A Statement from Ukraine

A Statement from Volodymyr Topchiy

 President of the Association of Zoos of Ukraine:

Every day, as the President of the Association of Zoos of Ukraine, I receive calls, letters and questions about how to help Ukrainian zoos and where to transfer funds and to what account. Today, zoos in Ukraine work in very difficult conditions and try to create conditions for the protection and rescue of animals.

Dear friends, colleagues abroad of Ukraine, thank you for your desire to help. But for now, this is not necessary. Thanks! It will become clear after a while. And then we will announce an invoice to help Ukrainian zoos.

On February 26, in the evening, near the Nikolaev Zoo there was a battle with the participation of tanks. They drove the invaders towards Kherson with losses. Today they fed and cleaned the animals like yesterday. Wait and we will tell you how to help us, Be careful as false ads of scammers may appear. Thanks.

 

аждый день я, как Президент Ассоциации Зоопарков Украины ,получаю звонки, письма и вопросы, как помочь Украинским зоопаркам и куда перечислить средства и на какой счёт. Сегодня зоопарки Украины в очень сложных условиях работают и стараются создать условия для защиты и спасения животных.

Дорогие наши друзья, коллеги за рубежами Украины, спасибо за желание оказать помощь . Но пока в этом нет необходимости. Спасибо! Будет понятно через некоторое время. И тогда мы объявим счет для оказания помощи Украинским зоопаркам,

26 февраля вечером возле Николаевского зоопарка был бой с участием танков . Отогнали оккупантов в сторону Херсона с потерями. Сегодня кормили и убирали у животных как и вчера. Дождитесь, и мы скажем как нам помочь, Будьте осторожны, так как могут появиться ложные объявления мошенников. Спасибо

Innocent Bystanders

As the Russian army makes its advance into Kyiv, fighting has been reported in the vicinity of the Kyiv Zoo.  Earlier this week, Feldman Okopark zoo was hit by explosives.  Staff confirmed that some animals were killed in the shelling.  I haven't heard about staff injuries or fatalities.

There isn't a single part of this illegal invasion which isn't horrifying, and I don't want to give the impression that, by mentioning the zoo-related tragedies, that I'm not stunned and appalled by this war crime as a whole.  It's just that as a zoo professional it's hard not to have extra sympathy for colleagues abroad.  To not be chilled to imagine what it's like to be in a warzone, worrying about your own safety, that of your family, AND being responsible for a host of creatures that you cannot evacuate, cannot remove from harm's way, and can in no way explain the oncoming dangers to.

I'm hoping that this insanity ends soon.

When Crocodiles Fly (Out the Window)

Imagine, if you will, that you were driving down the street, minding your own business, with a van driving ahead of you.  Suddenly, out from the window of that van rockets a CROCODILE that begins tearing down the street.  Two women launch themselves out of the van and grab the reptile, in the middle of the street, all with amazed onlookers gawking on.  They get the croc, and get back in the van.  Everyone carries on their merry way.

Welcome to St. Augustine.

There's lots of "Florida Man" (or, in this case, "Florida Women") jokes that could be made, but I've had some pretty awkward animal escapes happen without being surrounded by camera phones, so I'm going to shut my mouth.  Instead, I'll tip my hat to the staff of St. Augustine Alligator Farm.  There is probably no team in this country that is more practiced or better skilled at handling crocodilians, so no one who could have quickly and safely solved this snafu like they were able to.

As unwanted as the whole event was for them, I'm sure, both for managing their own safety (mostly from cars, the croc was taped) and the stress on the animal, I never would have doubted that they'd be fine.  Honestly, my biggest fear in this situation would have been that some macho onlookers would have jumped in, decided that this was "a man's job," shoved the staff aside, and done something disastrously stupid.

Species Fact Profile: Emerald Tree Boa (Corallus caninus)

Emerald Tree Boa

Corallus caninus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Range: Northern South America

Habitat: Tropical Rainforest, up tp 1000 Meters Elevation

Diet: Small Mammals (Rodents, Bats, Marsupials), Small Birds, Lizards, Frogs

Social Grouping: Solitary

Reproduction:  Can breed year round.  Seven month gestation period.  Liter typically consists of 6-14 young.  Eggs are retained inside the body of the mother and then the young are born live.  No parental care is provided.  Sexually mature at 3-5 years old.

Lifespan: 25 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern, CITES Appendix II

•       Adult length about 1.8-2.7 meters. weigh 1-2 kilograms (females are larger than males).  Highly developed front teeth are very long, larger than those typically seen in nonvenomous snakes.  The head is large and heart-shaped, thought by some naturalists to resemble that of a dog
•       The tail is prehensile, allowing the snake to grip branches.  Usually found in a characteristic stack of loops draped around a tree branch.  Able to climb immediately after birth.
•       Background color is emerald green with a yellow underside.  A series of jagged white stripes (sometimes one long stripe, other times a broken series of stripes) are on the back.  Juveniles are orange or red at birth, turning green at 9-12 months
•       Primarily nocturnal.  The face has large heat sensors, which are used for detecting infrared heat and catching prey in the dark.  Prey is killed with constriction
•       This species is sometimes divided into two species - the emerald tree boa and the Amazon Basin tree boa, which is larger and has different scalation patterns on the face
•       In zoos, often exhibited alongside the green tree python, which looks and behaves extremely similar to the emerald tree boa, but is not closely related, as an example of convergent evolution

February Flip-Side

A few days ago, I mentioned that in late winter, keepers and animals alike got so stir-crazy with being inside that the staff sometimes relented and let animals out on days when they might not have earlier in the year, just so the critters could get some more outdoor time.  Seeing animals having a fun day outside always makes me smile, but the treat isn't one that we can extend evenly.  It really only works with animals that can quickly, easily, and safely be moved back and forth between their indoor and outdoor areas.  For example, if all that separates a rhino or a giraffe from its outdoor yard is a single gate, you can easily put them out on a warmish winter's day.  Then, they'll get hungry and want to eat, so you can get them back inside without too much trouble.  That works well, because the next day might drop down ten or twenty degrees, when you really don't want that animal to be out overnight.

With some animals, though, the winter quarters aren't next to the outdoor exhibit.  Primates might be on outdoor islands in the spring, summer, and fall, but brought indoors in the winter.  Birds in a free-flight aviary might be caught up and taken into a building.  Tortoises, crocodilians, and other large reptiles are hauled into indoor quarters.  Once these animals are in for the winter, they can't be quickly or easily brought back out for the occasional warm day.  Once they are in, they are usually in until it is reliably warm enough for them to stay out for the season.

I was thinking of this as I walked around my zoo this week on what was an unseasonable warm day.  It was fun seeing some of the animals out and about who would normally be in barns and dens this time of year - but one of the outdoor aviaries was empty.  It was a major project last fall (as it was every fall) to catch up the birds and move them inside, and keepers wouldn't but the birds - or themselves - through that much stress just for a few days of "false spring."

Ideally, the best solution would be for the indoor and outdoor quarters to always be adjacent so that animals can always have access to outdoor space.  Sometimes, if the exhibits aren't built that way originally, they can be modified.  At the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, the smaller primates in the Chimpanzee Forest were kept in outdoor enclosures a few hundred yards away from the indoor exhibit building in the summer and were kept indoors in the winter.  The recent construction of an overhead trail system bridges that distance, allowing animals to be moved indoors and outdoors during changes in the weather (which does cut both ways - sometimes you have unseasonable cold snaps in warmer months, in which case it's desirable to bring the animals in for their safety and comfort).  Additionally, modifications can be made to  outdoor exhibit spaces - shelters, heat lamps, etc - to try to extend the amount of time each year when the outdoor space can be usable for the animals.

This is one of those concepts that I feel like we as a field have just started to really think about in recent years - how to maximize the amount of choice and opportunity we offer animals under our care.  Few choices are more enjoyable to animals than whether or not to be in one environment (inside) or another (outside), both with very different conditions.  Hopefully, more and more future projects and developments in zoos will be be designed to facilitate these choices - and, not incidentally, improve the visitor experience by allowing more animals to comfortably be out and about on the nicer winter days.

Satire: Parents Forced To Explain Thrill Of Having Sex In Public After Daughter Sees Monkeys Mating At Zoo

Parents Forced To Explain Thrill Of Having Sex In Public After Daughter Sees Monkeys Mating At Zoo

Forget It, February

I usually find February to be my least favorite month, weather-wise.  Maybe it just seems colder because I know spring is around the corner, maybe it's because it lacks the holiday season fun of December and early January.  At any rate, I start counting down the days to spring.  I always get the feeling that the animals are, too - especially the ones that are cooped up inside due to cold.

In late February, though, I notice that I start seeing a lot more animals outside on kind of "iffy" days - days when that same temperature might have kept them inside a month ago.  I call it "Forget it, February."  Actually, I call it something else, but that name can't be shared on a blog with young readers.  The premise is that the keepers, facing the prospect of another day of their animals stuck inside, look at the thermometer, hem and haw for a moment, then say, "heck with it" and let the animals out for a spell.  It gives them a chance to get in a really good cleaning and gives the animals a chance to get some exercise.  It also helps condition the animals to the cooler weather so that they'll be better able to take advantage of the not-infrequent cool days of March and sometimes April.

You can only push this so far (and not at all with some animals, such as reptiles).  This does not extend to letting the monkeys out for a frolic when it's in the teens.  But a day in the 30's with the sun out and with access to indoor space to come in when they want, a tolerable February day can be a fun outdoor excursion for a lot of animals as they (and the keepers) wait for the coming of spring.

Zoo Review: Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo, Part II

We'll continue the visit to Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo today with the rest of the exhibits...

Past the aforementioned macaques and sun bears, we come to another of Catoctin's less impressive exhibits, which houses an Amur leopard.  To be honest, I was afraid to sneeze too close to the exhibit, lest the claptrap construction fall apart and let the leopard out.  While it was relatively naturalistic, especially compared to the sun bear exhibit, it was small and felt unsubstantial.  It reminded me of one of my earliest recollections of Catoctin - reading in the news 10 or 15 years ago about how a keeper was mauled by a jaguar when it burst in on her through an inadequately-strengthened door.

Speaking of jaguar, that species of big cat was located just around the bend, though in an enclosure that, while not much larger than the one for the leopard, at least looked sturdier.  The jaguar heralded the entrance to a small South American area, with iguana, capybara, a surprisingly nice building of fruit bats, and, nicest of all, a naturalistic, large, moated island with Patagonian cavy, southern screamers, and greater rhea.  Non-geographic exhibits in the area included a few Asian and African residents - Visayan warty pig (another species that was until recently very rare even within AZA, and is still uncommon outside of it), binturong, and an aviary of Abdim's storks.  Nearby is an especially beautiful koi pond, a feature that I often think of as a waste of space in zoos, but I do have to admit that this was perhaps the most attractive I have ever seen.  Visitors can obtain chow from nearby machines to feed the fish.  An attractive exhibit of red-crowned crane completes the garden-like atmosphere.

Like the most recent non-AZA zoo I reviewed, Lake Tobias Wildlife Park, Catoctin boasts a safari ride, which roles over 25-acres of pasture that it grazed by a mixture of "fancy domestics" as well as wild ungulates, such as bison, Plains zebra, mouflon, and camels, as well as ratites, for an extra cost.  I opted not to take the ride, though I'm sure it would be of interest to many visitors.  The launching site is home to exhibits of patas monkeys, marabou stork, and leopard tortoises, as well as a small rocky mountain watched over by aoudad (Barbary sheep).  From this area, it is possible to see some of the ungulates; I observed bison very close to the fence while I watched.

The North American area consists of a barn inhabited by owls, two alligator pools - one for the small fry, one for the big guys, and yards for coyote and collared peccary (the latter a species that I used to see very often, but not nearly as much anymore, being replaced by the more endangered Chacoan peccary in many zoos).  A new exhibit for wolves is slated to be opened zoo - in the meantime, the wolves can be seen in a so-so exhibit elsewhere in the park.  Eurasian lynx, presumably a stand in for Canada lynx, occupy an exhibit that strikes me as much nicer than those that the leopard or jaguar got.  Tucked away around the zoo are aviaries for a few birds that you don't see too often - white-necked raven, white-eared pheasant, Barbary falcon, and yellow-headed vulture among them.  There are also a few petting barns where you can pet and feed some hoofed animals, both domestic and wild (this is the first time that I ever saw a scimitar-horned oryx - and an adult at that - in a petting zoo, though thankfully visitors could only reach in, not actually go inside with it).

Catoctin, like many unaccredited zoos I've been to, is a mixture of the very nice and the somewhat sketchy.  I have no basis for comparison, so for all I know the nicer stuff I saw represents new exhibits that are gradually replacing older, outdated ones.  If that's the case, than I certainly hope that the bear and big cat habitats are next up for replacement.  I'd heard some rough things about animal care here, but mostly from decades past, so I was willing to give a look - I'd hate for someone to judge my zoo based on how we ran things in the 1970s.  I did enjoy the chance to see so many novel species, including a handful that I'd never seen before (surprisingly at the apparent expense of species that I'd expect to see, such as tigers, spider monkeys, and other non-AZA staples).  

I'd be interested to see what direction Catoctin goes in the future: what new exhibits they unveil, what animals they obtain (or are forced to phase out as they become no longer available), any word of their animal care practices, and whether they'd consider joining AZA.

Zoo Review: Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo, Part I

There was a time when I was fairly strict about a rule of only visiting (or at least only patronizing) AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums.  I've since relaxed that rule considerably.  Part of the reason came down to my exposure to some really impressive non-AZA facilities, as well as some facilities which I'd visited and enjoyed in the past which, willingly or otherwise, parted ways with AZA.  But I'll admit that there's a selfish reason as well.  AZA's commitment to the Species Survival Programs and the sustainability of its animal collections means that many zoo collections are becoming a bit... homogenous.  You can, however, see some fairly unique animals outside of AZA.  I won't compromise too much by visiting a place that I've reason to suspect is irredeemably bad, but curiosity will lead me to zoos I'd ignored in the past.

Consider the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo, located in Thurmont, Maryland.  It's about an hour from DC and Baltimore, nestled in the forested hills near Gettysburg, PA (though the presidential retreat at Camp David might be the nearest landmark you may be familiar with).  The site has housed animal attractions for 90 years, first opening as Jungleland Snake Farm, featuring alligator wrestling, venomous snake milking demonstrations, and other feats of daring-do.  In the 1960's Jungleland was sold to Rick Hahn, who's family continues to operate the zoo.  The renamed Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo differs from many non-AZA zoos in its unique collection of specimens; whereas many such facilities feature the same handful of exotics - ring-tailed lemurs, servals, red kangaroo, etc - here, the zoo connoisseur can come across some pretty surprising animals (in enclosures of highly variable quality).

As befits a facility that started off a a snake farm, Catoctin boasts of a very impressive venomous snake collection, concentrated in a reptile house immediately inside the entrance gate, called Hot Stuff.  Visitors may encounter some of the standard venomous snakes commonly kept in zoos, such as king cobras and western diamondback rattlesnakes, as well as several uncommon ones, some of which, such as the Komodo island viper, I'd never heard of before.  The reptile tanks were spacious and well-furnished, different from the cramped, relatively sterile tanks I'd seen at many roadside reptile displays, which was a pleasant surprise.  A second reptile house elsewhere in the zoo focuses on larger snakes - anacondas,  pythons, boas - as well a habitat for meerkats.

Much of the rest of the zoo is laid out in (roughly) geographic zones.  The Madagascar area was the first that I visited, and I was surprised to see a few species that I seldom see in zoos, such as Vasa parrots.  Black-and-white ruffed lemurs occupied a decent exhibit, while fossa (a species that a few years ago was very rare in AZA collections and practically nonexistent outside of them) occupied an attractive two-part habitat with indoor and outdoor viewing.  

Madagascar segued into Australia, with the obligatory kangaroo and wallaby walk-through and budgie aviary (the later shared by other birds from around the world).  Side exhibits housed cassowary and dingo, while an attractive pond was occupied by a group of black swans.  The swan pool made an idyllic place to stop and rest for a bit, consult the map, and congratulate myself for deciding to make this visit on a fall weekday when schools were in session and all was quiet.  A third reptile house nearby held a mixture of Australian and Malagasy herps in enclosures of varying size and appropriateness for the animals within (an aquatic turtle display struck me as too small and lacking in furnishings), though there were some neat touches, like the burrow built into the woma exhibit.

Nearby were exhibits for two of the species for which Catoctin is best known.  The first and, I'm sorry to say, perhaps the worst exhibit in the zoo, was for sun bears.  This species, the smallest of the world's bears, is increasingly uncommon in AZA zoos, being phased out so as to free up space for other tropical bear species.  Part of the reason that this species was selected to be phased out was that it seldom bred reliably - but that's never been a problem at Catoctin, where's they've bred well.  I suppose that means that their small and kind of dingy enclosure, fronted with heavy bars, can't be the worst possibility for them, but it certainly could have been larger with more natural touches.  

The second species - and the one that I primarily came to see - was the booted, or gray-legged, macaque.  Catoctin has the only troop of these monkeys outside of their native Indonesia.  Knowing this, I was surprised at how bad their exhibit was, at least from a viewing perspective.  I'm not sure how much of it had to do with COVID protection, but you couldn't get that close to them, and the viewing was bad.  Their winter quarters appear to be a modular trailer located a few yards from the enclosure and linked by an elevated tunnel, and it was in that tunnel that the bulk of the troop seemed to be hanging out.  I couldn't get the best view of them, nor was I in much of a position to appreciate their enclosure.  Species that tend to be limited to one facility in this country tend not to be here forever, so I took the opportunity to spend a lot of time observing the macaques (which were very active, with several youngsters in evidence), as I was unsure when or if I'd see them again.

Other species scattered around this part of the zoo included olive baboons (in an enclosure similar to the macaques), two-toed sloths (exhibited alongside rarely-seen night monkeys), Asian small-clawed otters, and a tangle of trees linked with ropes that housed a mixed group of macaws (while it makes for pretty pictures, I've become increasingly opposed to having flight-restricted macaws perched on display, believing that they should be housed in aviaries where they can fly).

Tomorrow, the tour of the zoo continues...

Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo

Nom, Nom, Nom

I worked at a very small zoo once, so small that all of the staff shared one office trailer, which included the table where we would take lunch.  Being frugal (read: broke), I never went out for lunch, instead eating at that table every day.  There were two other colleagues who also ate in every day, a keeper and the groundskeeper.  The groundskeeper was a big man with a big appetite, and he had a huge lunch every afternoon, sometimes packed from home, more often bought at a convenience mart and brought back to the zoo to be consumed.  

He didn't just eat his lunch.  He practically made love to it, the grunting, groaning, slurping sounds he made as he parted fried chicken from its bone made a shudder run down my spine - I usually hurried to be finished my lunch before he got back.  It was even worse for the other keeper.  I would sometimes watch him as the groundskeeper ate, the eyes bulging from their sockets, his face taut with disgust, until he would eventually storm outside to eat his lunch out by the manure heap.  The swarms of flies, apparently, were less revolting company that the groundskeeper.

That was when I learned the definition of misophonia, the intense hatred of certain sounds, with eating sounds being a common trigger.

What I've found incredible is that, as much as the sounds of other people eating can annoy me, I find the sounds of animals eating to be endearing, no matter how loud or sloppy.  Whether its the endless lapping of my family dog's tongue as she works on her solemn quest to finally lick all the way through the bottom of her food bowl, or the contented little grunts that capybaras make as they churn their way through sweet potatoes and carrots, or the crunching of shells in a macaw's beak, or even the wet, rending, tearing sounds of a tiger ripping apart a carcass (which, to be fair, didn't sound that different from our groundskeeper), there's something about the sounds of a happy animal eating that just makes me smile.  (The same with snoring - I came this close to going on the lam after smothering my college roommate with a pillow for snoring, but the snores of a sleepy animal are extremely soothing to me).  

I suppose a big part of the difference is that, unlike the groundskeeper, or my college roommate, or any of the other people who irritate me with their noises, the welfare of pets and zoo animals is 100% my responsibility.  It's my job to make them happy or comfortable, whether it's a good meal that they obviously enjoy or feeling comfortable enough to sleep soundly in my presence.  When I hear those cheerful chews, or steady snores, I don't hear a lack of consideration or annoying sounds.  I hear them as sounds of satisfaction, hallmarks of a job well done.

Pick a Winner

It appears that there is some sort of sporting event slated for this afternoon.  I don't know too much about it... something about Superb Owls?  Whatever it is, it certainly has the attention of many zoos and aquariums - and not just in Los Angeles and Cincinnati - as their animals work to "predict" the winners (with an accuracy track-record about on par with Groundhog's Day predictions).

Images below from Blank Park Zoo, Fort Worth Zoo, and Mote Marine Aquarium

A Malagasy Milestone

When the general public thinks about endangered species, they most often think of pandas, rhinos, elephants, and tigers.  Which is all fair enough.  The species that we are often in the greatest danger of losing to extinction, though, are the most obscure ones.  One of those is the rarest duck in the world, the Madagascar pochard - a species that is so rare that it was thought to be extinct for many years before being rediscovered on a single lake in 2006.  With its prospects in the wild looking dim, birds were taken into captivity by Durrell Wildlife Trust for an emergency breeding program.

That breeding program has born fruit (or, if you're a stickler for accuracy, eggs), and the time has come to fulfil the dreams of every zookeeper and restore a practically-extinct animal back to its rightful place in the wild.  Over the last few months, Durrell staff were able to take advantage of the brief dry season, when the lake that these birds inhabit(ed) was still accessible to vehicles, to return 35 Madagascar pochards to the wild.   This isn't the first release of this species that Durrell has performed, but it is the largest, and represents the best chance so far of this critically endangered duck re-establishing itself in the wild.

Congrats to Durrell Wildlife Trust and the Malagasy people for helping one of Madagascar's most endangered species take one more step back from the brink, an accomplishment which would have seemed impossible 20 years ago when the species was thought to be lost.  Hopefully the success will continue and more Durrell-bred pochards will be taking to the wing above Lake Sofia until the time comes when these zoo-bred reinforcements are no longer necessary.

A new milestone for the world's rarest duck

Never Smile at a Crocodile

"By getting in their enclosures with them, and letting them put on those huge strikes from the water's edge, they get to use all of their predatory instincts and they just love it!"

So spoke Robert Irwin, son of the famous late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, after an especially harrowing experience at his family's Australia Zoo.  Irwin was filming a TV episode featuring "Casper," a 12-foot saltwater crocodile, when the croc lunged at him.  No surprise there - an Irwin being lunged at by a saltwater crocodile is kind of par for the course.  This time, though, the croc pressed its advantage, eventually chasing the young conservationist clear out of the enclosure, with Irwin shouting, "Bail, bail!" as he directed everyone to get out of the animal's path.

It makes good TV, I won't lie.  I grew up watching The Crocodile Hunter.  And, to be fair, these things to happen.  I've worked with five species of crocodilian over my career and, unlike the big cats and bears I've worked with, I've gone into the enclosure with each one.  Sometimes, they are not happy to see you and let you know.  Sometimes, they seem a little too happy to see you, and then they really let you know.  I won't say that I've ever run out of an enclosure before... but there definitely have been times when I've walked quickly.  Like I said, these things happen.

I'm sure that the Irwin's crocs get plenty of exercise by running their keepers out on a regular basis.  I do wonder sometimes if it's too much (not the exercise - the entire shebang).  I get it, they need to attract visitors, and a little showmanship doesn't hurt.  A lot, however, can kill you.  Or someone else, for that matter - I've always worried about members of the public getting themselves injured trying to imitate Steve Irwin.  (Full disclosure - the first bite I ever received as a zookeeper occurred while I was doing a Steve Irwin impression, bad Aussie accent and all.  To be fair, it involved a 12-inch baby carpet python which barely broke the skin, so it's not something that really stayed with me).  Secondly, even the best slip up sometimes.  All it takes is a loose shoelace, an unexpectedly wet patch of grass, or a hidden branch to trip young Robert up and then he tumbles long enough to be grabbed, seriously hurt... or worse.

The Irwin family has done more to promote crocodiles and their conservation to the general public than almost anyone I can think of.  The flip side of that, however, is that if one of them were to be hurt or killed by a croc, we could expect a vicious backlash against those animals (after Steve's tragic death, I'd heard that there was a spate of stingrays being found killed, presumably out of some sense of revenge, which I'm sure Irwin would have been appalled by).

So please, Robert (and Bindi and Terri), I know the shows are a part of the legacy, but be careful. The consequences of a mistake would be disastrous for you.  They could be just as bad for crocodiles.  

Derp-atology

derp /dərp/: exclamation - used as a substitite for speech regarded as meaningless or stupid, or to comment on a foolish or stupid action.  noun - foolishness or stupidity

- Oxford English Dictionary

I had a friend who wasn't all that into animals - except for cats.  She loved cats and had several living with her.  When I asked her what it was that she liked about them so much, she said it was the dichotomy.  One minute each seemed like a sleek-flawless-panther-goddess, the embodiment of grace and beauty.  The next, they'd be getting their heads stuck in the openings of Kleenex boxes, or scaring themselves silly by stumbling across a cucumber.  At those moments, they were her lovable moron children.

Some animals are natural clowns, like primates and dogs, but some of the funniest moments with animals are the ones with animals that seem to have an inherent dignity.  Penguins, for example - so upright, with stern-looking faces and plumage that seems to resemble formalwear, seeming to take themselves so seriously.  It's hard not to look at penguins and find them amusing, even when they aren't doing anything inherently silly.

I often feel that way about reptiles, too.

Creator: TerraTiger Studio

A lot of people think of reptiles as cold, expressionless, and completely lacking in personality.  I can tell from many experiences that the latter assumption is wrong - many of the reptiles I've cared for, either at the zoo or home as pets, have had tons of personality.   It wasn't always great personality, sure, but it was there nonetheless.  True, reptiles lack facial expressions, excepting for a threat gap.  They can convey their moods with other body language, such as a rising tension or a quizzical turn of the head, but there are limitations.  Perhaps because they can't change their faces, and as a result always look serious, it makes it all the funnier when they are engaged in a little silliness.

Sometimes the silliness is intentional.  Monitor lizards are generally held to be the smartest of lizards, and whenever they can be convinced to take a break from their primary obsession of finding food, they can be playful.  I've heard a colleague describe to me watching a Komodo dragon get a hold of a shovel that someone left in his enclosure, then play with it for an hour.  The dragon knew what a shovel was, and more importantly what it wasn't (edible... even by Komodo standards). There was no object to its constant interaction with the object other than mental stimulation - play.

Sometimes the silliness is inadvertent.  When I was younger, I had a pet bearded dragon named Isaac.  Crickets were a major part of Isaac's diet, which he tracked down and devoured ruthlessly... except every once in a while, when a single cricket would be leftover after he'd eaten his fill, then he'd leave it.  On those occasions, I'd sometimes come by and see Isaac with a cricket perched delicately on top of his head like a little living hat.  It never failed to crack me up.  I don't think Isaac was being whimsical, or playing with his food - he didn't put it there, after all, and he always ate the cricket eventually.  It was just his usual stern, disapproving visage looked so ridiculous with a cricket standing on his forehead.

A lot of people find reptiles scary, and, to be fair, when you are being chased from an enclosure by an irate crocodile, or round a bend in a trail and find a black mamba glaring at you, yes, they can be.  They can also make us laugh, however, intentional or not... and, I find, being able to laugh at something is a good first step towards learning how to care about it.

Species Fact Profile: Eastern Collared Lizard (Crotaphytus collaris)

                                                           Eastern Collared Lizard

Crotaphytus collaris (Say, 1823)

Range: South-Central United States, northern Mexico

Habitat: Dry Grasslands, Rocky Outcrops, Open Woodland, Desert and Semi-Desert

Diet: Insects, Spiders, Small Lizards and Snakes.  Ingest small amounts of plant matter

Social Grouping: Males are territorial and will aggressive exclude one another, maintain harems of females, which are more social

Reproduction:  Polygamous.  Breed from mid-March through mid-July.  Females may lay 1-3 clutches per year of 4-6 eggs in burrows or under rocks.  Incubation is 50-100 days.  No parental care, young are fully independent at birth.  Sexually mature by 2 years old

Lifespan: 5-8 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

•       Body length 20-38 centimeters, including the tail, with a large head and powerful jaws.  Males are larger than females
•       Highly variable coloration, but adult males tend to have bluish-green bodies with brown or orange heads.  The body is covered with spots and bands of different colors.  Females and juveniles are a lighter brown (juveniles have dark brown bands which fade with age).  Undersides are paler.  In both sexes, there are two black bands around the neck, providing the common name
•       Capable of running on their powerful hindlegs for short distances, reaching speeds of up to 24 kilometers per hour
•       Active by day.  Time not spent foraging is usually spent perched on top of rocks basking and scanning for predators.  If confronted by a predator, primary defense is to dive into the rocks.  Predators include coyotes, bobcats, roadrunners, and hawks.  Males are typically more active and visible than females
•       Females carrying eggs develop bright red splashes on color on their bodies, which disappear after the eggs have been laid
•       5 subspecies recognized across range, varying in coloration and patterning.  Several closely related species were previously considered subspecies before being split off
•       State reptile of Oklahoma.  Known locally as "mountain boomer" in mistaken belief that the lizards make loud calls (actually the wind rushing through the canyons where the lizards are commonly found).
•       Conservation status not formally known, but considered abundant, no major threats, and distributed over wide range

Fighting the Calf Killer

There are few occasions in a zoo that are cause for more celebration than the birth of an elephant.  Though they have been kept under human care for thousands of years, it is only relatively recently - the past few decades - the births starting occurring outside of Africa and Asia, and each newborn represents painstaking work and almost two years of fretting through the gestation period.  The anxiety doesn't end at birth, however.  Among Asian elephants, about half of all calves are stricken down by a silent killer.

By the time that the symptoms - lethargy, lesions - appear, it's usually too late.  The elephant could be dead in as little as 24 hours.  Those are the signs that the animal is suffering from Elephant Endotheliotrophic Herpesvirus - EEHV.  It usually strikes calves between one-and-a-half and three years of age, and is fatal in about 80% of cases.  Antiviral drugs are available, but not terribly effective, working in only about one-third of the cases.  The disease does not seem to pose much of a problem for African elephants; it's possible that the virus was endemic to them and they have resistance to it, which their Asian counterparts lack.  Of special concern is that the virus is starting to appear more frequently in wild Asian elephants, posing an additional threat to an already endangered species.  Just this year, EEHV already claimed the lives of two young Asian elephants at the Albuquerque BioPark Zoo in New Mexico.

Indali is now thriving, having survived her brush with the virus in 2019 - Chester Zoo

There is cause for hope, however.  The University of Surrey and the Chester Zoo (home to one of the rare survivors of the disease, a now 5-year-old female named Indali) are beginning the trials of a vaccine.  Not only could this potentially be a life-saver for zoo elephants (and for boosting the population - it could effectively double the number of calves that survive to adulthood), there is also the possibility of vaccinating wild herds to protect them from the virus.  In zoos, at least, the vaccination process (and the blood collection that goes into it) will only be possibly through the close relationship that elephants form with their trainers.  With luck, it could make tragic deaths such as those which devastated Albuquerque a thing of the past, as anachronistic as smallpox in our own species.

Vaccine trail for killer elephant virus begins

Book Review: Beloved Beasts - Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

"'People have approached us and said, 'Ah, that's nice, because now the Great Barrier Reef is fine,' [marine biologist Mark Vermeij] told me, 'And it's like, 'What on earth are you f-ing taking about?"

It's a commonly shared belief in the scientific community that we are in the midst of our planet's sixth great extinction event.  Unlike the preceding five, however, this one can be attributed to a single culpable species - us.   Through the combined effects of habitat loss, overharvesting, invasive species, and, most recently, global climate change, our world is in danger of losing many of its most unique, extraordinary species.  Beloved Beasts, written by Michelle Nijhuis of The Atlantic, is not the story of those animals.  At least, not directly.  Instead, it's the story of the people who have, in a lineage stretching back over a century, worked to reverse the course and save Earth's wildlife.

Excepting the book's first chapter, a detour into the history of taxonomy (because you can't save species unless you know what a species is, after all), the author presents a series of historical vignettes from the history of wildlife conservation, starting with the fiercely-opinionated William T. Hornaday, the Smithsonian taxidermist who, in between essentially founding the National Zoo AND the Bronx Zoo, managed to find time to save the American bison from extinction, and working up to the present day.  Often, one chapter feeds into another, the conservationists focused on in one going on to mentor (or, in some cases, oppose) the one that follows in the next.  For some reason, that might have been my favorite part of the book, learning about the interconnectedness of the history of conservation.

Ms. Nijhuis is an accomplished science writer, and she does a great job of presenting the complex science of conservation biology, including the struggles that many species face in rebuilding their numbers, in a manner that is easy reading for the general public.  She does an even better job exploring the politics of conservation and how decision-making and changing values lead to different conservation outcomes.  Some of the best parts of the book are the ones in which presents conservationists in opposition to one another with conflicting approaches to saving a species, or priorities as to which species to save.

It's an unfortunate truth that sometimes the conservation movement attracts folks who  have a love for the natural world that sometimes manifests itself as dislike for humans (either in their entirety or in general categories), and Ms. Nijhuis does not shy away from the periodic bursts of ugliness from some of her protagonists.  Anyone who's read much about Hornaday knows that if he appears in a book, Ota Benga is only going to be a few pages behind him, and the racism of early twentieth-century conservation is explored.  Uglier still is the more "scientific" racism of eugenics that followed later in the century, culminating in some biologists supporting atrocities up to the Holocaust.  It is perhaps fitting that the book ends with community conservation meetings in rural Africa, showing the complete inversion of the field, changing from decrees issued by rich white academics from ivory towers in museums and universities to a ground-up approach led by the people living alongside wild animals.

I found Beautiful Beasts in the science section of my local library, but it could have been just as home in the history section.  Come to think of it, I think I like it there more.  There are so many books which have been written about the scientific issues of wildlife conservation - population biology, land requirements, sustainable use.  I really do believe that, as a species, we have the science part of saving species down fairly well, while acknowledging the continually expanding frontiers of what is possible (the author devotes part of a chapter to assisted reproduction and cloning, such as what is being pursued at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park with northern white rhinos).  What we really need to get a handle on is the most important and most unpredictable variable in the whole mess - the people.

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction at Amazon.com

Staten Island's Groundhog Day

Happy Groundhog Day!  Okay, so this isn't a holiday that many folks get too excited about, not unless you're a hardcore Bill Murray fan.  There is at least one place I know that they get pumped about it, though - Staten Island Zoo!  Every February 2, the media flocks to the little New York zoo to greet one of their biggest celebrities, Staten Island Chuck, the groundhog, and to watch as he makes his annual prediction.

I'm sure that no one above the age of ten actually thinks that a groundhog predicts the weather or has any bearing on how much snow we receive.  Still, it's a great tradition that is offers one more aspect of how animals interplay with our lives, history, and culture (and one in which no animals are harmed - though not everyone agrees), so I'm all for it.  Happy Groundhog Day - and see you in the (hopefully not-too-distant) spring!

Beauty in Numbers

I've always loved zoos and aquariums, and I guess that I always will.  As I've gotten older (and slightly more financially comfortable), though, I've begun to indulge in an interest that it never really occurred to me that I might explore in my younger, broker days.  I've begun to take more trips with the planned purpose of seeing animals in the wild.  Yes, I still slip in a zoo or two or three on these trips, but I'm spending a lot more time with binoculars in hand out in the field these days as well.

A while back, I went whale watching off the coast of California.  We hadn't even left the harbor yet when I saw California sea lions - mountains of them, heaped on top of one another in loud, squabbling, smelly piles.   Not long after we reached more open water, I saw dolphins.  Now, I'd seen wild dolphins from the beach before - always a tiny little pod off on the horizon.  This was different - there were hundreds.  I had a hard time even focusing on them.  I'd be watching one and trying to stay with it as it went up and down, over and under the surface, only to be distracted by another, and then another.  

I've seen plenty of California sea lions before in zoos and aquariums, whether engaged in training demonstrations with their keepers or cruising past underwater viewing windows.  This particular species of dolphin (Risso's dolphin) was new to me, but I've seen bottlenose and white-sided dolphins in a handful of aquariums.  What made this viewing experience so special to me wasn't so much the wildness (though the unexpectedness of the encounters and the vastness of the horizons was doubtlessly a factor).

I think it was the numbers.

There's something incredible about seeing animals in such large groups.  I'm so used to seeing maybe half a dozen members of a species in a group in a zoo, when in the wild those groups might be enormous.  A "troop" of mandrills at a zoo might consist of a male, three or so females, and their young.  In the wild, there might be hundreds, the largest congregations of nonhuman primates on earth.  The thought of stumbling into a clearing in the jungle and coming across that would be breathtaking... and maybe a little terrifying.  And that's to say nothing of the massive herds of ungulates that you can find (or historically would have found) on grasslands around the world.  Why don't zoos run big herds of bison, or zebra, or wildebeest?

There are reasons why a zoo might not opt to go with a completely "natural" social group.  Part of it may be a holdover from the days when zoos placed more focus on numbers of species.  If you have enough pasture for twenty ungulates, the old logic was that it made for sense to go with a pair each of ten species rather than one herd of twenty.  A visitor was more likely to be impressed by seeing a variety of animals rather than a lot of one species.  You've seen one impala, you've seen them all, am I right?

There is a more practical argument also to be made for smaller groups.  Zoos no longer regularly collect animals from the wild, which means that they have to breed their own stock, which in turn means that they need to maximize genetic diversity for long term sustainability.  In a big social group of mammals, however, there's usually only one dominant breeding male (birds being more prone to monogamy - you typically see bigger groups of flamingos and penguins in zoos, though granted, they are much smaller than bison).  That means that the offspring born from that herd are all likely to be half-siblings, which can impact the breeding program pretty severely down the road.  Now, if you have several smaller herds, and that single zebra stallion only has access to three or four mares, he doesn't have such as outsized impact on your gene pool.

Which makes sense, I suppose... but there are times that I think it might be worth it to be able to showcase a truly spectacular, large group of big animals, to devote half of your total exhibit space to one species and let them really have the numbers to wow people.  Not only would it be an impressive exhibit, but it would probably result in less hegemony among zoos - one zoo might have a big bison exhibit, another a big wildebeest, another a big zebra, rather than each having a smaller habitat for each.  This would make each zoo more of a draw, as it would be different from its neighbors.  Larger social groupings mean more social affiliative (and agonistic) behavior, providing a better educational experience for visitors.  They also could help staff build expertise with certain species.

But, yeah, mostly I just think of the show aspect - maybe a little glimpse of what the world looked like when it was a little wilder than it is today, and great herds or troops or pods of animals still defined the landscape with their movements.