Cornering the Market

 

"Seagull Deterrent" at Blackpool Zoo

"Get a job at the zoo, they said.  It'll be fun, they said..."

 

Feeding Pandas, Starving Trolls

When people ask me what is the rarest animal in the zoo, that can be a tricky question.  Would that be the species that is the overall rarest in the world, with the fewest individuals left in existence?  Or the species that is the rarest in the wild - perhaps even a species that is extinct in the wild, but only exists in zoos?  Or, conversely, a species that is the rarest in zoos, maybe represented only at a single institution, maybe by a single individual?

Now, if you were to ask me what is the most common species in zoos, that's easy.  The trolls.  Especially the ones on facebook and other social media platforms.

The Memphis Zoo had been plagued for months by a troll army attacking them for their care of their elderly giant pandas.  One panda has since passed away (as old animals do, eventually), while the other has been repatriated to China, as was always the plan.  Now, these weirdos seem to have shifted their attention to the pandas at the National Zoo.  They're making endless repetitive, bizarre claims about pandas being starved, electrocuted, forced to drink soap, and all sorts of other random nonsense.

Starved?  The pandas at the National Zoo have a staff members with the fulltime job of harvesting bamboo for them?  Soapy water?  How to these people think that the pandas have lived so many years, and had so many cubs, if the most basic of their needs weren't being met?  Keepers in other sections of the National Zoo have, in the past, groused to me that they wished their sections would receive a fraction of the resources that the giant pandas get.

Many, though not all, of the posters (which I've blacked out, even though I kind of doubt they are real people) are under Chinese names.  Presumably being Chinese gives them a better claim to be outraged over the supposed mistreatment of "their" pandas.  Maybe it's bored kids trolling.  Maybe their Chinese agents looking to ferment trouble in America.  Maybe their animal rights activists, as ill-informed as they usually are.  Don't know, not really sure how much I care.

Whatever the subspecies, they're still trolls.  So far the zoo seems to be ignoring them, and other facebook users don't seem to be interacting with them.  Which I support - while pandas should be well-fed and well-cared for, the only way to deal with a troll is to starve it.

Larger Than Life

One of the random quirks of zoo animals that I've discovered over the years is that almost no animal is the size that you expect it would be.  Some are much larger, some are much smaller.  Often, I don't appreciate the size difference until I wind up behind-the-scenes with the animal, inches away with only mesh in between.  Even if it's an animal that I've seen dozens of times on exhibit, I'm sometimes blown away by how big or small they are in person, up close.

Lions and tigers surprised me with how huge the were - as a teenage volunteer, I felt our big male lion could look me right in the eyes.  Those are the two largest cat species in the world, so when I finally met the third-largest, the jaguar, I was surprised at how small that animal was compared to the other two - it's a pretty distant third, and our jag didn't come up much higher than my knee.  It was the same with bears - I was amazed at how big polar and grizzly bears were, and how small sun and sloth bears were.

Some animals I just don't know what to expect.  When I met a Sumatran rhino behind-the-scenes at the Cincinnati Zoo, he was so much bigger than I expected.  I knew that they were the smallest of rhinos, but I guess they are still rhinos - I'd been thinking I'd see something the size of a Shetland pony.  Pygmy hippo was another conundrum - yes, there is the word "pygmy," but there's still also the world "hippo."  Porcupines are bigger than I expected - I thought they'd be hedgehog-sized when I was younger.  Beavers blow a lot of people away with their size, too.   Camels I expected to be horse or llama-sized.  Gorillas were actually smaller than I expected, perhaps because you hear so much about "the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

Most birds are a fair bit bigger than I expected - trumpeter swans, pelicans, and condors blew me away with their size.  Reptiles are a trickier lot, since there is so much individual variation in their size, with some specimens being massive and others... average?

The animal that has surprised me the most with its size was the platypus.  Which is strange, because, in anticipation of meeting one at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, I read extensively about them, including their size.  Even so, I think I expected to see something substantially larger, maybe otter-sized, or at least ferret-sized.  Instead, it was about the size of a guinea pig

Species Fact Profile: Allen's Swamp Monkey (Allenopithecus nigroviridis)

                                                    Allen's Swamp Monkey

                                                Allenopithecus nigroviridis (Pocock, 1907)

Range: Upper Congo Basin of Central Africa (extreme southern Cameroon and Central African Republic, northeastern Republic of Congo, northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo)

Habitat:  Lowland Swamp Forest

Diet: Fruits, Leaves, Seeds, Small Animals

Social Grouping: Groups of up to 40 individuals (one report of a group of 85) with multiple members of both sexes.  These larger troops may break up into smaller foraging parties, practice social grooming to strengthen group ties

Reproduction:  Breed year round.  Thirty-day estrus cycle.  Display sexual swelling coinciding with ovulation, more like the mangabeys than the guenons.  Females give birth to a single young (very rarely twins) after a gestation period of 5-6 months.  Neonates weigh 240-450 grams at birth.  Young are weaned at 3 months.  Sexual swelling begins in females at 2.5-3.5 years old, begin giving birth at 4 years old; males reach maturity at 5 years

Lifespan: 25-28 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern, CITES Appendix II

• Body length 45 centimeters with an additional 45-50 centimeters of tail.  Weigh 3.4-5.9 kilograms, with males being notably larger than females.  The body is stout.  The fingers and toes are partially webbed (juveniles tend to more aquatic than adults)
• Fur is a mixture of brown, green, and gray with black bands and golden flecks, notably longer around the neck and shoulders.  Underbelly is white.  The face is black with a reddish chin, with long bundles of hair at the cheeks
• Active by day.  Spends much of its time in the trees, but comes to the ground to feed.  Good swimmer, capable of diving to avoid danger (sleep beside and over water as an anti-predator defense system)
• Primarily foraging on the ground.  Food items can be stored in cheek pouches (will sometimes rob each other’s pouches).  They will also enter water for forage for fish and small aquatic invertebrates (shrimp, snails) in the shallows
• Some tool use demonstrated – one zoo specimen threw hay on the surface of the water to create a shadow, which would attract fish that he would then seize and eat
• Predators include raptorial birds such as crowned eagles, large snakes, and bonobos. 
• Vocalizations include a high chirp as an alarm, a long squeal of excitement, and a deep gobble from males, thought to be territorial.  Threats consist of stares and teeth displays
• Have been observed casually socializing with and foraging alongside other guenons, such as Wolf’s guenon and Schmidt’s red-tailed guenon, as well as black mangabey and talapoin, but do not seem to go out of their way to facilitate such interactions.   One report of a hybrid produced in captivity with a male Allen’s swamp monkey, female vervet
• Species and genus are named after American zoologist Joel Asaph Allen.  It is the only member of the genus Allenopithecus (“Allen’s Monkey”), which differs from the closely related guenons in both its dentition and its habits, as well as by having fewer (48) chromosomes.  Species name refers to greenish highlights in fur
• Population believed to be decreasing, though apparently abundant in some protected areas).  Primary threat is hunting for the bush-meat trade.  Also sometimes killed in retaliation for crop raiding or captured for the pet trade.  All of this is facilitated by logging, which increases human access to their habitat.  Habitat loss itself is not a major threat to this species, as their preferred habitats are very swampy and unsuitable for logging or for agriculture

In Sync

As the weather warms, the zoo is full of changes as animals return to their exhibits.  Obviously there are a lot of tropical animals that are kept indoors in the winter which can now go back to their outdoor spaces.  Even among the northern, more cold-tolerant animals, however, there are some major exhibit changes.  While some species, such as bison and snow leopard, are just as active throughout the year, others - animals which may have spent the winter denned up and dormant, as they would in the wild - start to wake up as well.  Brown and black bears, for example, gradually wake up, ready to feed and shake off the dust of their winter dens.

Something I find fascinating about North American mammals is that - for the species with large ranges, extending from far in the north to far in the south - there are major variations in how animals behave throughout the year.  Which makes sense, when you think about - "winter" for a black bear in Canada is very different than "winter" for a black bear in southern Florida, requiring very different.  A bear in one habitat has months of very little food availability and has to gorge in preparation.  A bear in the other has fairly stable conditions year-round.  Their anatomy may be different too, especially in terms of size; Bergmann's Rule states that, in a species with a large geographic range, individuals closer to the poles are more likely to be larger and heavier-bodied to conserve heat than their warmer-weather cousins (applies to the Old World as well as the New - Amur tigers of Siberia are bigger and shaggier than tropical Sumatran tigers).

What I had not counted on was the fact that animals of the same species but from different parts latitudes might have trouble breeding.

Breeding is much more seasonal in northern animals, as you want your babies to be born at a time of year that maximizes their likelihood of survival  What that time of year will be varies based on your location in the range.  So, if you take a male river otter from Louisiana and a female from British Columbia and put them in a zoo exhibit to breed (many North American river otters in zoos are orphans or other non-releasable animals that are placed where there is room for them, which may end up being far from their birth site), their reproductive clocks might never synch up.  Even if you see them physically breeding, it is less-likely that a pregnancy will result.  You'd have better luck pairing up together two otters from more southern locations, and two otters from more northerly ones. 

I'm continually amazed at the complexity of breeding so many species; there always seem to be new details we're learning about to explain success and failure.  The more we learn, however, the more successful we can be in the future.

The Zoo-Files

For a show with the tagline "I Want To Believe," watching The X-Files requires a certain suspension of belief.  And I'm not just talking about the aliens, vampires, werewolves, and other monsters that populate the episodes of the beloved series.  I'm talking about plain old logical nonsense.  Seriously, Scully and Mulder work for the government, and are sent by the government to investigate phenomena, only to be constantly thwarted by the government.  I mean, you don't need to plan an elaborate cover up here - just stop approving their travel requests and expense forms, okay?

The silliness of the show was really driven home to me when I watched the Season Two, Episode 18 "Fearful Symmetry," in which Scully and Mulder investigate some paranormal wackiness at a zoo in Idaho.  Animals disappear, then reappear miles away from the zoo, usually on a rampage, apparently the part of some alien artificial insemination project.  It's an interesting plot concept, and I was intrigued.

What made it hard to get into, however, was how ridiculous so much of the plot was, as seen by a zookeeper.

Ok, so for one thing, a major part of the plot revolves around the fact that at this mysterious zoo, there has never, ever been a single birth or hatching of an animal.  Ever.  This is supposed to be part of the mystery.  Meanwhile, the zoo employees (we only ever meet two, presumably there are more) are constantly introducing us to their lone elephant, lone tiger, etc.  Like, no wonder you can't breed anything here, you're literally half of Noah's Ark - one of everything!  And that it never occurred to anyone to send any of the animals out to where they could breed.

The zoo is also supposed to be really old and hard up for cash, which explains why there are no funds to get partners for the animals to breed with.  We are constantly seeing big cats, for example, in what are travel crates, but are presumably their cages.  The elephant enclosure is the size of my bathroom, and about as naturalistic.  Then, we have a scene at the zoo's conference room, which has an entire wall taken up by a view into a tank of beluga whales.  Ok, I can see a few places where maybe we could have started to trim expenses a little...

And, of course, there are the two zoo employees.  Every zoo show or movie has two employees.   One is the hardened old brute who beats animals in submission and is there for the paycheck.  The other is the one who cares and is there to make things better, who has a connection to the animals.  Neither actually seems to know what they are doing.

Though the show does feature some anti-zoo activists, and Scully at one point expresses concern about some of the cages and their suitability for the animals, the episode isn't too inherently anti-zoo.  (It would be ironic if it were, since, with the special effects of the day, it was largely required to use live wild animals, obtained from trainers - so anti-captivity messages would have been a little ironic).  At the end, Mulder even speculates that someday humanity may endanger itself so much that, much as some animals require our help to save their species, we may be reliant on aliens to protect us.

I wonder if other professions find it hard to enjoy TV or movies sometimes because they are too distracted by inaccuracies.  Maybe zookeeping is extra-unique in that sense because how few people there are who actually have direct knowledge of it, compared to have prevalent zoos are in pop culture.  There are lots of lawyers, doctors, and law enforcement agent shows, each with their own consultants.  Maybe it's time I close up shop and head out to LA, set up a zoo-consultant firm for Hollywood?

From the News: Reintroduction of the Micronesian Kingfisher

US. Fish and Wildlife Service Announces the Final Rule for the Experimental Population of Sihek on Palmyra Atoll

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced the publication of the final rule establishing a nonessential experimental population of sihek (Guam kingfisher) on Palmyra Atoll, which is co-managed by The Nature Conservancy and the Service.

Under section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act, captive-bred sihek will be released to Palmyra Atoll as an experimental population in an effort to support the reintroduction of the at-risk species and foster long-term recovery.

ROCKabye Baby

Recently, a 31-year old male bald eagle at the World Bird Sanctuary in Missouri found out that even the most improbable of dreams can come true.  Murphy the eagle became famous for his dedication to sitting on his nest, which contained... a rock.  Keepers waited to see if he would eventually lose interest in the rock, but the bird never showed any inclination to do so, and continued to sit firmly.  Both staff and visitors tended to find the display of affection and devotion to be somewhat sad.

Photo Credit: World Bird Sanctuary 

That changed when the Sanctuary was presented with a young eaglet which had survived a fall from its nest, one that killed its sibling.  The young bird was given to Murphy to raise who, if perhaps a little surprised that the "egg" finally hatched, was quick to step up to a parental role, and is doing an excellent job raising the young bird.  Unlike Murphy, there is a chance that the unnamed-eaglet could be released into the wild.  If so, it would be quite a triumph for Murphy - though I suppose we'd then have to see how he adjusts to empty nest syndrome.

Not Worthless, But Priceless

Happy Volunteer Appreciation Week!  Volunteers are an integral part of many zoo and aquarium staffs, providing support in a variety of roles, such as animal care, education, and guest services.  Without all that they contribute, zoos would be far less capable of delivering on their missions of conservation, education, and recreation to the public.  Thanks again!  

Sporcle Quiz: Sporcle at the Zoo - Gorilla

 Sporcle at the Zoo - Gorilla

It's been quite a while since we've had a new entry in our Sporcle at the Zoo series, so enjoy this new quiz about gorillas!

Spoiled by the Zoo

This year, I decided that I was going to take more time to engage in wildlife watching.  Every trip I take, especially outside of my state, I try to tack on a little time for birdwatching or over chances to see wildlife.  I set myself up a little travel bag with my binoculars, camera, field guide, and notebook.  I was all set to enjoy my reentry into the world of amateur nature study.

My one take away - man, working in a zoo has left me spoiled.

I spend a lot of time looking and fields or patches of woodland and not finding anything.  Or, even more frustrating, getting quick glimpses of wildlife (sometimes just a sound) that vanishes before I can get more than a glimpse, let alone an ID.  When I do see wildlife, it really is the same handful of species over and over again - my life-list is largely untouched since I began.  It makes me feel a little dumb sometimes, because, duh, this is the wild.  That's how it works.  In a society that is often geared towards instant satisfaction, I can perhaps understand why so many folks don't have the patience for this sort of thing.

Zoos aren't the only thing which skews perspective.  Nature documentaries are full of wildlife encounters - seldom showing how many hundreds of hours those filmmakers spent filming nothing while waiting for that brief burst of drama that David Attenborough will narrate.  Natural history museum dioramas have have dozens of species crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder to a degree that they wouldn't tolerate in a zoo, certainly not in the wild.

None of this is really a complaint, per se - just a reflection on how much working in a zoo has, to a degree, skewed my thought process as to what seeing animals in the wild is like.  They aren't just *there* waiting for you, all easy to see and observe.  They're unpredictable, cryptic, and constantly on the move.  And there sure as heck aren't any identification plaques.

The natural world is real, and that's what makes it beautiful.  I sometimes worry that when we create media that manages people's expectations in a way that makes it look much busier and more diverse than it realistically ever would be, we can do it a disservice.  I would worry about it resulting in people looking at the real, natural world and thinking that there's no wildlife there, nothing to save, and therefore not worthy of attention and protection.

Zoo Review: Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park, Part II

Continuing with the tour of Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park, we come to native section.  

Situated along the Tennessee River, Chattanooga has a long history as a transportation hub, both by river and by rail.  The history of the later is celebrated in Walkin' the Tracks, a train-track themed exploration of Tennessee's wildlife (with a few outliers, like prairie dogs).  White-tailed deer, wild turkey, and coyotes are among the species hat can be seen here.  The theming is especially prominent in the Cougar Express (someone had fun coming up with that name, I'm sure), a train car which serves as a viewing building for the zoo's mountain lion exhibit.  The train car also serves as an education center with graphics about the most wide-spread cat of the Americas.  I was struck by the similarity of this exhibit to a very similar set up I saw years ago at Elmwood Park Zoo in Pennsylvania, that one focused on American bison.

Chattanooga proved to be a much more expansive zoo than I expected; I thought I'd actually be done at this point, before then coming across the Deserts and Forests buildings, a complex of two animal houses that hold the reptile, amphibian, and small mammal collection.  The buildings are fairly similar to one another, roughly circular in shape with small exhibits on the periphery, a larger central exhibit in each one.  I was surprised by the variety of species seen here, with the reptiles including pancake tortoise, desert horned lizard, and bushmaster.  Mammals were also well-represented with meerkats, rock hyrax, genet, and a very small naked mole-rat colony, among other species.  The walkway between the two buildings passes an outdoor habitat for Komodo dragon.

The final geographic area of the zoo is Corcovdo Jungle, which displays animals from Latin America.  A subsection of this area is La Selva Amazonica, a pavilion with indoor and outdoor habitats for several species of tamarins and marmosets; this was perhaps the greatest number of species of these small primates that I'd seen in a zoo for quite some time, especially in a zoo this small.  Nearby is grassy habitat for giant anteaters, with the path then looping down a winding trail past black-handed spider monkeys, prehensile-tailed porcupine, capybara, and jaguar.  I was especially surprised by the exhibit for kinkajou; not that I saw the animal, but these small, nocturnal mammals are often just kept as educational ambassadors, and it was a nice surprise to see a well-furnished exhibit for this species, as opposed to the off-exhibit holding I more often associate them with.

Chattanooga Zoo has expanded its footprint rapidly in recent years, with ambitious plans for more exhibits in progress.  Recent years have seen considerable renovations and improvements.  It lacks many of the "ABC" animals that many visitors go to zoos in search of - bears, rhinos, zebras - but still has a diverse, well-rounded collection.  Better to have a smaller collection that the facility can manage than to cram in as much megafauna as possible, as other facilities have tried.  Some of the exhibits (particularly some of the smaller ones, such as the raptor displays along Walkin' the Tracks) were not particularly impressive, but I don't know if I can say I saw anything truly bad.

There is quality work going on behind the scenes as well.  The zoo is small but still manages a substantial conservation involvement, as well as participation in local wildlife rehabilitation programs.  All in all, Chattanooga is an enjoyable little zoo, easily paired with the Tennessee Aquarium for a full day of quality time among interesting animals.

Zoo Review: Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park, Part I

Among the zoo-loving community, Chattanooga, Tennessee, is best known as the home to the Tennessee Aquarium.  The pleasant, mid-sized city along the Tennessee River is also home to the pleasant, mid-sized Chattanooga Zoo in Warner Park, just a few minutes drive away.  Chattanooga Zoo is often overshadowed not only by the Aquarium, but by the larger Tennessee zoos - Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and even Zoo Atlanta really isn't that far away.  For it's small size (13 acres, or twice the size of the diminutive Central Park Zoo, and much of that is taken up with an event field), it manages to hold a surprising variety of popular zoo species, while managing not to feel too overcrowded.

The current zoo actually represents Chattanooga's second zoo, the first being a short-lived attraction at the turn of the last century.  This zoo opened in the late-1930s, consisting of a pair of monkeys.  The zoo is geographic in theme, with the African area being the first section most visitors see.  It isn't overburdened with megafauna, which is just as well considering the zoo's small size, but does manage a representative selection of the continent's wildlife in two exhibit areas.

Makazi ya Twiga (Swahili for "House of Giraffes") is the newest exhibit in the zoo.  I don't consider it to be an especially impressive habitat, though to be fair, I find most giraffe habitats kind of meh, as if there is something about their occupants that just tends to not inspire imagination among zoo planners.  It's a basic paddock with the inevitable feeding platform, as well as indoor viewing that also features habitats for duikers and African birds.

The second half of Africa is represented in Gombe Forest, home to the zoo's chimpanzees.  The chimps have an outdoor habitat, along with a dayroom which is visible from inside a second building, which also features black crested mangabey monkeys and a few herps and inverts.  Again, the chimp exhibit is adequate, though a little uninspired, and perhaps standing to benefit from more vertical opportunities.  The exhibit was built to house Hank, a wild-born chimp who came to the zoo in 1976 and was its star resident  until his passing in 2011.  There is an adjacent outdoor aviary to the building, though at the time of my visit it was closed off, presumably due to concerns about avian influenza, which has been responsible for the closure of many aviaries to protect the health of the occupants.

Compared to Africa, I preferred the smaller, more compact Himalayan Passage, the stars of which are the red pandas.  Red pandas can be notoriously sensitive to heat, so they have indoor and outdoor habitats, allowing them to enjoy air conditioning in the summers (the indoor habitat here is apparently the largest indoor red panda habitat in the country, if not the world).  The Himalayan-themed pagoda also includes a few small reptile exhibits, while outdoors are balcony-level views of habitats for white-cheeked gibbon and snow leopard.  These two exhibits can also be seen on the ground level, alongside an aviary of endangered Bali mynah (an Indonesian species, incidentally - some of the small side-exhibits at Chattanooga don't always quite match thematically with their main exhibits).  A habitat for Chinese alligators is nearby.

Nearby is the Warner Park Ranch, where visitors can meet domestic animals in a petting barn setting, including dromedary camels.  

We'll continue the exploration of the Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park tomorrow.

Chattanooga Zoo at Warner Park

Easter Egg-citement at the London Zoo

 

Goodbye to Ya Ya

Today, the Memphis Zoo is throwing a farewell party for its giant panda, Ya Ya, who is scheduled to return to China later this spring.  The panda has been an icon of the zoo for 20 years, and will be sorely missed.

The Personable Tiger

Anyone who works around animals - be it a pet owner, a farmer, or a zookeeper - would probably find it very hard to consider animals not having personalities.  Sure, some animals tend to have more personality than others, which may be lacking entirely.  I've never heard any aquarist speculate on the individual personality of a jelly, for example.  Still, when we talk about personalities of zoo animals, we tend to talk more about the personality of a species, rather than an individual.  

White rhinos are normally more sociable and gregarious than black rhinos.  Clouded leopards are more nervous and high strung than pumas.  Sometimes the personality is based on age.  Young cassowary are quite friendly - until they hit a certain age, and then they're not.  Or, it may be based on sex.  Male Andean bears, in my experience, are big, dumb, and loveable.  Females are smarter and sassier.  

That being said, there can be a lot of personality variation within individuals of a species, as primate keepers can be especially keen to tell you.  It's harder to document and quantify than many other aspects of biology, and more easily dismissed as anthropomorphism.  Some biologists feel that we've been overlooking this for too long, however - and one recent study of Amur tigers suggests that variations in personality can have a significant impact in conservation.

Tigers have distinct personalities, according to cat questionnaire

An implication I've worried about - does personality matter in zoos?  Do animals of some personality types - perhaps the more mellowed out, less stressed individuals - do better, leaving more offspring and being represented more in future generations?  Is there a risk that we are producing future generations of zoo animals with base personalities that are not representative of those in the wild?

The Reluctant Volunteer

While lurking on the subreddit "Am I The Asshole," I came across another story I thought worth sharing.  A mother took her children to the zoo, only for the oldest (a boy of 16) to start making insulting comments about the zookeepers and their "menial" jobs doing dirty labor.  The comments weren't directed at the keepers per se, but the mother is fairly sure that they heard them, and wanted to punish the child, both for his rude behavior and to make him understand the importance of physical labor.

So, she signed him up as a volunteer.  This lead not only to some complaints from the boy himself, but also from the father (they're divorced), which led her to second-guess herself.

AITA for making my son (16M) volunteer at the zoo, after he made some rude comments?

So, is she the asshole?

The jury was split.  Granted, everyone believed that the kid was a little turd who could use a healthy dose of reality, to say nothing of respect for workers of all stripes.  The thing is, making him work at the zoo isn't just a punishment for him.  It's a punishment for the keepers.  They are now saddled with an unruly, whiny kid who will require a lot of supervision, which is kind of like doing your job while wearing a ball and chain.

To be honest, all volunteers are a hassle when they are new - they don't know how to do the job, need a lot of help, and in the end it's easier to do it yourself.  Why do we do deal with it, then?  First, they get better with practice, and if you invest in them, they become more and more proficient.  Secondly, it's good community outreach and a great way to share the zoo's message.  Most importantly, though, we all love animals, and we're willing to put up with some slowness and extra work to help someone else who loves animals start off on their path through the field.  It really can be a major pleasure of the job to mentor someone who is having their first steps in the zoo world.

All of that, of course, is contingent on the volunteer wanting to be there, which this kid doesn't.  And I kind of wonder if this mom is, heart in the right place, reinforcing the belief that this kid has that to do a job like this is a punishment for people who've done something bad to "deserve it."  To which I would respond, "Lady, this isn't our punishment - this is our passion."

Species Fact Profile: Southern Three-Banded Armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus)

                                  Southern (La Plata) Three-Banded Armadillo

                                                Tolypeutes matacus (Desmarest, 1804)

Range: North-central Argentina, east-central Bolivia, and parts of Brazil and Paraguay

Habitat:  Grasslands, Savannah, Dry Forest, Wetlands, up to 800 meters elevation

Diet: Insects (especially ants, termites, and beetle larvae)

Social Grouping: Primarily solitary, but may form groups in cold to huddle together for warmth (up to 12 together).  Males and females have overlapping home ranges

Reproduction:  Young have been reported throughout the year, but with a peak from November through January.  Single offspring born after 120-day gestation.  Only mother participates in raising the young.  Young are born blind, but fully formed and develop quickly.  They are able to walk, close up their shell shortly after birth.  Independent as young as 72 days, though young may stay in mother’s home range for a time.  Sexually mature at 9-12 months old

Lifespan: 20-25 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Near Threatened

• Body length approximately 22-30 centimeters with an additional 6-8 centimeters of tail (stout, immobile).  Weigh 1-1.6 kilograms.  Forefeet have four separate claws; hind feet have one separate, thick claw and three that are grown together, resembling a hoof.
• Typically, a yellowish-brown color
• Back is covered with a thick, leathery shell of keratin, segmented into three bands (usually – some individuals may possess two bands, others four).  Unique among most armadillos (a trait shared only by the Brazilian three-banded armadillo), this species can roll into a ball, with the shell completely enclosing the body (a small gap can forcefully snap shut on the paw – or hand – of any predator that tries to reach inside).  They are able to do this because the front and rear portions of the shell are not attached to the skin on the sides, providing greater flexibility. 
• The shell can also trap air which is then warmed by the body, reducing heat loss
• Shell is primary anti-predator mechanism, and a largely effective one.  Predators include wild canids and felids, as well as raptors
• Penis of the male is one of the longest in proportion of body size of any mammal, up to 2/3 the body length (has to be long to extend past the female’s shell to the vaginal opening)
• Primarily nocturnal, but active by day during colder weather, and younger armadillos may be more diurnal to avoid nocturnal predators
• Poor eyesight, primarily use sense of smell to find food, identify one another, and determine readiness to mate
• Do not dig their own burrows, instead using abandoned anteater burrows; may also take shelter in dense vegetation (perhaps not being as much of a digger as other species because of its more sophisticated shell defenses)
• Habitat destruction is main threat (no longer present in Buenos Aires province in Argentina, for example) but able to tolerate some habitat modification, subsist on cultivated land
• Hunted locally for food (non-fossorial nature makes it easier to catch than other armadillos).  Shell is sometimes used in handicrafts.  Also some capture for sale in the pet trade.  Vulnerable to overexploitation due to slow reproductive rate

Treating Yourself to the Zoo

 From the Facebook page "Debi Downer" - my college-years onward, in a nutshell:

Mammals of Unusual Size at the National Zoo

 Just a friendly reminder to check the dates of all news articles that you see shared on the internet...

Glyptodon Pups Born at the Smithsonian's National Zoo

Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute made a breakthrough in the recreation of glyptodon, a prehistoric giant armadillo that went extinct nearly 11,000 years ago.

This morning, April 1, four glyptodon hybrid pups were born at the Zoo's Small Mammal House via a La Plata three-banded armadillo surrogate mother. Due to the massive size of an adult glyptodon, officials at the Zoo expect the exhibit will eventually need to be renamed the ‘Mammals of Unusual Size’ House. 

READ FULL STORY https://s.si.edu/3ZxVhHN