Remembering the Philadelphia Fire

This time last year, COVID-19 was still only a faint shimmer on the horizon for most people - an obscure disease that most of us hadn't heard of.  For many people, 2020 looked so full of promise and potential.  That was not the case for the staff of Germany's Krefeld Zoo.  A fire started by a Chinese lantern at a nearby New Year's celebration burned down their ape house, killing almost all of the inhabitants.

I suppose you could say that they were some of the first people to know that this year was going to be awful.

Now we've come to the one year anniversary of that tragedy.  This month is also the 25th anniversary of a similar tragedy, but one that hit much closer to home to me.  On Christmas Eve of 1995, a fire broke out at the Philadelphia Zoo, also at the primate house, resulting in the deaths of many animals.  Philadelphia magazine wrote a great article remembering the fire and its aftermath, including the zoo's rebirth, which I'll share here:

The Day The Great Apes Died: The Legacy of the 1995 Philadelphia Zoo Fire

I have no memories of the old primate house at Philadelphia; by the time I paid my first visit to the zoo, the building had already burned, leaving a raw wound in the middle of the park.  By the time I paid my second visit, the current building, the new PECO Primate Reserve, stood in its place.  Krefeld too is moving on from the tragedy of last year, with plans for change and renewal.  A building can be replaced, often with something even better.  Apes, however, leave holes in the hearts of their keepers, for which there is no substitute.  Even when new animals arrive that you love, they don't replace the memories of the old ones.

Everyone have a good night and a Happy New Year.  No flying lanterns, please.

Species Fact Profile: Short-Beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus)

                                                               Short-Beaked Echidna

Tachyglossus aculeatus (Shaw, 1792)

Range: Southern and Eastern New Guinea, Australia (including Tasmania)

Habitat: Lowland Rainforest, Open Woodland, Savanna, Semi-Arid Scrub

Diet: Ants, Termites, and other Invertebrates

Social Grouping: Solitary, not territorial.  Overlapping home ranges

Reproduction:  Breed in Australian winter.  Both sexes give off a musky odor to attract a mate.  13 days after mating, female lays a single, soft-shelled egg in her pouch, which hatches after 10-11 days.  The young ("puggle") weans at about 3 months, then leaves the pouch, covered with spines  Adult size reached at 3-5 years old

Lifespan: 40-50 Years

Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Body length 30-45 centimeters, weigh 2-7 kilograms.   The neck is not externally visible, making the head to appear merged with the body.  The eyes are small, the snout about 7.5 centimeters in length.  The nostrils and mouth are at the end of the snout, which can open no wide than 0.5 centimeters.  Limbs are short and stout, adapted for rapid digging
• Fur is dark reddish-brown.  Most of the body – apart from the underside, face, and legs – is covered with cream-colored spines.  Fur is interspersed between the spines
• Becomes very sluggish in very hot or cold weather.  Body temperature may fall as low as 5 degrees Celsius.  Does not pant or sweat, seeks shelter in hot weather.  Loses lots of water in hot weather.  In Australian autumn and winter, enters a period of torpor or deep hibernation
• Multiple males (up to 10) may follow a female, creating “echidna trains,” though the female will only mate with one male per season.  Pairs mate by lying in a small crater they dig, letting them out their soft underbellies together (females can reject males by rolling into balls).
• Few significant predators, though they may be taken by dingoes, goannas, raptors, Tasmanian devils, and introduced mammals (cats, pigs).  Juveniles are more susceptible to predation that adults.  Protect themselves by burrowing until only the spiny back is exposed.
• Scientific name translates to "Quick Tongued, Equipped with Spines"
• Five subspecies: the nominate (much of mainland Australia), T. a. acanthion (Northern Territory and Western Australia), T. a lawesii (New Guinea, possibly northeast Queensland), T. a. multiaculeatus (Kangaroo Island), and T. a. setosus (Tasmania, islands of the Bass Strait).  Subspecies vary in size, hairiness, and the size of their spines and claws
• Major human-caused mortalities are vehicle collisions, hunting for food, and habitat loss  Tolerant of some agriculture and deforestation as long as there are still insects to forage on
• Has been a totem for many cultures throughout Australia and New Guinea  Was once protected from hunters in New Guinea by cultural taboo, but as local peoples have become more westernized, that protection has faded and the species has been faced with more hunting pressure

Flying Under the Radar

What with a global pandemic and a presidential election and a whole lot of other stuff going on, there is a lot of newsworthy news which didn't really make the... well, the news.  One item this year popped up on my radar in a big way.  After years of batting around the idea and then letting it lay, the USDA looks like they are finally starting to move towards expanding their definition of "animal" under the Animal Welfare Act - as in, the creatures that they have jurisdiction over and which they do inspections of - to include birds.

The vast majority of zoos and aquariums in the US are already inspected by USDA - the only way they wouldn't be is if they don't have mammals.  Most aquariums usually have some mammals, if not marine mammals such as seals or cetaceans than otters, or small education ambassadors, or maybe sloths or monkeys in one of those ubiquitous rainforest exhibits they all have.  Even the National Aviary in Pittsburgh has a few token mammals on exhibit.  This is still going to be an enormous change, though.  Probably one of the biggest challenges is going to be establishing exactly what the standards of care for birds are going to be according to USDA.  We're talking 10,000+ species, as diverse as kiwis, burrowing owls, condors, puffins, and lorikeets.

Zoos and aviaries aren't really the focus of these new regulations - they are really aimed at breeders and dealers.  Still, they will cover us all the same.  Earlier this year, USDA had listening sessions with interested parties to get their take.  The resultant responses were... well, varied, to be sure.  They ranged from angry private aviculturalists who furiously denounced government overreach into their private businesses to equally furious animal rights activists who would accept nothing less than the abolition of keeping any birds, in captivity, for any reason.  You can read some of the comments in the transcripts below - and on some of them, you can smell the crazy.

APHIS Bird Listening Sessions

I don't know soon to expect these changes to be coming.  For one thing, USDA is so short-staffed that they can barely cover their current load - I've gone years without seeing our inspector.  A major change like this will also probably take years to implement, not least of all with the necessity to establish and tweak standards (who is going to be writing those, anyway?).  For now, it's business as usual in birdland... but with a definite wind of change somewhere on the horizon.

Boxing Day

The day after Christmas is traditionally known as Boxing Day - for reasons completely unrelated to big cats and cardboard boxes and enrichment.  

Still, if you're cleaning up from your holiday festivities and have very large cardboard boxes - or a natural Christmas tree - consider checking in with your local zoo to see if they want them for enrichment purposes.  The box idea is especially good to keep in mind for when you get large appliances - bigger boxes are bigger toys for bigger animals.

If they don't, consider tossing your (again, natural) Christmas tree in your yard, where it can serve as wildlife habitat instead of just rotting in the landfill.  That's some quality regifting!

Recycling Christmas Trees for Wildlife

Merry Christmas from Fiona!

Santa Claus leaves presents for all the good boys and girls, but the best hippos get in-person visits.  Merry Christmas from the Cincinnati Zoo and Princess Fiona!

A Christmas of Keepers

Since I graduated from college, I've worked almost every Christmas.  At certain points in my life, work has been close enough to my family's home that I've been able to make it up for Christmas dinner after finishing my shift.  On other years, I've celebrated with other keepers and their families.  On other years still, I've celebrated alone.

That's never bothered me too much.  This year, it's something that's going to be bothering a lot of people.

Due to the pandemic, many people will not be traveling for the holidays.  And I just want to say, from the perspective of someone who has missed a lot of Christmases - it'll be ok.  It feels a little weird the first time, and you find yourself wondering what you're supposed to be doing, how much holiday spirit to get into, and whether or not you should try to make a big deal of the day, or just treat it as the day between the 24th and 26th of December.  There's no right answer.

What I can tell you is that celebrating with your family whenever you see them next - be it a day or a week or a month later - is fine.  It loses none (or at least not much) of the Christmas magic.  

So if you are spending your first Christmas away from home this year, it'll be okay.  Hopefully it's just the one.  Unless you end up becoming a zookeeper or other position that requires you to work in a location-specific job.  Then all bets are off.

Zoo Review Update

Coronavirus may have put a financial hurt on many zoos and aquariums, but 2020 still saw notable changes at many of the facilities we've visited on this blog.

Among the causalities of the COVID-19 pandemic was the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, a  member of the Aududon Nature Institute located in downtown New Orleans.  Formerly located at the US Custom House, the insects are being relocated to the Insectarium's nearby sister-facility, the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas.  The move is expected to save Audubon roughly $1,000,000 annually.

Brandywine Zoo has continued its ambitious overhaul with the opening of a new Madagascar exhibit.  Radiated tortoises join three species of lemur in a new mixed-species habitat with indoor and outdoor viewing.

Brevard Zoo has announced the addition of a new lion exhibit, scheduled to open next year.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo reopened its Aquatics House, rechristened as Water's Edge - Africa.  The exhibit brings back two of the zoo's most popular species, African penguins and Nile hippos, with indoor and outdoor, above and underwater viewing.  Warthogs and lemurs also join the collection.  At the same time as Water's Edge was unveiled, the zoo shuttered one of its oldest exhibits, the Monkey Pavilion, which no longer met the standards of animal habitat that the zoo was striving for.  New habitats for primates are part of the masterplan.

The Cincinnati Zoo opened not one but two new penguin habitats.  African Penguin Point provides their African penguin colony with three times more exhibit space, as well as better facilities to support breeding.  The penguins share their habitat with other African water birds, such as ducks and pelicans.  A much less-commonly encountered species of penguins, Australian little blue penguins, can be seen in Roo Valley, which stands were Wildlife Canyon once stood (an unfortunate loss of zoo history, as Wildlife Canyon was, until recently, home to Cincinnati's famous Sumatran rhino program).  As the name would suggest, Roo Valley is also home to kangaroos, which can be found in a walk-through habitat that allows visitors to get very close and personal.

The tiny Clearwater Marine Aquarium isn't so tiny anymore after an $80 million dollar expansion, which saw its famous dolphins move into much larger digs.  The facility is also home to rarely-exhibited rough-toothed dolphins, and has the potential to house manatees in the future.

Marine mammals were also highlighted at Columbus Zoo in the new Adventure Cove, home to California sea lions and harbor seals.   The pinnipeds can be experienced though underwater tunnels, meandering through their home, as well as a demonstration area.  Also part of the expansion is Jack Hanna's Animal Encounters Village, providing a new home for Columbus's expansive collection of animal ambassadors.

Georgia Aquarium opened a new shark pavilion.  It would be hard to imagine a more impressive shark experience than seeing their whale sharks in Ocean Voyager, but they try, adding several new species, including rarely-seen ones such as great hammerhead and tiger shark.

Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo continues its massive growth project with a new sea lion habitat, complete with a wave pool, huge beach, demonstration area, and underwater viewing.

The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore follows up last year's renovation of its lion, giraffe, and elephant exhibits by redoing the habitat of another iconic African species, the leopard.  

The Milwaukee County Zoo followed up the opening of a new elephant exhibit last year by opening a new hippo habitat this year.  The facility provides more space, as well as underwater viewing.

Having moved its elephants in a new, more spacious habitat, Zoo Atlanta has converted the old elephant habitat into a new home for white rhinos.

And in perhaps the biggest (literally) zoo news of the year, White Oaks Conservation Center is now the home of the largest herd of Asian elephants outside of Asia.  A series of nine interconnected, diverse habitats, sprawling over 2500 acres, will house the 30 elephants, retired from Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.  I'm not certain whether or not this means White Oaks will eventually become a breeding facility.  If it does, having a facility that size would be a game-changer for maintaining Asian elephants in the US.

Pretty but Perilous

There's more than one kind of "Frozen Zoo" out there... and this past week, the weather gave my coworkers and I the literal version.

We were forced to close for three days due to the icy conditions.  Now that the COVID-19 shutdowns have rolled back, I'd been hoping for a nice, mild fall that would let us make up some of the attendance that we lost from the spring.  So much for that... and it's not even winter yet.

The zoo is always a pretty place, in different ways in different seasons of the year, but there is a surrealism in working when it's closed for icy weather.  You can glide along empty paths, crunching through snow, and enjoying the incongruous sight of zebras, kangaroos, or other animals strolling through the snow before meandering back into their barns.  Then, of course, there are the real winter-weather animals, such as polar bears, at home in their element (seldom penguins, though - the majority of penguins in US zoos are the warm-weather species, such as the African penguin, and zoos that do house cold-weather species, such as the king penguin, generally keep them indoors).  The snow is a maze of tracks, and you can observe the numbers of squirrels, rabbits, and other small animals that meandered the paths before you.  It's equally fun to take two steps from a subzero landscape into an indoor tropical rainforest, with birds swooping overhead and monkeys chattering in the branches, having to wait for your glasses to unfog before you can see anything.

All of it is enhanced by the silence, the emptiness, as you walk down paths that just a few weeks ago were crowded... or, as crowded as things are allowed to get these days.

Of course, there's the reason that we're closed, which is visitor safety.  It's been a hard enough year, financially - no need to add lawsuits from the public to our 2020 burdens.  We have enough trouble with keepers falling.  I feel like every other day I'm getting sent some notice or another from higher-ups over the work email, exhorting us to be careful.  "Walk like a penguin," they say.   It's easy to get distracted by the beauty and lose track of your footing, which can send you careening across the black ice.

Which, of course, brings us to the one good thing about being closed during icy weather - there are no guests present to watch as I slide and face-plant in a snowbank for the third time that morning.  

Accidentally Domestic

"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces."

- Aldo Leopold

Genetics has been one of the most exciting (for people who aren't me) frontiers in zoo biology.  The understanding of inbreeding and the need for genetic diversity, pioneered by Rawls and Ballou in the 1970's, completely restructured how zoos interacted with one another, going from competitors and rivals to partners in collaborative breeding programs.  The sciences of cloning, gene-banking, cryopreservation, and assisted reproduction have potential to impact the facts of many endangered species.  It's worth remembering that genes didn't just come into being in the last century or so.  They've always been a part of us (and our animals), and what we've done has always had an impact on the genetic level, going back to the beginning of time... for good and for ill.

Our earliest experiments in genetic management of animals go back thousands of years, to when our ancestors domesticated the first animals.   The differences between modern domestic animals and their wild ancestors are extraordinary.  A Chihuahua bares little resemblance to a grey wolf, a cochin chicken is very different from a red junglefowl, and the domestic horse and cow are all that we have left of their now-extinct wild progenitors.  No one who tried turning a mouflon into a domestic sheep, with a woolly coat for shearing, had understanding about genes - they just bred animals that they liked, resulting in animals which they liked even more.

There is the potential for the same to occur with zoo animals - albeit accidentally.

Evolution is the process of genetic changes in a population, and evolution can be shaped by unnatural forces as well as natural ones.  Suppose zoos and aquariums, intentionally or subconsciously, starting breeding certain animals with certain traits.  Maybe they favor breeding males that are less aggressive and easier for keepers to work around.  Maybe the animals who are less afraid of the keepers are able to get more food (since they won't be hiding or running when diets are put out), making them stronger and better breeders than their more skittish exhibit-mates.  There certainly has been a bias in the past for breeding animals with unusual colors or patterns, such as white tigers or albino Burmese pythons.  Intentionally or not, zoo managers can shape future generations.

This has been done deliberately with wild animals.  We don't want to live with wolves and wild cats, we want to live with domestic dogs and cats, and have changed those species accordingly.  We've been our own evolutionary force that has molded those animals.  But with zoo animals, we should want the opposite - in a sense we want to freeze evolution.  Ideally, a tiger in a zoo in the year 2100 would be indistinguishable from one in the wild.  This is especially important for species which we hope to return to the wild someday.

Conservation doesn't just take place on the level of ecosystems and species - it takes place on the genetic level.  If we turn wild animals in zoos into something new - a quasi-domestic species, fit for life in a zoo but nowhere - we lose a piece of the natural world, and we may never get it back.

CREW at the Zoo

One of the leaders of the Frozen Zoo movement has always been the Cincinnati Zoo, home of the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife, or CREW.  Towards the beginning of the pandemic, Cincinnati began giving virtual tours of various parts of their facility, including CREW.  They'll explain it better than I ever could - my biology knowledge gets a little fuzzy once you climb into a petri dish.  Enjoy!

 

Zoo History: Flossie's Unexpected Calf

In 1981, a Holstein cow - the black-and-white dairy breed that we most often think of when we think of cows - gave birth.  There is nothing especially remarkable about that.  Lots of Holstein cows give birth to lots of Holstein calves every year.  The thing is, this Holstein cow didn't give birth to a Holstein calf.  She gave birth to a gaur, an endangered South Asian wild cattle that is also known as the Indian bison.  She also didn't deliver her calf on a dairy farm, but instead at the Bronx Zoo.  If Flossie (as the mother cow was known) was at all surprised or confused by this outcome, she didn't show it.  

After all, she was in decent company.

From the 1980's onward, zoos have been continually experimenting with artificial insemination, embryo transfer, gene banking, and other reproductive technologies.  Among the techniques that they sought to perfect were the freezing of sperm, ova, and embryos, as well as the transfer of fertilized embryos into the wombs of other species, which might have been the development that surprised many people the most.  Many endangered species breed slowly, having few young at a time which mothers nurture for an extended period of time.  With only some many females in a breeding population, that can really slow the growth of the species numbers.  The plan was to convert females of other, more common species into carriers of endangered babies... and you don't get that much more common than a dairy cow.

The rule of thumb was that, not surprisingly, these surrogate pregnancies would be most successful if the foster mother and the offspring were of similar, related species.  You can't have sheep producing giant panda cubs, obviously.  The species which we've had the most success with so far have been ones that have a close analog in either animal agriculture, the pet trade, or animal research.  At the Louisville Zoo, for example, a zebra foal was born to a domestic horse.  In a more exotic twist, The Baltimore Zoo experimented with raising the embryos of endangered lion-tailed macaques in the uteri of the much more common pig-tailed macaque.  Another story involved Dr. Betsy Dresser, formerly of the Cincinnati Zoo, with her baby bongos.

Dr. Dresser was the Director of Research at Cincinnati (currently with the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species), a facility which has long been at the forefront of the Frozen Zoo concept.  Her goal was transport the embryos of a bongo - an endangered forest antelope from Central Africa - from San Diego back to Cincinnati. But how do you transport temperature-sensitive embryos?  Body temperature seemed to be the most efficient, reliably manner.  The location on the human body with the most stable temperature is the rectum.  Then the mouth.  Then the armpit.

She went with the armpit.  

When Dr. Dresser stepped off her plane in Cincinnati, five bongo embryos taped in little containers under her arm, she was met with the press.  They eagerly photographed her little personal carry-on bag, assuming that was what held the precious endangered embryos.   The embryos were later transferred into a female eland, resulting in the birth of a beautiful, healthy baby bongo.

For a brief window of time, artificial reproduction like Flossie the cow's guar calf, or Dr. Dresser's miracle bongo, seemed like it would be the future of zoo reproduction.  While such pregnancies and births do still occur, however, they never really became commonplace, largely as a result of funding.  There's still so much that is unknown about cryobanking, hormone synching, and, for some endangered species, even the basics of their reproductive biology.  For some species, assisted reproduction may be the only hope.  For others, it may work best to stay low-tech.

Swamp: Ants at the Zoo

 

Species Fact Profile: Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

                                                                 Bornean Orangutan

Pongo pygmaeus (Linnaeus, 1760)

Range: Borneo (including both the Malayan and Indonesian sections, though it is absent from the southeastern portion of the island).  Fossil evidence suggests that the species was once present across much of Southeast Asia

Habitat: Old-Growth Lowland Rainforest (Primary and Secondary)

Diet: Fruit (about 60% of diet), Leaves, Shoots, Flowers, Bark

Social Grouping: Males solitary and territorial.  Females also largely solitary, but may congregate around food sources

Reproduction:  No set breeding season, but females tend to be more fertile during periods of plentiful food. Gestation period is 9 months.  Almost always a single offspring is born, though twins have been reported.  For the first four months or so, the infant is carried by the female everywhere.  Females typically nurse for up to 6 years and breed every 6-8 years, the longest inter-birth interval of any mammal, with young remaining with their mother until the next birth.  Sexually mature at 10-15 years old.  

Lifespan: 35 Years (Average, Wild), 55 Years (Maximum, Zoo)

Conservation Status: IUCN Critically Endangered, CITES Appendix I, USFWS Endangered 

• Males have an average height of 97 centimeters and weight of 87 kilograms (extreme record is over 200 kilograms); females are 78 centimeters tall on average and weigh 37 kilograms.  Both sexes have long arms (up to 1.5 meters long), prehensile feet, and throat pouches, though those of the male are larger than those of the females 
•  The skin is grey, covered with coarse, shaggy red fur.  The face is not furred, though some individuals have a beard or mustache
• Males have two different adult forms.  Some males are flanged – much larger than females (about twice the size) and possessing large, flat cheek pads and larger throat sacs, as well as a crest where the muscles are anchored.  Unflanged males more closely resemble adult females.  Flange status may have to do with dominance and social status, as unflanged males may develop flanges as they get older and stronger, though either may breed
• Diurnal and arboreal (the largest arboreal animal in the world), rarely coming down to the ground.  Generally solitary, but small groups of females may travel together or congregate around plentiful food sources.  Spend the nights sleeping in platforms of vegetation made 15-20 meters off the ground
• Juveniles swing like gibbons, while adults move more slowly and cautiously.  On the ground they walk quadrupedally, on their fists instead of their knuckles.  Sometimes walk bipedally.  They cannot swim, and as such rivers form boundaries to their distribution
• Males can make a loud, 1-2 minute call to announce their presence to both rivals and potential mates; it can be heard several kilometers away.  Other sounds include a lip-smacking sound when in small groups, a fast-call during conflict, and screams when frightened
• Predation of small mammals, including other primates, such as slow lorises, has been observed
• Some orangutans have been observed eating soil, either to obtain essential minerals or to detoxify poisons in their food
• Adults have no significant predators.  Young may be taken by clouded leopards.  Bornean orangutans are seen on the ground more often than Sumatran orangutans, possibly due to fewer predators on Borneo
• Translated from Malay, orangutan means “Person of the Forest,” but is not the name that is used locally for the species – “Maias” or “Mawas” is used instead.  The genus name “Pongo” is from the Bantu for “large primate,” historically used for chimpanzees.  The species name means “pygmy” or “dwarf,” essentially translating as “dwarf chimpanzee”
• Tool use has been observed in the wild, including sticks to (unsuccessfully) spear fish, leaves to wipe feces, leaves as “gloves” for handling spiny durians, and branches as umbrellas
• First captive specimens outside of the native range was sent to a Dutch prince in 1640.  The first in England arrived in 1830 (surviving only two days), and Charles Darwin studied orangutans in the London Zoo (notably “Jenny”) prior to writing this On the Origin of Species The vast majority of the original habitat on Borneo had been lost to deforestation, originally for timber extraction, then for agriculture, especially palm oil plantations.  Habitat fragmentation makes it difficult for animals to move across the forest, decreases dispersal, and increases competition within forest fragments.  Habitat is also lost to fires
• Additional threats include harvesting for meat and capture for the illegal pet trade (rehab centers have been established to help restore rescued infants to at least some semblance of semi-wild status).  They are also sometimes killed as agricultural pests, with some plantation managers putting bounties on them

Zookeeper's Journal: Often overshadowed by the African greats apes – the gorillas and chimpanzees – the Bornean orangutan has always fascinated me.  I attribute this in part to how different it is from them.  Whereas chimpanzees are loud and boisterous and social, orangutans are mostly silent and solitary, moving deliberately through the trees.  Interestingly enough, much of what I thought that I knew about orangutans growing up ended up being false.  For one thing, they aren’t as solitary as was originally believed.  Zoos have long known that orangutans will live happily in group settings, similar to other apes, but observations by Birute Galdikas helped shed light on the surprisingly social nature of these apes in the wild.  From a zoo perspective, my fondest memories of this species date back to the opening of the “O-Line” at the Smithsonian National Zoo.  This innovative exhibit opened in the 1990’s, allowing apes to swing directly over the heads of zoo visitors as they traversed the distance from the Great Ape House to the Think Tank building.  When it opened, there were lots of doubts voiced about how it would work.  At worst case scenario, an orangutan would escape (or, slightly better, bomb visitors below with explosive feces).  At best, many thought that the apes wouldn’t use it.  To be honest, in the many times that I’ve visited National Zoo, I’ve only seen apes on the O-Line towers on a few occasions, and only seen them actually swinging and climbing a handful of times, perhaps less than a dozen.  Still, when I have seen orangutans in motion, it’s been incredible.  They seem so graceful and powerful that they show little resemblance to the sleeping red throw rugs that I usually saw heaped in an exhibit corner.

Ethics and Insemination

In attacks on animal agriculture by animal rights groups, few topics are as electrifying - and emotional - as artificial insemination.  You can read all sorts of angry comments about the "rape" of cows, sows, mares, and other animals.  Exotic animal husbandry doesn't receive as much of the firestorm, with the exception of the biggest lightning rods, orcas, which again are described as "rape victims" by activists.

Farm animals (and zoo animals) are, of course, not able to verbally consent to artificial insemination, and applying the Golden Rule here - asking whether you would want someone to artificially impregnate you, and if not, why would you do it to animals - feels a bit... icky.  I've been asked by more than one new keeper about the ethics of such practices.  Zoos by their nature are about imposing an element of control on animals, whether we're talking about the boundaries of an enclosure or the individuals that we place in a social group.  Is artificial insemination a bridge too far?

It's worth remembering that we limit animal's reproductive choices in the zoo already - we effectively decide who is mating with who by deciding which males and females have access to one another.  Also, natural breeding isn't always one in which choice is given a lot of weight.  In the wild, female ducks or frogs may be drowned under the mass of males trying to breed them.  Spider males often end up inside the digestive tracts of their mates.  For some species breeding is painful, frightening, stressful, or even potentially deadly.  

I prefer natural breeding of animals whenever possible.  I like the idea of preserving natural behaviors, and that includes courtship and copulation.  A male is more than a sperm donor, a female is more than an incubator.  In some cases, I worry we look too closely at genes and genes alone, trying to maximize diversity.  Maybe certain individuals shouldn't be represented in the future.  If a male is a mate-killer, for example, is it possible that there's something about him that we shouldn't want to see in future generations?

In other cases, however, artificial reproduction is the easiest, safest, and most cost-effective way to bring about the next generation of endangered species.  Is it playing God?  Sort of - but when you're dealing with extinction, either by bringing it about or by trying to prevent it, you're already kind of playing God.

A Little Help From My Friends

Dr. George Church and his brilliant scientific team (depicted in Woolly) aside, I have a feeling that we are still a ways away from watching our first woolly mammoth plod across the Siberian steppes.  Still, that which seems hard to believe now may be achieved one day - much of the technology that we employ now, from air travel to the wireless computer that I write this post from - would have seemed like magic to earlier generations.  The pioneering researchers that are working on recreating the mammoth are themselves standing on the shoulders of the scientists before them who pioneered artificial insemination (or, since there really is nothing artificial about the end result, assisted reproduction).

Like most technologies used in zoo animals, AI was crafted with domestic animals (and people) in mind.  The technology isn't exactly new - the Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani artificially inseminated a dog back in 1780.  The technology did not really develop until the middle of the last century.

In animal agriculture, artificial insemination is useful in allowing a male to impregnate a greater number of females than he might be able to manage naturally, or to allow for the transportation of just the semen instead of the whole animal.  This can be especially valuable for animals in which a breeding male can be large and potentially aggressive, such as a dairy bull.

Among zoo animals, the benefits of AI are similar to those in agriculture, although perhaps even more pronounced.  If you think moving a prized bull from female to female could be challenging, imagine moving an orca - which is in part why SeaWorld has relied on it for maintaining its orca program.    "Nakai," born at SeaWorld San Diego in 2001 to mother "Kasatka," is believed to be the first orca conceived through AI.  Though whales had been bred before then, it's certainly much easier and less risky to move just the part you need.  If an animal is very large, or delicate, or maybe not in the best health for a long trip, it can be much easier to just move semen.  

This is especially true for animals which might have perfectly viable genes, but aren't able to breed for other reasons.  For example, "Kuma" was an ocelot at the Beardsley Zoo in Connecticut, who had lost a leg in a violent conflict with another ocelot.  She could still breed, but she would be at a major disadvantage in another introduction with a male ocelot.  Physically and behaviorally, she would not be up to the task of breeding - motherhood, however, she could handle.  She was artificially inseminated using a donation from "Ozzie," a male from the Salisbury Zoo.  The same techniques would have worked for an animal who was physically fit but had some behavioral hang-up that prevented breeding, such as being hand-reared and imprinted on humans.

"Kuma's" story goes to show - for many animals, especially solitary wild animals, sex is one of the most dangerous aspects of life.  It puts animals in extremely close contact, and it doesn't take much for something to go wrong.  I've heard first-hand horror stories of big cats (clouded leopards are especially notorious) and bears killing mates with seemingly no provocation during breeding introductions.  Even among relatively social species, it can get dicey - I once had to physically rip two capybara off one another after the female decided that she wanted to try and kill the male that we were introducing her to.  Both survived the encounter with minor injuries, and I managed not to have my face bitten off.

Given the option of having a "contact-less pickup," to use one of the buzz phrases of this summer, I can't say I wouldn't.

Book Review: Woolly - The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History's Most Iconic Creatures

If you ask a member of the general public to name an animal from the North Pole, they will probably give you one of two answers - reindeer, or polar bear (or, possibly, a third and incorrect answer of "penguin").  Those are probably the two answers that you'll get.  The high north isn't generally known as a hotspot of animal diversity.  These days, at least...

Thousands of years ago, the tundra that ring the Arctic Circle were home to a wide variety of megafauna, some of which still exist, much of which has faded into extinction.  Among these animals, the biggest and perhaps most famous was the woolly mammoth.  Unlike those other famous extinct giants, the dinosaurs, woolly mammoths went extinct quite recently (geologically speaking), with the last known population dying out about 4,000 years ago.  That means that unlike dinosaurs, mammoths coexisted with humans - in fact, they were still plodding around on Wrangel Island while the pyramids were being built in Egypt.  Their relatively recent existence and the nature of their frozen ecosystem means we also have some frozen specimens - and DNA.  

Anyone who has read or seen Jurassic Park knows where this is going...

Ben Mezrich explores the possibilities in Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History's Most Iconic Creatures.  This quest is largely driven by two very different scientists from opposite ends of the world.  The book's main protagonist is George Church, a Harvard geneticist and molecular engineer who has been one of the leading pioneers in human genetics and director of one of the most high tech labs in the world.  The other is Sergey Zimov, a Russian biologist who is based out of the Russian Far East, his isolated research base standing amidst some of the last lands the mammoths once walked.   

Most of the book focuses on Church and his students (which makes sense considering how much more accessible the are, both in terms of geography and language).  Not surprisingly, most of the book also focuses on their aspect of the project - the "how?"  The reader will learn a lot about the development of genetic research and the challenges and processes of extracting genetic material and splicing and manipulating genes to create something which may or may not be a mammoth.  Church and his team identify a series of traits - such as hemoglobin that will survive the bitter cold, small ears, and, of course, the mammoth's namesake coat - that will need to be selected for in order to recreate the animal.  It's all very interesting, but for those of us who are more interested in the whole animals, not just the sums of their parts, we may wish that more attention was paid to Zimoy, because that's where the "why" comes in.

When people discuss the resurrection of extinct species, the expectation is often that the recreated animals will be little more than very expensive show pieces of little environmental significance.  Wouldn't it be better to channel all of these funds into conserving the elephants that we do still have rather than creating yet another?  If you believe Zimoy's theories, however, there is a lot more at stake in the mammoth resurrection that just making some hairy elephants (though that would be cool, too).  Zimoy believes that restocking the Arctic with mammoths - as well as musk ox, bison, caribou, and Yakutian horses, among other species - will save the world.

In Zimoy's view, the tundra that we see today is an unnatural, unstable ecosystem, one that resulted from the loss of the large animals that once lived there and maintained it as a steppe.  Without the steppe ecosystem, the permafrost beneath is now more accessible, allowing stored carbon to leak into the atmosphere and creating a global warming feedback loop.  In his mind, restoring the steppes will shield the permafrost and reduce global climate change, creating a more stable, productive environment not just in the Arctic, but worldwide.  To that end, he and his son are experimenting on a small scale by restocking the land near their research station with small herds of ungulates - with the end goal being to bring back the keystone mammoths themselves (in the meantime, the Zimoys are doing the best they can to replicate the effect themselves by driving a tank back and forth across the tundra).

Zoos make brief cameos throughout the book, largely in Church's quest for elephant DNA to use in the experiments.  Many do not seem especially receptive to participating in what seemed like a mad scheme, and it takes a while before the lab gets access to the genes - first in a failed attempt to snag a sample from a very irate elephant who makes its displeasure very clear, and second from trying to scoop up a placenta from a very newborn baby in a different zoo.  Along the way, Church learns about the deadly elephant herpes virus and offers his services in helping to combat it - in part as a "Thank you" to elephants for helping him with his research, in part to help protect any potential future mammoth babies from succumbing to the disease.

Mezrich's book is a work in progress, and in a few parts (starting in the very beginning) he slips into the future, offering a glimpse of what a world might look like with mammoths still astride the top of the globe.  It makes for a somewhat frustrating read at times, as you feel like things just stop at the end without real resolution.  At times I felt like Mezrich was stretching out Church's biography (and shorter biographies of his students) to fill the book, because there wasn't as much mammoth info to write about yet.  There's the feeling that the story is left half-told and unfinished... because it is.  While the project conclude and mammoths be reborn?  Did things just... end or go in a completely different direction five days after he published the book?  Only time will tell.

One thing is certain though.  To paraphrase one of Church's disciples, "It's all science fiction... until you remove the fiction part."

Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History's Most Iconic Creatures on Amazon.com

The Curator Got Run Over By a Reindeer

This Christmas, many zoos and aquariums are trying extra-hard to get into the holiday spirit, in no small part to help make up for the loss in revenue caused by COVID-19.  There are cookies with Santa, Chinese lantern festivals, and, of course, ZooLights at many institutions.  Many of these are events that zoos have done for years, though some are relatively recent additions meant to bolster attendance.

Growing up, one feature of the holidays that I loved at my zoo was the seasonal appearance of the reindeer.  Every December, a small herd of the domesticated cervids (caribou in North America, reindeer in Europe) would appear in our zoo's farmyard, on loan from a private owner who made part of their living by exhibiting the deer around Christmas time.   Other zoos and venues might add a Nativity scene with live animals - sheep, donkeys, camels - but reindeer are a popular seasonal hit.

This was back when I was a kid, and I don't see these seasonal reindeer displays happening too much anymore.  The big driver is probably concern about Chronic Wasting Disease, a fatal disease of deer, which many state wildlife departments live in terror of. As a result, it can be extremely difficult for zoos to move deer from one state to another, as biologists worry that the disease could spread into wild deer populations and decimate them.  Even without CWD concerns, there are potential quarantine headaches for moving a population of large mammals in and out of the collection for such a short time period.

There's also the little problem of where to put said deer.  Most zoos aren't going to just leave an exhibit empty for 11 months of the year just to have reindeer in December.  That means that the deer have to be put someplace when they arrive that may just be a temporary structure or pen.  The facility might not be as up to snuff as other large hoofstock facilities - for example, holding pens and shift areas might be lacking.  This can lead to some awkward, close-quarters action, up to and involving chasing and trampling, if the deer don't particularly want you in their pen.

There are some zoos that have reindeer on permanent exhibit year-round.  San Diego and Columbus are two that readily come to mind.  I've always enjoyed seeing them more in those settings, anyway.  I like to think of reindeer as a real animal - one with a wild range, natural foods and behaviors and predators, one that eats and mates and poops and sleeps - instead of a fictional character with a red light-up nose that exists only in December.

From the News: House passes 'Tiger King' bill to ban private ownership of big cats

House passes 'Tiger King' bill to ban private ownership of big cats

It wouldn't be accurate to say that the hit Netflix documentary series Tiger King was the inspiration for the Big Cat Public Safety Act - but it would be hard to deny that the show helped put a pretty bright spotlight on the issue.  Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would outlaw the ownership of big cats - lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, snow leopards, pumas, and cheetahs (and any hybrids thereof) - with the sole exemption being facilities licensed by the USDA as exhibitors (with other current owners grandfathered in).

In reality, I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have.  I've never really seen clear statistics on how many privately owned pet tigers and lions there are in the US (by which I mean animals that are NOT on public display, but kept in someone's home).  It's an often-quoted statistic that there are more privately owned tigers in the US than there are in the wild across all of Asia, but that's never been backed up to my satisfaction either.  Roadside zoos such as Joe Exotic's now-closed animal park are, by nature of being open to the public, already licensed by USDA, so I don't see how these would directly impact that.

Plenty of the zoo folks that I know are agitated by this, but largely in the sense that they get agitated by any zoo-related legislation, viewing it as a slippery slope to what they see as our inevitable doom.  For what it's worth, the AZA heartily endorsed the bill - but that just makes it even more suspicious in the eyes of some zookeepers, who are, by their nature, a suspicious lot.

One change that we will see, which I am excited about, is the banning of cub petting.  I hope that this not only improves the welfare of animals in unaccredited zoos, but will also, by reducing the demand for cubs, limit irresponsible breeding.

Adaeze, a young cheetah from the Leo Zoo in  Greenwich, Conn., licks a hand after a briefing titled "Combating Threats to the Cheetah, Africa's Most Endangered Big Cat" on Capitol Hill in 2016. (Al Drago/CQ Roll Call file photo)

On an unrelated note, Big Cat Rescue, one of the facilities portrayed in Tiger King, saw tragedy yesterday after a volunteer was mauled by a tiger.  I hope that the volunteer makes a full recovery.

The Fairer Photogenic Sex

Looking through my photo collection, I've come to the conclusion that humans might be the only species in which females are more attractive than males.  Looking at my pictures of deer and antelope, ducks, songbirds, birds of paradise, lions, pheasants, orangutans, and so on, you might easily conclude that only the males of those species exist.  When I do take a picture of a female, it's usually because she has a baby and that makes her "worth" photographing to my subconscious.  

Generally, the males are big, showy, handsome, and sometimes borderline freakish-looking.  Females of many species are... well, drab.  I'm trying to correct the bias with my photography, not so much as to combat any inate sexism, but to create a more complete record of the animals I've seen.  Still, when you see a handsome peacock with his tail all spread out and shaking, it's hard to pay too much attention to the brown-and-white oversized chickens standing next to him.

Dave Coverly

Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

"No matter what you do, it will never amount to anything but a single drop in a limitless ocean.  What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?"

- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

It's December, which means it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The Tuesday after Thanksgiving is often called "Giving Tuesday," following "Black Friday," "Small Business Saturday," and "Cyber Monday" - presumably Sunday is still a day of rest.  This is the day that nonprofits typically come around, hat in hand, looking for charitable support.  This year, many of them certainly need help even more than in years past.

Consider, if you can afford it (and heaven knows that plenty of people might not be able to this year), drop a little bit of support to a nonprofit organization with a mission that is dear to you.  It doesn't have to be a zoo, aquarium, or other animal-related organization.  Maybe it's related to healthcare, racial justice, child protection, education, or some other worthy cause.

Few of us are in a position to make an enormous, life-changing gift to a charity or nonprofit - but many of us, giving together in small sums, can change the world.