers former niche) were transferred to Kazakhstan from Stichting Leeuw, a facility in the Netherlands.  Bodhana and Kuma have been released into a large enclosure; the hope is that they will breed in these semi-wild conditions, and that their cubs will then become truly wild.  This plan is proceeding with careful coordination from government and non-government partners, working with local people (those who are most likely to be impacted by future generations of wild tigers) in an effort to maximize the success and sustainability of this tremendous venture.

Compare that to the situation in the UK...

Fears of "rogue rewilding" grow in Scottish Highlands after four lynx captured by park ranges

Last week, not one, but TWO pairs of Eurasian lynx were found wandering the Scottish Highlands,  There has been interest in reintroducing lynx - extinct in the British Isles for centuries - for many years, but the process has been slow and cautious, working to build support.  It seems that someone took the initiative for themselves and released animals.  It doesn't appear that these lynx - of unknown origin - were that well prepared for release, as the animals, so shy and stealthy in their natural state, basically ambled about until they were captured with relative ease.  They've been taken to the Edinburgh Zoo for care while the whole matter is investigated.  Of the second released pair, one animal died not long after capture.  Besides the tragic loss of the one animal, if these lynx, during their brief time out and about, had, say, killed livestock or engaged in other similar behaviors, it could have been a major blow to future attempts to restore the species to the wild legally.

"While we are passionate to see lynx back in the wild, it's crucial to stress that illegal releases like this are not the way forward... lynx have the potential to play a vital role in restoring habitats and natural processes.  Their rightful return to the wild can make a real difference - but only if it's done the right way" - Wildwood Zoo, UK

The Buzz About Hummers

Birdwatching is one of my main hobbies, but I give hummingbirds relatively little thought.  In my part of the country, there's generally only one species - the ruby-throated hummingbird - so if a hummingbird zips by, I know what it was.  When I'm traveling to a part of the world with a greater diversity of hummingbirds (so, almost anywhere else in the New World), sightings are usually so fast and so short that I don't have much of a chance to see it, let alone tell what it was.  

Normally, I appreciate the opportunity to enjoy studying and observing birds in zoos and aviaries, but here again, hummers pose a challenge.  I don't think there's any group of birds with a great contrast between the number of species in the wild and how few are represented in zoos.  I think I can count on how hand how many facilities I've seen hummingbirds in (and in two of those facilities, I encountered the birds in off-exhibit spaces).

What gives?  Well, hummingbirds pose a number of challenges.  For a bird which can be difficult to observe and breed, that might make some aviculturalists wonder if they're worth the trouble.  They are very small and delicate.  They have super fast metabolism and require constant feeding - that makes the fact of capture and transport difficult, which has historically made them a challenge to send far from their range.  They're very active and require larger habitats than one might expect for a bird of their size.  

They're also surprisingly aggressive - I remember years ago reading a quote from a biologist who said that if hummingbirds were the size of crows, it would be too dangerous for us to walk in a meadow.  That makes it all the more challenging to keep groups together, as the territorial birds were jealously see each other off of their favorite feeders (a pretty large number of my wild sightings of hummingbirds have consisted of one chasing another).  When I most recently visited the San Diego Zoo and saw their new hummingbird house, I was surprised (but maybe only a little) that the vast majority of the birds that I met in the exhibit weren't hummingbirds.

Some zoos have luck with the family.  One of the coolest walk-through aviaries I ever saw was the outdoor hummingbird aviary at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, home to several native species in conditions that were essentially identical to the wild just outside.  For zoos that don't have the resources, skill, or (and this is okay) interest in dealing with some of the most charismatic yet frustrating birds to manage in captivity, there's another solution - just put a feeder or two in a public area.  Let them come to you.

Book Review: The Glitter in the Green - In Search of Hummingbirds

"Yet I could not escape the feeling that these efforts were papering over the cracks that were appearing across the continents in which the hummingbirds were found.  They were indeed, I realized now, the most beautiful canary in the coalmine."

The distribution of birds in zoos and aviaries is an uneven one.  Some groups, especially those that are most closely related to our domestic birds with well-understood, easily satisfied husbandry, are very well represented.  Waterfowl, for example, as well as pheasants.  I've cared for several species of each, and have seen many of the remaining species in one collection or another.  Other birds remain far more elusive, far more difficult to manage.  Perhaps the birds I've thought of the most in this way have been the world's smallest birds, the hummingbirds.

The interest is hardly mine alone, either.  For as long as people have seen hummingbirds, they've been fascinated by them - their speed, their perpetual motion, their tiny size.  At times, they seem less like birds, than they do largish insects, or perhaps even very elaborate pieces of clockwork.  The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds is Joe Dunn's account of traveling the length and breadth of North and South America in search of hummers.  I would've expected the book to open by telling us how Dunn grew up watching hummingbirds in his garden, or found and nursed a wounded hummer as a kid, or some such story.  Instead, I was surprised to learn that he was from the decidedly hummingbird-free UK.  Given the difficulties in maintaining hummingbirds in zoos, his first exposure to the little birds would not have been live animals, but as pinned specimens in the cabinet of a natural history museum, like little feathered jewels.

Dunn makes no claim that he is going to show the readers all - or even a majority - of the world's 366 or so species of Trochilidae.  Instead, he focuses his book on the superlatives, birds that stand out as exceptionally unique even in the midst of such a strange family.  An obvious candidate, for example, is Cuba's bee hummingbird, the smallest of birds (though Dunn tells us that this diminutive title is contested).  He also bookends his work with the northernmost and southernmost of hummingbirds; I'll have to admit, I'd never even considered that Alaska would be a place where one could conceivably find these little guys!  He even takes us on a quest in "search" (through history, as well as geography) of a hummingbird which never even existed, a fabrication of an era when new species were being described left and right, not always with the most accuracy.

As always when I read books like Dunn's, I'm equally entertained by the peppering of historical and geographical information in with the zoology.  One of the most interesting chapters takes the reader to desolate islands off the coast of Chile, home not only to hummingbirds, but, centuries ago, to a castaway whose story was the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.   A few diversions aside, however, Dunn keeps his focus on his pint-sized avian protagonists.  And, as with every modern natural history book out there, in the background is the looming specter of endangerment brought about by human actions.  There's loss of habitat, there are invasive species, and there is an unsustainable demand for the bodies of these little birds, as Dunn shows us as he tours a Latin American marketplace and sees hummingbirds for sale.  Fortunately for the reader, there are also plenty of people that we meet who are determined to do their part to save the little birds, and their stories inspire hope for the future of hummers.

Hummingbirds are birds that have always frustrated me on some level.  They are so tiny and so fast that whenever I see them, in the wild or (less frequently) in a zoo, I feel like I can barely register them as they zip by, sometimes hovering for a few seconds to offer me the quickest of views.  Perhaps because of this, I was all the more appreciative of a chance to sit down with a good book about the family so I could appreciate them at a more leisurely, less hummingbird-like pace.

The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds at Amazon.com

Fire in the Hole

The major national news these days continues to be the devastating fires raging across southern California.  So far the region's zoos seem to have escaped damage, though I'm aware of at least one nature center in Pasadena which has been destroyed; I'm not certain as this time as to whether the center's small collection of native herps was evacuated before the fire came.  Even if the facilities and animals themselves remain untouched, the fires are having a horrific impact on the communities that they are part of, including where their staff and their families live.  We'll continue to think of them and look for opportunities to support them as the situation plays out.

Ironically, the one zoo that was damaged by fire yesterday was nowhere near California.  The Rainforest building at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo caught on fire yesterday.  The iconic building was closed to the public last year as the zoo prepares to renovate and expand it, but several animals - including bats, orangutans, and the majority of the zoo's reptiles and amphibians - are still housed inside of it.  Thankfully, the fire happened during normal business hours and the response was quick.  No animals or humans were harmed, and hey, if something has got to catch on fire, might as well as something that was in the early stages of demolition/renovation anyway.

Fire might be the disaster the frightens me the most at work.  Unlike extreme weather events, there's often no warning as to when it breaks out, and it moves very swiftly.  Often the only recourse is to evacuate - easier said than done with a zoo-full of animals.  You can have a contingency plan, and train for a response to an occurrence like what happened in Cleveland, but if you have a situation like the one that threatens the California zoos?  That's a lot harder to manage - and unfortunately, disasters such as the California fires only appear to be getting more numerous, and more damaging.

Zootierliste

For many years, European zoo enthusiasts have enjoyed a unique website which has greatly facilitated their hobby - Zootierliste ("Zoo Animal List").  Recently, the website has been expanded to the United States, so I thought it might be time to explore it and see what the fuss was about.

The site, true to the name's list, provides lists of animals held in zoos, both current holdings and former.  You can search by animal, to see what zoos have a certain species, or you can search by facility, in order to see what animals that zoo has.  The information comes from what visitors report, so there are some issues, probably inevitable, with accuracy.  I search for my zoo, for instance, and saw three species listed under current holdings that we no longer have, and two species listed under former holdings that we do, in fact, still have.  So, if I were going to plan a trip with the express purpose of seeing a specific animal, I'd probably want to reach out first and confirm that they actually have it (and that it is, in fact, on display, before I committed myself.

A second neat feature is a "zoo radius search," in which you can put your town, set your distance, and get a list of all facilities within that range.  (The Association of Zoos and Aquariums has something similar on their website, but it only lists AZA-accredited facilities).  Now, the caveat here is that they are pretty generous with what they consider a zoo.  I was surprised to see a dozen facilities with a 50 kilometer radius of my home - but the vast majority of them were tiny local nature centers with a box turtle and some frogs and fish, as well as an alpaca farm.  

Still, kind of cool to know that they're all out there.

Zootierliste