What to Expect When Your (Babirusa's) Expecting

I was enjoying this footage from the San Antonio Zoo of Sula, their female babirusa, getting an ultrasound.  I've been spending a lot of time lately going through old records for a project, and sometimes I've found myself wondering what the directors. curators, and keepers of those days would think about where we are now as a field.  

Doing ultrasounds on animals is one thing that they probably wouldn't have imagined - but also doing them voluntarily, while the animal is awake and casually having a snack?  That would have been unthinkable.  So would the idea of sharing it on social media (or, in their days, the newspapers), in many cases.  So many pregnancies miscarried, or neonates died shortly after birth, that it would have seemed foolish and risky to share the news before it was settled.  Now, there is a lot more openness about births and deaths - let people celebrate the good news with us, mourn the bad news with us.

And all that, of course, invites the question of what we'll be able to do in another thirty or forty or fifty years - what sorts of accomplishments, what new technologies, what new philosophies that shape animal care for the years to come.