Zoo Review: Seattle Aquarium, Part II

The exhibits that I described in yesterday's post covered all of the exhibits that I saw at the Seattle Aquarium during my visit, save for one.  The remaining one was a small gallery of tropical Pacific species, consisting of one large tank and several smaller, jewel-boxes of tanks.  The fish and invertebrates in these tanks were the sole representatives of species on display that were not from the waters of the Pacific Northwest, perhaps a small concession to visitors who wanted to see something a little more bright, more tropical, more representative of, say, a coral reef.

Since my visit, that gallery has since closed.  It was obvious as I walked out of the Aquarium, however, that things were about to change.  

Immediately adjacent to the existing aquarium was the construction site of the new Ocean Pavilion, which was rapidly taking shape even then.  The structure opened earlier this year, and greatly expands the facility, both in terms of the size of its campus and the diversity of its collection.  This exhibit gallery focuses on the tropical Indo-Pacific, but at a much greater scale than the small gallery in the old Aquarium did.  More importantly to most visitors, this gallery introduces sharks to the facility, which had previously been limited to a few small dogfish in the iconic Underwater Dome exhibit.

Having not been able to see the final product, my impressions and review of the expansion will understandably be limited (and the pictures posted here are of the species that I saw in the old tropical gallery).  Exhibit areas include a mangrove forest, where small rays fly underwater amidst the roots of the estuary trees, a gallery of smaller, themed tanks stylized as At Home in the Ocean (seahorses, cuttlefish, etc), a jellyfish nursery, and more.  The main attraction, and the Aquarium's largest exhibit, is The Reef, which is home to a variety of elasmobranchs, black-tipped reef sharks, zebra sharks, bowmouth guitarfish, and spotted eagle ray, as well as morays, humpheaded wrasse, pufferfish, and many more.  The final species roster of the exhibit hall is still being determined, with new species arriving and being installed.

The opening of Ocean Pavilion  was a major change for the Seattle Aquarium, and one that wasn't without some local controversy about the deviation of mission and the introduction of non-native species.  When I heard about the plan, I wondered if there would be much competition or overlap with the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, which itself as a tropical Pacific aquarium.  Again, not having seen the new exhibit I'm limited in my ability to comment, but it looks very impressive, and it's not as if the introduction of new species has resulted in the displacement of the native ones - it's addition, not subtraction.  I'm not sure what's next on the Aquarium's agenda, though I've heard that there are plans to redo and expand the marine mammal exhibits, a project which I'm sure will be met with much approval.

It certainly sounds like an exciting time for the Seattle Aquarium, though I admit, I'm glad that my first visit to this facility was before the opening of Ocean Pavilion.  It was nice to see the facility as it was, when it was almost 100% focused on the creatures that could be found in its own waters.  From its handsome architecture (so different from the new addition next door) to the beautiful artwork (Chihuly glass, murals by the excellent Ray Troll) to its focus on species seldom highlighted elsewhere, particularly salmon, it was one of the most unique and special aquariums I'd ever seen.

Zoo Review: Seattle Aquarium, Part I

Seattle, Washington, is as city closely tied to the sea, lying on an isthmus jutting out into Puget Sound, and famous for its fish markets, so it's not especially surprising that the city boasts of a fine aquarium.  The current facility, located on Pier 59 on the waterfront (having also expanded into Pier 60), is the successor to early aquarium attractions.  One of these earlier aquariums, located only yards away on Pier 56, was the first US facility to display orca.  The current aquarium opened in 1977 and has had a remarkable, if short, history, focusing primarily on the sea life of the Pacific Northwest.

Visitors entering the aquarium are first treated to a handsome of the local fishes in Window on Washington Waters, a 20-foot tall tank that slants out over the visitors in the lobby.  Modeled after Neah Bay's rock blades, the 120,000 gallon tank features a variety of creatures, from the anemones and sea stars that cling to the rocky bottom to the rockfish, sculpins, and wolf eels that swim about. Around the corner is a long (40 foot), thin tanks known as Crashing Waves; as the name would suggest, it represents the intertidal zone defined by the forceful movement of water.  It's amazing watching the fish in this tank swimming in such a seemingly serene manner as water slams around them.  

Next, the hall leads to a darkened room featuring jellies, touch pools, and, one of the aquarium's most popular exhibits, the giant Pacific octopus.  The Seattle Aquarium was first in the world to breed this species, so it didn't surprise me that they had one of the finest habitats I've seen for them.  It was large and complex, but also provided opportunities for the animal to demonstrate its remarkable ability to enter and navigate tiny spaces.  The moon jelly habitat was likewise impressive, a tall, acrylic arch, lit up, which allowed visitors to walk through the jellies habitat.  I'm not normally that interested in the touch tanks, being old and jaded at this point, but I was more easily able to appreciate them here in association with the rocky, tidal pool studded shorelines of the region - the concept just felt a little more authentic in Seattle.  A non-animal component of the exhibit is the Caring Cove Play Space, which allows children to use plush animals and other toys to pretend that they are aquarists, vets, and other animal care staff, helping to build empathy in young animal lovers.

Visitors exit the building to enter the outdoor shorebird habitat, which consists of a walk-through aviary of sandpipers and plovers, as well as a glass-fronted habitat for tufted puffins and other alcids.  It's exhibits like this which have left me wondering how its possible that puffins have never managed to match penguins in popularity - they might not have the strangeness of flightlessess, but their appearances are even more outlandish, and their personalities far more engaging (and besides, I think a bird that flies in the air and in the water an incredible concept).

A series of exhibits focus on the fishes of Puget Sound, especially that most iconic of Washington's fishes, the salmon.  Visitors are able to see the life cycle of the salmon and learn how the fish traverse the boundaries between rivers and the sea.  There are other tanks, small but handsomely furnished, featuring sculpins, lumpsuckers, and other small fish, but the most iconic feature of the aquarium is its great underwater dome.  Set into a giant, concrete web-like frame, visitors peer through a series of windows into a 400,000 gallon that surrounds them on all sides, including overhead.  Sturgeons and dogfish (sharks) are the stars here, but there's so much to keep track of.  I'll admit the heavy concrete frame can make it a little difficult to track the fish as they swim around and I lost a few that way, but there's something special about this exhibit - whereas many aquarium exhibits look very similar, it's always a treat to see something very different and distinctive.

The weak point of the Aquarium are the marine mammal exhibits.  Three marine (and one freshwater) mammal are exhibited here, and the habitats of the former three are find of meh, a little on the dull and cramped side.  The species featured are sea otter, harbor seal, and, a zoological rarity, northern fur seal.  The sea otters are of note - this is the first facility in the world to have bred the species (zoos and aquariums no longer breed sea otters, keeping their spaces available for non-releasable animals).  River otters fare better in a larger, more naturalistic habitat.  A unique feature of the aquarium is an outdoor catwalk that provides vantage points of the Sound, from which wild marine mammals can sometimes be spotted swimming along. 

The tour of the Seattle Aquarium will continue in tomorrow's post.

Seattle Aquarium

Build Me an Ark

"So never mind the darkness, we still can find a way,

'Cause nothin' lasts forever, even cold November rain."

- Guns n Roses, November Rain

There's all sorts of natural disasters which a zookeeper has to cope with, some of which I've never had to deal with (at least a major one) - fire, earthquake - others I have - blizzard, severe storm, drought.  Perhaps the natural disaster I've dealt with the most often, and which stresses me out the most, is flooding.  Flooding poses the same risk of damage and loss of life - human and animal - as the others, of course.  It also has a heightened risk of escape.  Storms and earthquakes can also damage cages and allow animals to escape, it is true, but floods have an inconvenient ability to fill in moats and raise and overflow the water features of exhibits.  What once was a barrier keeping the animal in its enclosure suddenly becomes a highway that leads the animal out of its enclosure.

I'm a pretty poor swimmer, and drowning has always been a possibility that scares me.  That's something I think a lot about when I'm running around a zoo in shin-deep water.  It's something I really think about when I find myself sharing water with an animal and I know that animal is definitely in its element whereas I am not.  On dry land, even a fairly large alligator or crocodile is pretty easy to work around safely.  When all of the dry land in its exhibit is now drowned beneath the rains, suddenly the odds aren't quite in your favor anymore, and it's amazing how little water it takes even a very large alligator to hide in.  Leaving said alligator alone, unfortunately, was not an option for safety reasons during the flood.

In one of the most startling flood incidents I had, a sudden rainstorm flooded the (normally dry) moat of our capybara exhibit.  I ran to check on them and couldn't see any of them in the habitat.  Panicking, I hopped the fence and splashed into their moat, chest deep on me (not my better idea).  The second I did, the capybaras all surfaced in the water all around me, bobbing to the surface just feet away.  They seemed to be loving their pool.  I wasn't loving the fact that the surface of the water was now level with the top of the moat.  Had they been so inclined, they could have hopped right out of the moat, walked across the path, jumped into the nearby creek, and swam off into the distance.

That creek, however, was also a natural component of a few hoofstock exhibits, and in its swollen state those animals found themselves standing on vanishingly small islands in their now-flooded paddocks.  After careful discussion, we decided to open the gates to the paddock and let the animals that couldn't be caught up and relocated just roam the zoo at large (the perimeter gates were closed) and move to higher ground.  When the waters receded, we were able to use food to coax them back to their exhibit.

The more I look back on it, it seems like we actually had a lot of crazy floods at that zoo.  Floods that the old timers there said had once been once a decade were now occurring two or three times a summer.  I'm sure that there's no possible climate change implications in that, of course...

The Hunger Song

Same, guys.  Same

 

Species Fact Profile: Sarcastic Fringehead (Neoclinus blanchardi)

                                                         Sarcastic Fringehead

                                           Neoclinus blanchardi (Girard, 1858)

Range:  Pacific Coast of North America, from central California south to Baja California

Habitat: Sandy or Muddy-Bottomed Coastal Waters, up to 75 meters deep

Diet: Plankton, Crustaceans, Squid Eggs

Social Grouping: Solitary.  Territorial

Reproduction: Spawn from January through August.  Female lays about 3000 eggs in a sheltered location (generally the shelter of a male), which are guarded by male until they hatch

Lifespan: 6 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Up to 30 centimeters long, weigh about 300 gram.  Slender build with large pectoral funs, small pelvic fins.  Loose folds of skin on the face are fringes of the common name.  Largest member of the blenny family
• Skin is largely scaleless.  Body color varies from warm brown to gray with dark blotches.  Blue eyespot on the dorsal fin
• Males can open their mouths extremely wide, revealing brightly colored interior (blue with yellow lining) with some fluorescence.  When the mouth is open (expanding its apparent size four-fold), it serves to intimidate both rival fringeheads and potential predators
• Often found in crevices, with only their heads exposed (will readily take shelter inside man-made objects, such as bottles and cans).  Females may select males based on the quality of their shelter.  Very protective of shelters and will often fight over access - an unsheltered fringehead is very vulnerable to predators
• Feed by charging from their burrows and sucking down small prey - the large gape of the males is actually an impediment to effective feeding
• Largely ignored by fishermen due to small size and aggressive nature, will readily bite if handled (their common name refers to the original meaning of "sarcastic," from the Greek for "to tear flesh" - the mouth has several needle-sharp teeth)

The Gentleman Zoologist

I have a friend who is one of the most well-read people that I know, to say nothing of an absolute expert on the subject of zoo and aquarium history.  I have him to blame for the overflowing "To Read" list on Goodreads; many of those are books that I have since read and reviewed on the blog.  One book that I recently finished, on his recommendation, was The Living Air, the memoir of the French ornithologist Jean Theodore Delacour.  I enjoyed it very much.

Delacour's life was a long one, but not an easy one, and it marked with repeated tragedy and loss - not just of family and homes to the two world wars, but also the repeated devastation of his animal collections.  Still, it's hard not to read parts of his biography and feel washes of envy.  

He describes sitting in his comfortable study, walls lined with shelves of valuable books about the natural world and curiosities from his many travels, while working on some project of personal interest at his desk - maybe a monogram on pheasants, or a treatise on waterfowl, or catching up on his vast correspondence.  Then, perhaps feeling his legs getting a bit stiff, he saunters out for a walk on the grounds of his estate and admires the animals of his private zoo, stopping here and there to hand out a treat to a particular favorite, to see how a newcomer is settling in, or check on how an ailing patient is recovering.  The zoo is his and his alone - it has only the animals that he wants, and is arranged according to his tastes, without concern for what a public might want instead, or what trouble they might cause.  For part of year, he may travel abroad, secure in the knowledge that some of his many friends will keep an eye on things for him, as well as his trained devoted staff.  Animals that are exceedingly rare in our day were more common and more easily seen in his.  While abroad, he is free to collect additional specimens, by trade or by capture, in this pre-CITES world when the world's wildlife didn't seem so scarce.

It seems idyllic.  And it probably was, assuming that you were a white man who happened to be born into the aristocracy and didn't have to worry about income or any such other piddling concern.  To be so wealthy that you could build a zoo and gardens and an estate, have it bombed into oblivion, and then be able to rebuild it... twice.

It's unattainable to all but the very richest (and some of the modern changes are for the better, particular the part about the trade in wildlife), but it's still easy to read his books - and those of other gentleman (and gentlelady) naturalists of the era - and not feel a pang for missing out on something (even if I suspect I would have been lucky to have been a groundskeeper back then, not lord of the manor).  So I try my best to recreate what I can.  At home, I've created a little nook for myself, centered around my desk.  I have my bookshelves of animal books, and the walls are lined with animal paintings and prints and photos of animals, and it's a few steps away to a small garden, where I can see what birds are coming in to bathe or feed.

The illusion is enhanced when I go to work.  There, when I have a chance, I like to walk through the grounds early in the day, before the gates are open and while the animals are just beginning to stir.  For a few minutes on rare, quiet days, I can sometimes pretend that they are there just for me, and that the entire world consists of the animals and me.

Humor: Winter in the Zoo

Things have been a little grim and grumpy lately, so I thought folks might enjoy this old German cartoons that I found depicting winter in the zoo.  Pardon the poor translations, Google translate did the best it could when I typed the captions in.

"As the Zoo Director's wife, you have to come to terms with the heating oil prices these days."

"It's too cold for him outside now, so he helps us punch the tickets inside."

"Paul once again makes shoveling snow easy for himself."

"Hello, Meteorological Institute?  Snow depth at the moment is 1.6 meters."

All Creatures Great and Small

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

                                                                

                                                                -     Mahatma Gandhi (apocryphal)

It's not surprising that most of the hot-button topics of the culture wars relate to children.  Whether it's what books children should be allowed to read to how schools should handle transgender children to whether people should be allowed to take steps to prevent themselves from having children, the entire subject of children is fraught with emotion.  There are very things more personal or insulting than criticizing (or being perceived as criticizing) someone else's parenting... as I am reminded of every time I (nicely!) ask parents to tell their kids to stop climbing fences, throwing rocks, etc.

Close behind that, people also feel very strongly about their pets and animal care practices.  There's a reason J.D. Vance said "childless cat ladies," and why it struck such a nerve with so many people.  There's a reason that (false) stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs caused such a whirlwind of news coverage.   Animal issues were barely mentioned on the campaign trial, but pets still resonate strongly with people, with animal abusers facing almost as much (well-deserved) vitriol as child abusers (also well-deserved).  But even though you didn't hear Donald Trump or Kamala Harris give any speeches on the subject of animal welfare, there are still massive cultural controversies and divisions about how we relate to non-human animals under human care... and that's not even touching the hot button topic of animal agriculture.

Two recent stories which come to mind...

First (and featured to a small extent in Trump rallies), there's the saga of Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon, illegally-kept pets by a wildlife enthusiast in southern New York.  The Instagram-famous pets were seized by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, after which the rodent bit an official, and as a result was euthanized for rabies testing.   The backlash has been severe, with critics claiming that it was a massive case of government overreach resulting in the unnecessary death of the animals.  I'm firmly opposed to the idea of people taking wild mammals and raising them as pets - but I can't help but think that there was a better way that this could have been handled that would have allowed the animals to live out their lives under human care in other circumstances.  This was a teachable moment that turned into a tragedy.

States in which it is legal to own a raccoon:

I'm a hell of a lot less conflicted about what happened at Louisiana State University.  For generations, the mascot of LSU has been Mike the Tiger.  Tigers are popular mascots for sports teams, but most campuses don't have an actual tiger living on campus, as LSU does.  Historically, the big cat was paraded out to home games.  The practice was phased out, and now the tiger (actually a succession of "Mikes") can be seen living in a rather nice habitat on the campus.  This peaceful situation was disrupted when Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry decided that he wanted the tiger present at an LSU-Alabama game.  The school vet, and the tiger's keepers, said that it was a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and that they would not produce the tiger for the game.  Snubbing their advice, but realizing that it blocked him from using that tiger, Landry arranged to have a tiger driven over from Florida (the animal owned by a character with a somewhat spotty USDA record) and driven around the packed, thunderously-loud stadium in a cage about the size of a mattress, surrounded by screaming fans.  

In each of these cases, I feel like the problem is people viewing animals not as sentient beings, but as props.  I'll cut Peanut's former caretaker some slack for good intentions, especially in the face of NY's overly heavy-handed response.  I see no possible justification for Landry's more with the tiger.  I could understand thinking it might be an interesting idea and asking about it, but when everyone you ask essentially tells you that it's a bad idea and tantamount to animal abuse... maybe don't keep asking until you finally get someone to say "yes" to your idea.

Animal welfare seldom makes the political mainstage, mostly because it's usually seen as a local issue, rather than a federal one.  I have a hard time seeing it ever being a dominant political issue in the manner that immigration or abortion will.  Still, it easy to see that these are issues that people feel very strongly about (sometimes violently so, judging from the amount of death threats that swirl around whenever these stories make the news), they shouldn't be swept aside as filler stories or light news.  (Most) people care very much about the wellbeing of animals, and the question of how they should be treated are topics that are worthy of serious discussion, if only to help us as a society improve our collective empathy.

Book Review: Many Things Under a Rock - The Mysteries of Octopuses

A person wishing to know what it would be like to encounter extraterrestrial intelligence could do much worse that meet an octopus.  The eight-legged cephalopods are among the most intelligent creatures on earth, and yet theirs is an intelligence so different from ours.  Whenever I encounter an octopus, I'm struck by how they manage to be so similar and yet so different from us at the same time.

Biologist David Scheel had spent much of his earlier career studying mammals on the plains of East Africa, so transitioning to the study of the what is probably the world's most charismatic invertebrates in the icy waters of Alaska is quite a change.  Scheel brought an informed outsider vantage point to his study of these creatures, providing a lot of interesting insights into the challenges and rewards of studying these often-cryptic animals.  His resultant book, Many Things Under a Rock, takes its name from an indigenous Alaskan name for the giant Pacific octopus, the species that the book is primarily focused on.  

As the title implies, there is a heavy indigenous influence to Scheel's book, which I very much enjoyed.  I suppose I tended to think of most underwater creatures as existing almost on a separate plan of existence from humans, at least until people began venturing under the surface with SCUBA gear and what not (ignoring the fact that octopus can leave the water, something the vast majority of fish and other marine creatures can't do).  The truth is that people have a millennia-long association with octopuses, both as sources of wonder and fear (Scheel has a chapter devoted to the cryptozoology of octopuses), but, more practically, as a source of food.  Likewise, I suppose on some level I knew that octopuses were animals of the northern oceans, but I never had really thought of them as Alaskan wildlife before.

In this exploration of octopus behavior and anatomy - how social are they?  how do they use tools?  how do they reproduce? - Scheel spends much of this time diving among them in waters around the world.  He also features captive octopuses in his work, and even maintains a small aquarium at his university to allow his students to have hands-on experience with the creatures.  The Seattle Aquarium and Alaska SeaLife Center are also highlighted here.  Sometimes Scheel's work even comes home with him, and he describes an octopus that takes up residence in the fish tank in his living room.  These stories are particularly enjoyable, because, with more prolonged, regular encounters with the same animals, we really get to see their personalities - from affectionate to mischievous - shine through.

Octopuses are easily among the most popular of aquarium animals, and their eight-legged grip on pop culture and science have been evident for many years.  At a superficial level, it seems like many folks just think of them as scary sea monsters.  It's easy to see how they could be considered frightening, being so eerily different from us, and yet so recognizable.  Beyond that first impression, however, there is a creature that is so remarkably intelligent, sensitive, and charismatic as to install enchant any human lucky enough to have met them.

Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses at AbeBooks.com

The Work Goes On

Governments supposedly project an aura of stability, but the truth is, they can be fickle partners.  That becomes no more apparent than at the time of an administration change, especially between two administrations with such radically different visions of what a country should look like.  While there will doubtlessly be some areas of continuity between a Biden and Trump White House, I feel fairly confident that conservation issues won't fall under that umbrella.  

The federal government, which historically has been the main driver of wildlife conservation in the US, is likely about to take its hands off the wheel.  Assuming it doesn't deliberately drive us into a ditch.

A lot of zoo professionals that I know - especially those that are LGBTQ, or from communities of color, or have basic empathy - are sad and hurt by the events of this week.  I've heard a fair number express dismay that things just don't seem worthwhile now.  The truth is, however, that the work that we do is more important now than ever.  Without the government's support, the job of saving wildlife falls even more so to zoos, aquariums, and other NGOs and nonprofits.  It's up to us not only to raise the funds and do the work of protecting our country's biodiversity - such as leading breeding and reintroduction programs for native species and restoring native habitats - but of using our collective voice, our platform, to help create a country where people care about issues like wildlife, climate change, and habitat preservation.  To this, every member of the zoo and aquarium community has an important role to play, and we all need to step up to the challenge.

It's a damned shame that there's not more support for the cause out there, as Tuesday goes to show.  But the work still needs to go on and somebody has to do it.  Might as well be us.

An Aardvark Interlude

A lot of people are still sad and upset over the events of this week, and I'm certainly not saying it's without reason.  Fortunately, zoos and aquariums are a goldmine of cute animals which not only help brighten our moods after misfortunes, but also remind us that there's plenty of good in the world worth fighting over.  Consider this aadorable aardvark recently born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park:

Political Animals

My boss's house loomed over the private zoo where I worked like a feudal manor overlooking its serfs... which, I suppose, was not an inaccurate way of looking at it.  Even though it was just yards away from the keeper office, and though I was one of the senior members of the staff, I only stepped foot inside the house once in the four years I worked for him.  I found it to be an awkward, uncomfortable experience - everything seemed a little wrong to me, a little stark, and a little... I don't know... gauche?  More emphasis on expensive than aesthetics or comfort.  I also was bothered by the fact that, though the living room walls were lined with expensive looking shelves, it took me a while before I finally saw a book.

I was not the least bit surprised to see that, instead of an animal tome, it was the recently-released memoir of Sarah Palin.

No community (especially one as unruly and - often - poorly socialized as ours) is ever truly monolithic.  Still, taken as a whole I've noticed that the zoo community tends to lean left of center.  It's not surprising.  Most of us start of in it as young, well-educated, and with a deep interest in conservation and environmental issues.  Animal care requires a degree of empathy, which often extends to humans as well as creatures, and most zoos are located in cities, which tend to foster more progressive viewpoints.  Oh, and most of us are also perpetually broke.  Even those of us who climb the ranks tend to remember where we came from and continue to empathize.  Not that I haven't met politically and culturally conservative keepers, it's just not as common, and they tend to be part of the exception to the rule.

The anti-rule, if you will, the complete contrast, tend to be the owners of private facilities, such as my former boss.  They all tend to be die-in-the-wool blood red.  Part of it may be a greater concern about financial matters; owning their own zoos, they tend to be a fair bit less idealistic and more focused on the bottom line, which I can hardly fault them for.  Part of it's probably cultural too, as such facilities are much more likely to spring up in rural areas.  At the same time, I've also noticed an angry, anti-regulatory streak (and if you're in the zoo world, you realize just how many forms of regulations the field is subject to), a constant simmering anger about government agencies and inspectors who dare to tell them what to do with *their* animals.  

Because these facilities are generally unaccredited and don't participate in the formal breeding programs, they have to buy their animals, or trade for them.  I feel like sometimes the constant buying and selling of animals fosters a viewpoint of them as commodities in their eyes.  I remember walking up on the owner and his wife as they were stroking a young camel I had been raising.  I was so eager to hurry up to them and tell them about how he'd been doing, his training and his growth - until I got close enough to hear that they were wondering what price he'd fetch.

The disdain also extends to the keepers, who tend to be even less-well paid than their counterparts in public zoos, and have fewer opportunities.  I remember my boss plopping down next to me on a bench one day and saying "Keepers are like tissues," he told me with no preamble  "You use them.  Then you get new ones."  With that he smiled at me and wandered off.

I've been following the giraffe drama out of Natural Bridge - the stay on the removal of the remaining three animals has been lifted.  A lot of the commentary from the zoo and its allies has been focused on the heaping abuse on the state, the courts, and government in general; a few folks have even claimed that they think Trump will swoop in and save them, though I doubt that it's made it across his portfolio at this time.  Some of the posters just went on all Q-Anon crazy, and I'm glad I don't have to deal with them, either in real life or online.

It marvels me that people who are drawn to the same basic life decision - wanting to spend their careers working with animals and share them with the world - can produce people with such different outlooks on just about everything - including the animals themselves and how they should be managed and cared for.

Species Fact Profile: Oriental Fire-Bellied Toad (Bombina orientalis)

                                                   Oriental Fire-Bellied Toad

                                           Bombina orientalis (Boulenger, 1890)

Range:  Eastern Asia (northeastern China, Korea, southeastern Russia, possibly Japan)

Habitat: Coniferous and Deciduous Forest Wetlands

Diet: Insects, Mollusks, Worms, Algae, Fungi

Social Grouping: Occur at high population densities in favorable habitat, but asocial

Reproduction: Breed in late spring, through summer.  Males court females by calling in shallow water to attract females, fertilizes eggs as the female lays eggs as she swims, with the male clinging to her back.  Up to 250 eggs, split among several clutches, laid on submerged plants in shallow water.  Hatch as tadpoles after 3-10 days, complete metamorphosis and leave the water at about 5 months

Lifespan: 30 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Body length 3.5-8 centimeters long, weight 25-55 grams.  Females are larger than males, but males have thicker forearms; during the mating season, males also develop nuptial pads on their first and second fingers.
• Dorsal color varies from brownish-gray to bright green, often with some dark spotting; dorsal skin has many pronounced tubercles,.  Ventral surface is bright red or yellow (the "fire belly"), also with black spotting
• Unlike many frogs and toads, cannot extent their tongue to catch prey, so instead jump on it
• Skin contains a toxin, bombesin.  While primarily relying on the camouflage of their dorsal surface to hide from predators, if they are seen they will flip over and arch their backs (position called unkenreflex) to show off their red bellies, warning predators' of their poison.  Some species of snake can eat the toad with no ill effect.  Toxin is generally not very harmful to humans, but can be introduced through mucus members after handling.
• Hibernate from late September through late April or early May, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups.  Hibernate inside fallen trees, stone piles, or in the leaf litter, but sometimes in water
• Commonly kept as a pet, as well as a research specimen, among the best-studied of amphibians
• Very resilient to habitat disturbance, and can even be found breeding in heavily polluted water.  Despite this, and their popularity as pets, they have not become invasive

Cheyenne Mountain Speaks Out

For as long as we have zoos and aquariums, there are guaranteed to be folks who are determined to oppose these institutions on philosophical grounds.  When that happens, the question always becomes, how best to respond?  Ignore it, try not to give any oxygen to the complainers, hope they just fade away?  That can just give cede the entire philosophical floor to them to make their claims unchallenged.  Fight back?  There's the risk of looking too defensive, or like you have something to hide or be ashamed of.

It's a tough call.  I've seen different zoos try each strategy, with the result sometimes varying.  SeaWorld was slow to respond to criticism about its orca program, which only allowed that backlash to snowball.

Recently, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, CO, went with option #2.  In response to repeated attempts by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to have the zoo's African elephants declared persons and "freed" for the zoo, CMZ had had enough.  Their statement to their followers, below.  It's a bit of a read, but I'm glad to see a zoo put out a detailed, well-thought out and well-reasoned response to set the record straight and stand by their animal care practices.

  

Not So Itsy Bitsy

Chester Zoo, better than any zoo I can think of, understood the assignment of how to celebrate Halloween... with a little tongue in cheek as well

Whistling Past the Graveyard

Happy Halloween!  Across the country, our zoos and aquariums have been decked out for the season for the past month or so, all the better to take advantage of special events.  A lot of the décor would be pretty familiar to anyone who has decorated for Halloween, which much of it more themed around fall than the spooky season itself.  There are pumpkins (not just those that get carved or smashed up for treats) and haybales and scarecrows and dried corn.  

For spookier decorations, there are those fake skeletal animals which drive many a keeper to fury with their anatomical inaccuracies (spider's don't have bones!).  And then there are the graveyards.

Graveyards are a popular lawn ornament for Halloween at many homes, but those at the zoo tend to be a little different.  The names inscribed on their Styrofoam surfaces aren't Barry M. Deep, I. M. Agoner or other silly puns.  Here, the festivities get a little grim.

Passenger Pigeon.  Sept. 1, 1914

Carolina Parakeet.  Feb 21, 1918

Thylacine/"Tasmanian Tiger." Sept 7, 1936

And many others.  All extinct animals - but no dinosaurs or pterodactyls, or even mammoths and sabre-toothed cats.  The markers all commemorate recently extinct animals - ones driven to the grave by our collective, human hand.  Some species we know exactly when they disappeared.  Others just sort of... faded away, and then someone realized it had been a really long time until anyone had seen one.

Read about the Extinct Species Graveyard at the Bronx Zoo here

These tombstones are often treated as a bit of a joke, a cutesy prop, but if you think about it, they contain an existential terror.  In almost every horror movie, their is a survivor - who else would tell the story if there wasn't?  But extinction, by its definition, leaves no survivors.  You take the death of an individual - be it at the wrong end of a sailor's club, at the claws of an introduced predator, or of old age, isolated from potential mates by habitat loss and therefore dying alone - and then you multiply it on a grand scale, until no one is left.  There are some horror movies that focus on the extinction (or near extinction) of the human species, such as I Am Legend.  It's easy to extrapolate that terror to animals.

Anyway, enjoy the candy. 

From the News: Syracuse zoo elephants get groundbreaking vaccine

 Syracuse zoo elephants get groundbreaking vaccine

Combining two of the biggest US zoo elephant stories of recent years, the miracle twin Asian elephants from Syracuse's Rosamond Gifford Park Zoo are among the first elephants to receive the new vaccine against EEHV, the deadly elephant herpes virus.  Hopefully they do well with their treatment and are an additional step towards establishing a healthy, thriving population of Asian elephants under human care.

The Most Gourdeous Time of Year

Wear Your Waterfowl

Halloween is fast creeping up on us.  Don't have a costume yet?  Don't worry!  According to Ducks Unlimited, by raiding your closet, you may very well have the makings of a perfectly acceptable waterfowl costume.  See what you've got! (Or you could go shopping, but some of these prices seem a little out of budget for the average keeper)

A Slice of Sudan

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a reptile keeper, I always thought, was being able to create the habitats.  With their smaller size, glass fronts, and the steady, year-round climate control from being inside, as opposed to the outdoor habitats for mammals and birds, it was often possible to exercise a far greater degree on control when building a reptile exhibit than it was for other animals.  And with that greater control came greater opportunities to engage in artistic creativity.  

I was able to refurbish a cornsnake exhibit, for example, which had previously just been a box with mulch.  I tore off wooden planks from old fences and lined the walls of the tank with them, making it look like the interior of a barn.  Other barn implements - a milk pail, a pitchfork, etc - added complexity for the snake in the form of climbing structures and hiding opportunities, while also providing a more interesting experience for the visitor.  It also provided an educational lesson, as we could talk about how cornsnakes benefited farmers by eating rodent pests.

One of the first reptile habitats I ever assembled was one for a Sudan plated lizard (I saw "one of" because the first attempt I had at such an exhibit, for frilled lizards, was deemed so inadequate by my curator that he immediately took it apart and made me redo it, recounted here).  To do this, I spent a lot of time looking back at pictures and memories of my time in East Africa, where I'd seen the lizards in the wild.  What really left an impression on my memory was the earth there - the red, sunbaked earth - so I went and found a few bucket-loads of similar material for the substrate.  I found big, flat rocks to form a Retes stack of slate stones.  These formations are excellent for rock-dwelling lizards, which can take advantage of the multiple crevices formed by the rocks to hide within, while also having lots of exposed ledges of various distances from the heat lamp for basking.  Lots of tufts of tall dried grasses (I tried and failed to establish live plants) provided cover.  A piece of drift wood, a water bowl, and voila  - we had a habitat.

Because this was a 4 x 4 x 4 habitat in a reptile house, I was able to do it all myself easily.  And what's more, at any time I wanted to, for any reason, I could undo it and redo it by myself - even if it was just a whim.  No need for an all-day team project, or a bunch of heavy machinery to be called in.  I could handle it by myself, which meant that the lizard could get its habitat redone and refreshed much more often than, say, the tigers could.  

Recreating reptile habitats is a fun, aesthetic challenge, all the more interesting because the multiple levels to it.  Can you build a habitat that is naturalistic, while still having the animals visible to the public (considering that the natural behavior of many reptiles is to hide)?  Can you impart meaningful conservation and educational messages with your design?  Can the exhibit you designed easily and safely be cared for by staff?  And, most importantly, can your animals thrive in it, expressing as wide a range of their natural behaviors as possible or desirable for them?

Species Fact Profile: Sudan Plated Lizard (Broadleysaurus major)

                                              Sudan, or Greater, Plated Lizard

                                           Broadleysaurus major (Dumeril, 1851)

Range: Eastern and Central Africa 

Habitat: Semi-Arid Savannah, Woodland

Diet: Invertebrates, Fruits, Vegetables, Small Vertebrates

Social Grouping: Semi-Social.  Males may be territorial

Reproduction: Females lay 4-6 large eggs (each approximately 12 centimeters), buried in loose sand or soil.  Incubation period 3-4 months, hatchlings 10-15 centimeters long.  No parental care

Lifespan: 10-20 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Body length 45-70 centimeters, about half of which is made up by the broad tail.  Males are slightly larger than females.  Stout bodies with short limbs.
• Gray-brown scales over the body (sometimes also called the tawny plated lizard), paler on the underside.  Males tend to have paler throats than females, which become more brightly colored during breeding season.  Juveniles tend to be darker and more spotted than adults
• The most heavily armored of the plated lizards, covered with square-shaped armored plates, which are fused into a "helmet" on the top of the head.  There is a scale-free fold on skin running along either side of the body, which allows the body to expand for breathing
• Diurnal, spending the nights sheltering in burrows or termite mounds.  May share these refuges with other species
• Primary defense mechanism is to wedge themselves in rock crevices, which they can be difficult to extract from.  Will also whip their tails at predators.  Rarely bite.
• Previously in a genus with several other plated lizards, since split off into its own genus.  Two subspecies recognized.

Dr. Frankenstein's Zoo

 "It took them eight years to do it, but it was finally successful.  You can see that it has zebra legs and it has sort of a giraffe top.  The neck looks like it's coming in strong, but not quite the length a baby giraffe would have." - nanchakusdragon

What in the Eldritch horrors hell is this nonsense?  Some Tiktoker, who I sincerely hope is joking, is claiming that the Cincinnati Zoo has genetically engineered a monstrous new creation... which is, of course, a perfectly natural okapi.  

Why do people insist on generating misinformation nonsense?  I'm almost certain that this idiot probably knows that what he's saying is false - if not, the fact that he has hundreds of comments that all go, "Nah, that's an okapi" should clue him in.  But when you put false information out there, it takes on a life of it's own, even if you meant it to be a joke.  Hell, there's plenty of folks who believe in flat earths, or that the world is run by lizard men, or that politicians control the weather to attack their rivals.  Compared to those outlandish crazy ideas, wacky experiments at the zoo seem fairly believable.

It may seem like it's all silly fun, but it's not.  It can harder for zoos and aquariums to generate support for conservation if people don't believe their animals are real, but are rather some Frankensteinesque monsters.   For an endangered species like the okapi, which already has low recognition with the general public, this nonsense only complicates efforts to raise awareness.

The Culinary Keeper

Making salad is a relatively simple process, be it for a dinner party or for a herd of tortoises.  Different species (including humans) have their different preferences, and you have to be aware that some fruits and vegetables are toxic to certain species, either parts of them or in their entirety.  Still, the process is fairly simple - you rinse, you chop, you mix.  Other recipes from the zoo's kitchen can be a bit more involved.

When I was a kid, reading my first books about zoos, I remember coming across a recipe in one of them that was tailored towards king cobras.  In their wild state, king cobras are snake specialists, and as a steady supply of feeder snakes of appropriate size could be tough for some zoos (especially in the north, where wild snakes are denned up for much of the year, and generally aren't that common) could be difficult to come by, creative measures were called for.  One zoo had developed a recipe for a rather nauseating-sounding sauces, with shed snakeskin as a base ingredient - that they'd cook up in the kitchen, then dip feeder rats into it.  The cobras would smell the snake on the rat and then eat it, solving the problem.

If you look through the records of many older zoos, you might see a lot of mention of a variety of animals, from ducks to elephants, being fed bread.  Bread back then wasn't the white sandwich bread that we see in grocery stores today.  Sometimes it was the same loaves that were baked for human consumption, especially for animals like elephants that needed bulk feeding.  Other animals had specialized breads baked for them, with some zoos having bakeries on grounds to meet the demand.  In some ways, these breads were the predecessors of the commercial chows.

In many ways, the newfangled commercial diets - Mazuri and the like - have reduced the culinary demands placed on zookeepers.  Now, nutritionally complete diets for a variety of species can be obtained simply by opening a bag, then supplementing with some greens, bugs, fruits, meats, or what-have-you.  I did work for a private zoo owner who had an aardvark, however, and the man was too cheap to spring for the Mazuri insectivore diet.  Instead, he determined, somehow, the soaking dry cat food and leafeater biscuits, then putting them in a blender together, was somehow the same thing.  So a big part of my daily kitchen adventure was mixing that mess up.  An even bigger part of it was cleaning the resultant red goo off the ceiling and walls, as our crappy little blender had a bad habit of spitting off its lid at inopportune moments (he also wouldn't spring for a half-decent blender).

I've often thought it would be fun if a lot of old-time zoo folks got together and made a historical cookbook of all of these old recipes.  True, I don't see us making too many of them up in the future anymore.  They are a fascinating piece of zoo history, however, one which I'd hate to lose completely.

Sink Salad

In yesterday's post, I made a brief mention of sink salad, and thought I'd unpack that a little.  In our reptile house, we basically had three dietary groups - the bug eaters, the meat and fish eaters, and the salad eaters.  While the first two groups were broken down further on the basis of size (fruit flies vs crickets, pinkies vs mice vs rats, etc), the salad eaters all got our standard salad.  For purposes of ease, we'd make it up in one large batch, mixed up in, you guessed it, a (clean, empty) sink.

Several greens would be chopped up as the base - we usually went for a mix of lettuce (romaine, red leaf, green leaf - never iceberg) and darker greens, such as collards.  Then, the veggies, mostly of the root variety - carrot, yellow squash, zucchini.  Sometimes there would be added seasonal vegetables as well.  Everything was chopped roughly and mixed up, then doled out into individual serving sizes.

The salad was largely the same, but the eaters (and the sizes of their mouths) were not.  For the big kahunas, like the Galapagos tortoises and the blue iguanas, you barely needed to do anything else - they were big enough to eat it as it was.  For the tiny guys, such as the shield-tailed agamas, you had to take their share and dice it fine, as you'd expect for a lizard with a head the size of your thumbnail.  The smaller the portion, the more important it also was to make sure they got a representative sample of the salad - not just a chunk of carrot.

Some species would get some fruit, like apple or banana, mixed in.  Others wouldn't.  Fruit is very watery and for species that aren't used to it, it can cause diarrhea.  And you couldn't put too much in either - otherwise the animals would scarf the yummy fruit portion down and ignore the part that was, you know, healthy.  Other animals might get some meal worms, or even some diced rodent, sprinkled across the dish.  Then, a dusting of vitamin and mineral powder over the mix, served out in trays or bowls.  When we'd put the bowls in enclosures with multiple animals, we'd often pick the critters up and put them at the edge of the tray.  That way, everyone knew it was feeding time and no one missed out.  Then, we'd wait a second or two to make sure everyone actually was eating.  Not showing interest in food might just mean the animal wasn't hungry - or it might be a sign that something was wrong.

The Wisdom of Small Things

 "There really is a way to hold a broom and dustpan that allows you to collect all of the dirt on a floor.  There is a way to rinse a mop to get rid of the dirt it has already absorbed, so that you don't simply spread it back on the floor with each successive sweep.  There is a method for unpacking live frogs from a cardboard shipping box so that they can't leap out en masse in every direction as soon as you lift the first flap.  There is also a way to open a cage door behind which lurks a dangerously venomous snake or, at beast, a flighty lizard looking for escape.  I needed to learn it all."

- You Belong in a Zoo, Peter Brazaitis

As a volunteer working at my local zoo as a kid - and later as a fledgling zookeeper out of college - I knew that I had a lot to learn.  At my first keeper job, I took home books from our zoo library (because that's how old school we were back then) to read up about the animals.  I pestered senior staff to show me their secret techniques.  I kept voluminous notebooks with my scribbles.  

What I didn't realize was how much of my learning was going to come down to basic life hacks - both those that had applications for home life, and those that just made the job easier.

As an example, one of my main jobs used to be to change out all of the water bowls in our reptile house.  That was no small task, as we had over fifty exhibits.  Each bowl I had to grab, empty into the floor drains, scrub out, refill at the sink, and then carry back.  The problem was that the reptile house back corridor was thin and treacherous, with hoses and bricks and other debris everywhere, and I was constantly spilling water.  Each bowl was half empty by the time I had it back in its enclosure.  Eventually, I learned to clean the bowls, then put them back in the exhibit empty and dry.  Then, I'd fill them up with a pitcher of water I'd filled at the sink.  I could fill each bowl all the way up, and not spill water all over the floor of the back corridor, which was generally slippery enough already.  

It was the little life hacks like that, more than any arcane knowledge of animals, which really made me start to feel like a professional zookeeper.  Like how to most effectively chop vegetables up for the big sink salad we made every day to feed all of our plant-eating lizards and tortoises, or that a squeegee works better when you drag water towards you than push it away.  Learning these techniques enabled me to do my job faster and better, freeing up more time for the more enjoyable jobs.  Some of these skills also have at-home application.  To this day, chopping vegetables for dinner is my job, and I don't mind it.  It takes me no time at all.