Hearts (and Tails) Intertwined

 As I've confessed earlier on this blog, I'm really not a primate person - but I will always have a special soft spot in my heart for the titi monkeys.  Part of it is that they are, just by nature, so much calmer and sweeter than many other monkeys.  But part of it is the tail-twining behavior.  I saw it in the pair that I worked with, but was never able to get a good photo of it.  Here's a picture from the website of the Cape May County Zoo, just to give you an idea of how endearing it is:

Some animals play the field and are very promiscuous, whereas others are monogamous.  And among those that are monogamous, sometimes you encounter species in which the mutual affection is just so poignant, so obvious, that it makes you melt a little bit.  It also on some level breaks your heart, because you know that, barring some sudden disaster, one of the animals is inevitably going to outlive the other, and then it will be alone, and that just seems horrifically unfair.

The female of the titi pair that I worked with passed away unexpectedly, leaving her mate not only crushed, but also saddled with care for their newborn infant - who also passed away, despite our best efforts to save him.  We worked very quickly to get that male placed at another zoo, partially so he could have a new mate as soon as possible (but in some level because I think we would just have cried all day looking at him).  Years later, I visited him in his new home, and was delighted to see that he was happily re-paired, with a new mate and offspring.

Species Fact Profile: Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey (Plecturocebus donacophilus)

                                                                Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey

                                                        Plecturocebus donacophilus (D'Orbigny, 1836)

Range: Eastern Bolivia, a very small portion of adjacent western Brazil

Habitat: : Primary and Secondary Forests, favoring understory habitat beneath closed canopy.  Up to 1000 meters elevation

Diet: Fruit, Leaves, Seeds, Insects

Social Grouping: Pairs or Small Family Groups (2-7)

Reproduction: Monogamous for life.  Females give birth once a year.  Breeding season is in spring, the start of the rainy season, though captives may breed year round.  Gestation period of 18 weeks.  Usually single offspring (twins are rare) carried by the mother for the first week or so, after which they are largely carried by the father, who gives them back to the mother for nursing.  Sexually mature at two years old, but generally don’t breed until they are four years old.  Generally independent at maturity

Lifespan: 20-25 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern, CITES Appendix II 

• One of the smallest titi species.  Head to body length 30-33 centimeters, with an additional 48-51 centimeters made up by the long, non-prehensile tail.  Weight 0.8-1.18 kilograms, with males generally slightly larger than females.  Compact body, long hind limbs.  Males have slightly larger canine teeth than females)
• Sexes look alike.  Coat is dense and plush, gray in color with alternating light and dark bands and some orange-brown flecks, giving an agouti appearance.  White tufts of hair around the ears, giving the species the alternative common name of “white-eared titi”.  Tail is light gray on the underside, dark gray on the back, but tends to grow lighter with age.
• Highly arboreal, rarely come to the forest floor.  Most active in early morning and late afternoon, resting during the midday to allow leaf-heavy diet to digest.  Travel through the forest quadrupedally, taking some short leaps but moving cautiously.  Range about 0.5-1.5 square kilometers per day.  Sleep high in the trees (about 15 meters up) to avoid predators
• Predators include raptors, wild felids, and large snakes.  Infants have been observed being predated by capuchins
• Adult pairs are very closely bonded, often sit together with their tails intertwined, become anxious when separated from one another
• Highly communicative, series of chirrups (used to locate group members), moans, pants, and screams.  Calls used in part to demarcate territory.  Males are territorial, try to intimidate one another with piloerection, tail lashing, and chasing
• The white-coated titi (P. pallescens) is sometimes treated as a subspecies of Bolivian gray titi, but is more often recognized as a full species.
• Tolerant of some degraded habitat (found in the forests around Bolivia’s largest city, Santa Cruz de la Sierra), but threatened by habitat fragmentation

Worth the Wait

On some happier zoo news, one of the biggest news stories this spring has been the hatching of four Galapagos tortoises at the Philadelphia Zoo.  Their first time mom is wild born, but is believed to be 100 years old.  The four tiny tortoises are now on display in the Reptile House.

Satire: Trump Opens Up Nation's Aquariums to Commercial Fishing

Let's not given anyone in DC any ideas, okay The Onion?

"At press time, Trump announced an additional executive order allowing commercial seafood vessels to fish in exotic pet stores, home aquariums, and private backyard koi ponds."

Trump Opens Up Nation's Aquariums to Commercial Fishing

The Urban Elephant

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Zoo announced that it would be relocating its two Asian elephants, Billy and Tina, to the Tulsa Zoo.  I'm not sure if the news actually surprised me or not.  On one hand, the elephants (especially Billy) had been a lightning rod of controversy for LA for years, when many high profile celebrities targeting the zoo over its elephant program.  On the other hand, unlike many zoos which have gotten out of elephants in recent years, LA actually has a very good exhibit that probably could have continued housing the species for many years - if it was somewhere other than LA.

Besides Los Angeles, the other most beleaguered elephant program in the country is the Bronx Zoo, also home to two Asian elephants, also subject to longstanding criticism from activists, this time largely because their females are managed alone.  While things can certainly change, Bronx has hinted that they may be getting out of elephants after their current two pass.  That would leave America's two largest cities without elephants.  The third largest city - Chicago - is currently also without elephants, though Brookfield Zoo does plan to bring the species back as part of its masterplan.  

It seems like we are witnessing a slow but steady congregation of elephants into the hands of a smaller number of zoos with larger herds, especially in the central US, away from the coasts (with some exceptions).  On one hand, it's important to recognize that elephants have requirements for their wellbeing that not all zoos are going to be able to accommodate, both in terms of the size of the habitat and the number of animals maintained (as well as a climate that allows them to be outside for a large portion of the year).  Tulsa, for example, has just opened a 10 acre habitat which should be among the world's finest.  On the other hand, elephants are such unique, extraordinary, and inspiring animals.  For many visitors, they are a gateway beast to learning to love wildlife.  It makes me sad to think that there are upcoming future generations of visitors who won't have direct access to such magnificent creatures.

Asian elephant Billy, photo from Tulsa Zoo facebook

AI: Animalkeeper Illustrators

 Hot off the grill, another cheesy internet challenge.  This time, folks are using generative AI to produce images of themselves or friends as action figures, and as always, when there's a social media trend, zoos can be counted to follow.  This time, however, they ran into some pushback.  Not only is AI controversial due to its usurping/undermining human artists, it's also surprisingly bad for the environment, using a lot of energy, which a conservation organization such as a zoo should be aware of.

In an effort to use the trend to raise awareness of this, while still having a good time, some zoos have posted their action figures, but illustrated by members of the staff, instead.  Some have even taken the admirable step of linking the image with the profile of the creator - many zookeepers and aquarists have second jobs or side gigs, including several who are also freelance artists.  Check out these handmade starter packs, one from Roger Williams Park Zoo (check out the artist on instagram at @hollymaedesigns) and one from Lincoln Park Zoo.

The Easter Ostrich

What with the price and eggs and all, and zookeepers not getting the best pay, an entrepreneurial keeper might be inclined to think outside the box this holiday weekend... or at least outside the Easter basket.  

I have, on a few occasions (and with management's approval, in the past) taken an ostrich egg home.  These were all infertile eggs (I could tell because we only had females) and there was no possibility of them hatching.  In most cases, I blew out the eggs because I wanted the shells, perhaps as gifts for folks (I used to give them as thank you presents on behalf of folks who had really helped out the zoo with special favors).  On one occasion, I decided to eat some, scrambling the egg.  It's true what they say, one ostrich egg is the equivalent of twenty-four chicken eggs.  Having one egg would seem to save you a bit on grocery bills then... if only they tested good.  I myself did not like it very much.  Way too much yolk, too little white.

But, and hear me out, what if you had an ostrich Easter egg?  

I know a guy who hard-boiled an ostrich egg for his kids - he said it took hours.  Once it was done, he cut slices off of it for their sandwiches, to the amazement of their friends at lunch in school the next day.  That would be a commitment, for sure, both boiling it and eating it.  I can also imagine ostrich eggs being fun to dye - being so much larger, there is so much more surface area for fun designs.  

And hiding them for Easter egg hunts?  That might be a little less fun for older kids, while making it easier for younger ones.  It's a lot hider to hide, and a lot easier to find, an egg when it's the size of your head.

Happy Easter!  

PS: Speaking of Easter eggs, the CEO of the San Antonio Zoo has hidden an ostrich egg, containing four free passes to the Zoo, somewhere in San Antonio's Brackenridge Park.  Happy hunting!

Zoo Review: Akron Zoo, Part II

Continuing through the Akron Zoo, we come to the three geographic-themed areas.  These areas all have three things in common.  First of all, they're fairly small, with two of them being represented by only three exhibits each.  Secondly, they are the newest developments in the zoo, all having been added in the most recent years.  And thirdly, all are anchored by a large carnivore.  

Just outside of Komodo Kingdom is Wild Asia (part of me wishes that Komodo Kingdom had kept strictly Asian theming, and then it could have been considered part of this complex).  There is an exhibit for red pandas, an almost obligatory species for zoos in the northeastern US, as well as a large indoor-outdoor habitat for white-cheeked gibbons.  The stars here are the tigers, which occupy two large yards, with a stone amphitheater situated to provide seating and viewing for training demonstrations.

Towards the back of the zoo is Pride of Africa which, as the name might lead you to suspect, is home to lions.  An interesting feature of the lion exhibit is a sort of... I don't know, what's the opposite of an alcove?  Any, a little section of the exhibit just juts out into the public area, in which the lions can often be found dozing, providing extremely close viewing for visitors.  The exhibit area also features a yard of Speke's gazelle and white storks (this exhibit stuck out in my mind for having the largest number of white storks I'd ever seen in a zoo - in the wild they do form large colonies, whereas most zoos exhibit them as pairs).  There is also a goat-petting corral.  This area is considered a Phase I of Africa, with plans calling for the addition of giraffes, meerkats, and possibly other species in the future.

Until then, the largest and most impressive of the three geographic areas is Grizzly Ridge, with no points going to whoever guesses what the large carnivore here is.  Besides the namesake brown bears in their big, well-furnished yard, visitors may also encounter red wolves and coyotes, bald eagles, screech owls, and river otters.  The otter exhibit is equipped with an enclosed slide for young visitors that carries them through the otter pool, providing brief underwater views of the animals (though conventional underwater viewing is also available).  The exhibit that zoo professionals will best know this exhibit area by, however, is its aviary.  In most zoos, North American bird collections are focused on waterfowl and raptors, but there has in recent years been a much stronger focus on North American's rapidly vanishing songbirds.  The Akron Zoo aviary has an elevated viewing platform from which the birds can be observed.

A few small aviaries, including one for a breeding pair of snowy owls, also dot the campus.  There are a few garden spaces, as well as a carousel and train for younger visitors.

Akron, in its current form, is a small zoo, and I'm not sure how much larger it really will have the chance to be.   I liked some of its unique touches, such as Legends of the Wild (though the area could use a refresh) and the North American songbird aviary.  Some of the other areas, like the Asian and African areas, were perfectly fine, but seemed a touch generic.  Perhaps it's because their all still so relatively new, that building materials and visitor areas just seemed a bit stark and raw, too glossy, too angular, not faded into the landscape.  I thought about that a bit as I read about the planned addition of giraffes to Africa, and what it might mean for the character of the zoo.

Akron Zoo is less than an hour from the much larger Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.  I think both communities deserve their own zoos, but in the shadow of a much bigger neighbor, I'd like to see Akron develop its own identity and celebrate its own uniqueness.

Zoo Review: Akron Zoo, Part I

Lost among the mega zoos of Ohio - Columbus and Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo - the relatively diminutive Akron Zoo could easily be overlooked.  It opened its gates in 1953 as a Mother Goose-themed children's zoo managed by the city, later privatizing and diversifying into a full-fledged zoo.  Though still a fairly small zoo - easily knocked out in a half-day - it has grown considerably in recent years, adding new and innovative exhibits which have helped this small facility carve out a niche of its own.

Directly inside the entry building, an imposing structure of wood, stone, and glass, is Penguin Point, home to a flock of Humboldt penguins.  It's an attractive, fairly simple exhibit, part of an unofficial water-bird complex that starts off the visitor experience.  Also included is a lagoon of waterfowl, including trumpeter swans, as well as a yard of Chilean flamingos.

Perhaps the most unique exhibit complex - though one which is starting to fade, it seems - is Legends of the Wild, which opened in 2005.  The exhibit area was based around the concept of animals in the role in legend and myth around the world, and features a diverse cast of species, including snow leopard, white-naped crane, ring-tailed lemurs, and Andean condors.  The respective animals are paired with signage that tells the story of the animals from their home countries; among the indigenous peoples of the Andes, for example, the condor was considered a messenger of the sun (which helps explain its role as the national bird of several South American countries).  It's a refreshingly unique take on exhibit design in an age where everything seems to be geographic in focus, and I was aware of no exhibit complex like it in the country.  When you visit as many zoos and aquariums as I do, uniqueness is always something to be appreciated and sought after.

This was the exhibit area that I was the most interested to see, but I will admit, the theming felt a little weak, diluted by changes to the collection over the years (which is strange, because the neat thing about this theme is that it should free a zoo up to work with a wide variety of species, free from geographic or taxonomic constraints).  Some of the exhibits seem a bit dated and are in flux; what was a jaguar exhibit when I visited last year, set next to a capybara exhibit in a predator-prey display, is now in the process of being repurposed for another species, yet to be announced (the jaguar exhibit wasn't great, but it's still an unfortunate loss for the area, few species being a better example of the role of animals in legend than jaguar).  The area includes two buildings - one for the lemurs, one nocturnal building for bats, snakes, frogs, and slow loris).

Outside Legends is Komodo Kingdom, the largest indoor exhibit in the zoo.  For a zoo of such small size, Akron has a surprisingly large aquatic collection, including jellies, an electric eel, and small sharks.  This was explained to me as being a result of the closure of the Ohio SeaWorld park in nearby Aurora, OH; many of the staff, I'm told, took jobs at Akron Zoo and brought their aquatic expertise with them.  As the name would suggest, the building houses an indoor habitat of Komodo dragons, along with Galapagos tortoises and several smaller reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates (not enough that I'd call the building a true reptile house, but still the nexus of their small collection), as well as a small South American rainforest mixed species exhibit, with small primates and birds in the trees over fish and turtles.

In the next post, we'll look at the additional areas of Akron Zoo.

Akron Zoo

Darkness After Sunset

I really don't want to spend too much time on this blog talking political issues.  I started writing because I wanted to share stories about zoos and zookeeping.  But sometimes political issues touch our world and are too great to ignore.  One such bomb - one of an endless stream, it seems - dropped the other day.  Donald Trump's latest Executive Order of questionable legality calls for sunsetting all environmental regulations.  These include the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty act, and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

What does this all mean?  It means that, unless people work to protect these safeguards, the laws and regulations that have been responsible for saving so much of America's wildlife heritage - including, I don't know, OUR NATIONAL BIRD, which went from the brink of extinction to now being a reasonably common bird - will cease to be.

The President, to be clear, cannot just opt to end a law.  That takes an Act of Congress (we still have one of those, right?).  But as we've seen on several fronts in recent weeks, telling the current admin that they legally cannot do something seems to be something they take as a personal challenge.

I can already hear the papers being filed for the lawsuits that will challenge this vile act.  All the same, it never is a bad time to make your voices heard to your elected officials.  Enough is enough - and we are all way past enough.

Elephants vs Earthquakes

Even the world's largest land animals can get rattled when the earth itself starts to shake - but an earthquake is no excuse for not looking out for the youngest and most vulnerable members of your herd!  When the San Diego area was struck by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake, their African elephant herd at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park immediately formed a protective circle around their calves.  It's a fascinating video clip which has captured the public's attention in the day since the quake happened, serving as a reminder of how intelligent and compassionate the animals can be.

 

Ferrets on the Edge

Speaking of the more important things that conservation dollars could be going to rather than pseudo-science dire wolves, a very real, live (at the moment) endangered species could stand to have some support.  Sadly, there are some folks in power - including the Secretary of the Interior - who don't seem to see the value in saving iconic American species such as the black-footed ferret

Dire Straits for Conservation

Years back, a Chinese zoo earned well-deserved mockery by painting two dogs so that they could be passed off, unsuccessfully, as giant pandas.  Now, imagine taking the basic premise of that scam, making it much more expensive and complicated, and then bragging to the world about it.

Just in time to have missed April Fool's Day, the American biotech company Colossal claimed that they have brought the dire wolf back from extinction through cloning.  It's a story that the media has been fascinated with and which has garnered a lot of attention and speculation.

Counterpoint: No, they really haven't.

The animals that they produced are nothing but (slightly) genetically-modified wolves.  There isn't a trace of actual dire wolf DNA in them.  There is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a dire wolf is in pop culture, which is probably not helping the situation.  A dire wolf is not a made-for-fiction animal, that is essentially a big gray wolf as seen in Game of Thrones (actual, the species is often shown as being larger in fiction than it was in real life).  It wasn't even in the same genus as modern wolves under recent classification - it was an entirely separate canid.  The fact that they made a point of making them white - which there is no evidence that they were, but seems to have been an aesthetic choice to match the wolf "Ghost" from A Game of Thrones - makes it even harder for me to take this company seriously.

Even if this was a real "de-extinction," I'd consider this a foolish endeavor.  If we actually had this technology, it would best be used with species that recently went extinct due to human causes, and which could have a chance to be re-wilded.  Dire wolves went extinct thousands of years ago.  Their niche is gone, taken over by other species.  Even if something genetically identical to one were brought back (which this in no way even approaches), we'd have no place for it to go, as well as no idea if it would even be behaviorally competent or ecologically viable.  Instead of conservation work, these people have essentially created a designer carnivore, of as much ecological use as a white tiger.  

What's worse, some tech and political figures (including US Vice President J.D. Vance's patron, Peter Thiel) are hailing this as the future of conservation.  Who cares if species go extinct?  We can clone them back later!  Or at least something that vaguely looks like what we think they should be.

Colossal has been one of the companies vocally claiming that they are going to bring back the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger).  With this being the example of the work they've produced so far, I'm not holding my breath for what come out of the lab.

Experts dispute claim dire wolf brought back from extinction

A Grudge with Gibbons

As I've said, I’ve never really been much of a primate person. I love carnivores. I love hoofstock. I love obscure little beasties, such as rodents and bats and that weird clade that we used to lump together as insectivores. But I’ve never especially liked working with primates. And I think that I can trace that antipathy towards our closest relatives back to my earliest experiences with gibbons – the very first primates I ever worked with.

Looking back, it surprises me a little – I associate gibbons strongly with my first day in the zoo field, as a young volunteer keeper aide, barely out of middle school. It was a beautiful summer morning, and I was walking the zoo grounds on my way to volunteer orientation. Everything was quiet, as the zoo hadn’t opened yet and no visitors were present – quiet, that is, until a series of powerful whoops, reaching a crescendo that made the very air vibrate, broke the silence. Gibbons are most prone to call in the early morning, and it was a treat to have that special moment to myself on that first day. I took it as a good omen.

Reality was a little more disappointing.

The male white-cheeked gibbon taught me several important lessons over our years together, first and foremost being, “Even if you haven’t done anything to deserve it, some animals are still going to take a dislike to you. Sometimes a strong, very personal dislike.” And boy did he dislike me. This originally just manifested itself as following me along the mesh, chattering angrily as I walked by. Things gradually got uglier. One day, as I was walking by down the narrow keeper corridor between the row of cages, he shot a long, thin arm out through the mesh and grabbed a hank of my (fairly short) hair, and with a hard jerk slammed my head against the side of the cage. I was still seeing stars, but thankfully stumbled backwards, falling against another cage (I don’t remember who was in that one, probably one of our smaller felids), so at least falling out of his range before he could try again.

After that, I always walked very cautiously past the gibbons, and always made sure I knew where he was. I never underestimated his reach again. Strangely, his mate never showed any hostility towards me, and over the years as they presented the zoo with two offspring, the kids seemed friendly, playful, and curious – not that I tried getting too cozy with them, lest I provoke their father’s protective ire. I especially enjoyed watching the coats of the infants change color as they matured, confirming their sexes.

I had similar experiences at another (this time unaccredited) zoo working with their gibbons, both lone males (so maybe it was a male thing…). One in particular, an individual named Pugs, scared the hell out of me – I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such constant, apoplectic rage from an animal on a daily basis. It was all the more concerning because their enclosures were, as best as I could figure out, made of two-by-fours, chicken wire, zipties, and spit, so every time a gibbon slammed on the side of the exhibit, the entire cage looked like it was about to fall apart (the two males were housed separately in adjacent exhibits). Everything was made of wood of poor quality, so cleaning every day was a cause of worry for me – should I try using water to scrub the abundant, liquidy gibbon poop off of everything? Or would the water just make the damned cage rot even faster? After leaving that zoo, I didn't return again for over 10 years, and when I did (as a visitor), I was glad to see those wretched cages were gone.



Strangely, my experiences working with the largest of the gibbons, siamangs, was the complete opposite. They were some of the gentlest, most serene primates I’ve ever worked with. Their movements, while graceful, were still so much slower and more deliberate than the other gibbons, which seemed to throw themselves around with mad abandon. Even when they called, it was done almost lazily, like they were going through the motions. And they actually seemed, if not pleased, than at least ok with seeing me every day – particularly when, after feeding them, I’d give each of them a small marshmallow as their daily treat, which they’d carefully pluck from my palm with leathery hands. Another interesting thing about siamangs – they’ve always struck me as the most terrestrial of the gibbons, and I saw ours on the ground as often as I did on a perch or hanging from the mesh.

 

 

 

As stressful as our gibbons were to work with, I must admit that they were a treat to behold.  Their vocalizations are crowd-stoppers, some of the most iconic sounds of any zoo (I actually lived on grounds at one zoo, and grew to really resent the early morning wake-up calls from the gibbons, especially on my rare days off).  Their acrobatic leaping and swinging through the branches in truly something to behold, especially in an exhibit that really gives them space to build up momentum, like an aerial ballet.

Species Fact Profile: Northern White-Cheeked Gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys)

 Northern White-Cheeked Gibbon

                                                        Nomascus leucogenys (Ogilby, 1840)

Range: Southeast Asia (Laos, Vietnam) – believed to have been extirpated from southern China (Yunnan)

Habitat: Primary Evergreen Subtropical Rainforest, up to 1600 meters elevation (historically occurred at lower elevations, may be shifting habitat usage due to habitat loss)

Diet: Fruits, Leaves, Flowers, Eggs, Small Animals

Social Grouping: Breeding pair with offspring

Reproduction: Monogamous, generally for life.  Can breed year round.   Single infant born after seven month gestation period.  Infant clings to the mother for the first two years (having the same color fur as the mother at this point allows it to blend in with her fur), being weaned at the end of this period.  Both parents care for the infant.  Sexually mature at 6-7 years old.  Independent at 3-8 years old.  Have offspring every 2-3 years

Lifespan: 50 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Critically Endangered, CITES Appendix I

• Both sexes measure 45-63 centimeters long, weigh an average of 5.7 kilograms, but up to 7.5 kilograms (males perhaps being slightly larger).  Arms are 1.2 – 1.4 times as long as the legs.  Long fingers with opposable thumbs and big toes
• Coloration variable based on age and sex.  All are born with cream-colored fur.  At 2 years old, the fur changes to black and the animal develops the namesake white cheeks.  Upon reaching sexual maturity, females change back to the cream/tan color, losing much of the white on their cheeks, while males remain black.  Males have an upright tuft of fur on top of their heads.   Females often have a dark patch on the back of the head or nape of their neck.  Faces and the palms of the hands and soles of the feet are bare and black
• Genitalia of the adult male and adult female are fairly similar, making sexing on animals before they achieve their adult coloration difficult
• Highly arboreal, usually found in the canopy and rarely coming to the forest floor.  Travel through the trees by brachiating, swinging between branches using their long arms.  Fingers loosely hook around branches, enabling them to quickly make a hand-over-hand motion.  When on the ground, usually walk on their hind legs, holding their arms up or out for balance.  May reach speeds of up to 55 kilometers per hour and swing across trees up to 15 meters apart
• Live in small family units (up to 6, usually 3-4) of a breeding pair and their offspring.  Females are dominant to males; adult female is leader of the group, followed by female offspring, male offspring, and the adult male at the bottom.  Sleep in groups at night, holding onto one another
• Highly vocal, using calls to demarcate territories and as part of mating rituals.  Female usually initiates the call, making a series of 15—30 notes with an increasing pitch, followed by the male calling with rapidly changing frequency modulation.  Each cycle lasts for 20 seconds, can be repeated for several minutes.  In zoos, noted that pairs that call together frequently mate the most often.  Juveniles in a group sometimes join in when defending territory.  Pairs are the most vocal at dawn
• Home ranges of 0.3-0.4 square kilometers (75-100 acres), about three-quarters of which will be defended.  Males will only rarely physically fight one another over territory.  Aggression is communicated by gaping and showing canine teeth.  Typically, do not travel far, especially in the rainy season when fruit is plentiful.  May have to travel further in the dry season to find food.
• Important seed dispersers.  Forage throughout the day, feeding higher in the trees in the morning, moving to the lower layers in the afternoon.  AThe proportion of different foods in the diet changes based on seasonal availability, with fruit being preferred, but leaves making up the bulk of the diet during the dry season
• Until 1989, considered to be a subspecies of N. concolor (crested, or southern white-cheeked gibbon), which has a range immediately to the south of this species.  The two are most easily distinguished by the tuft of fur resembling a mohawk on N. leucogenys.  To differentiate the two, N. leucogenys is sometimes referred to as the northern white-cheeked gibbon
• Experiments in captivity have determined that they are capable of self-recognition
• Primary threat is habitat loss due to deforestation, both for timber and for agriculture (especially for palm oil plantations).  Also persecuted both by direct hunting (have been a source of meat for traditional communities, as well as playing a role in traditional medicines), as well as for the capture of infants for sale on the pet trade
• Depicted in Chinese poetry, artwork, and literature, especially during the Song Dynasty.  Admired for their grace and nobility, in contrast to macaques, which were seen as greedy.  Toaists believed that gibbons could live for hundreds of years and even turn into humans.  Although gibbons never naturally occurred in Japan, there is a popular Zen motif of a gibbon grasping at the reflection of the moon on the water.

Zookeeper's Journal: We joke about the smells, but it's often the sounds that I remember the most about the different zoos I worked at - and few sounds are more evocative than the ear-shattering whoops of the white-cheeked gibbon.  On my very first day in the zoo field, as a brand new volunteer at my city's zoo, what I remember the best were the gibbons.  I don’t remember seeing them that day, actually.  Instead, I remember sitting in the volunteer office, waiting for instructions, when suddenly the air was pierced by the cries of the pair of white-cheeked gibbons in the valley below.    Gibbons call most often in the early morning, before the zoo is open for the day - which means that staff and volunteers (and irate neighbors) are much more likely to experience it than visitors are.  It really may have been that call which told me that I was there, that I’d begun my zoo career.  When I did eventually make my way down to the gibbons later that week, I remember their songs, coupled with their easy, graceful movements as they swung around the enclosure.

Joel Sartore and the Chimp Incident

If you ever get a chance to hear PhotoArk photographer Joel Sartore speak, you should jump on it.  He's a great storyteller, and years of traveling the world to photograph animals has given him lots of material.  There are two primate stories that he especially likes to tell (I mean, three if you count the Peruvian photo shoot that left him with his hair full of monkey poop).  One is of the "Chimp Incident" at the Sunset Zoo, when the super-smart primates felt the need to remind him of how uncooperative they can be.

    

The second was of Kanzi, the bonobo... the only animal to take a photo of the world famous animal photographer!  Kanzi seems to have done a pretty good job, too

Pithecophobia

 Years ago, on my first trip to Africa, I was spending my first night out in the bush, when I awoke with a start.  I became aware that there was an animal outside my tent, shuffling around.  Fascination turned to fear, seconds later, when whatever it was let out an ear-piercing shriek and started smacking into the side of my tent.  I was pretty sure for a few seconds there that my first night on safari would also be my last.

The late night visitor, surprisingly, ended up being a pint-sized bat-eared fox.  Talking around the breakfast table the next morning, my companions - all who were safe and snug in their tents during this - had expressed their fears that there was a lion or a hyena in the camp, which could have done much more damage.  I guess I agreed.  I hadn't quite realized it at the time, but what had really scared me more than anything that night, what I really, really was afraid I'd see when the side of the tent tore open, was a baboon.  And that I was glad that I wasn't in a part of that country that had chimpanzees.

A lot of people are famously afraid of clowns.  The same can be said about skeletons, and zombie horror is a popular genre.  I think I heard it explained to me somewhere that we're afraid of these things because they are sort-of, but not quite, human in our eyes.  They are close enough to be like us, but our brain perceives something different and, therefore wrong and worrying about them.  With that in mind, I'm surprised that the fear of apes and monkeys, pithecophobia, isn't more of a thing.

There's something that I find very unnerving about a lot of non-human primates, and the more closely related they are to humans, they more off-putting I can find them.  They're the animals that I've probably enjoyed working with the least; the one day that I spent filling in for the chimp keepers, in the cavernous depths of their holding building, echoing with shrieks and the rattling of doors, was one of the creepiest experiences of my life.  Years later, when I watched Silence of the Lambs for the first time, that scene in which Clarice Starling first walks down the hallway of the insane asylum, past the various psychopaths as she made her way to Hannibal Lecter, reminded me of that day.

I find zookeepers very divided on the subject of chimps, which, being the most human-like of the primates, are also the most violent and mercurial.  Some of them absolutely adore them, finding their closeness to us fascinating and incredibly, and delighting in their intelligence and behavioral complexity, their dynamic social lives.  Others are horrified and disgusted by them - their grossness, their loudness, their brutality, to each other and to other animals.  One registrar I spoke with likened reading the daily report of the chimp keepers to a catalog of injuries that they inflicted upon each other, seemingly on a whim.  A former keeper who visited me at one zoo where I worked literally put her hands over her eyes as she walked past our chimps, asking me to guide her by and let her know when she had passed them.  I know of no other zoo animal that is so polarizing among keepers as to how they feel about it.

When most animals defecate on you, or threaten you, or display a sexual fixation on you, it can feel unpleasant enough, but you brush it off, usually.  When it's an ape, or a large monkey, however... well, it feels creepier, and a lot more personal.  It becomes harder to think of it as animal expressing that hostility and/or lust (they two have a weird habit of going together with primates), and more like a strange, wild person.

I'll throw myself on the back of an alligator, or wrangle an anaconda.  I'll go in with wolves and cheetahs.  I'll walk a thin catwalk above a shark tank.  But ask me to work chimps again?  Sorry, I think I have to wash my hair that day... and not just because the damn monkeys pooped in it again.

The Dangers of Finger Food

Last week, the President and CEO of the Indianapolis Zoo, Dr. Rob Shumaker, was treated after having his finger bitten by a chimpanzee at the facility.  According to an anonymous post on Reddit (the veracity of which cannot be confirmed), the bite occurred after he was feeding the ape "inappropriate foods" after hours.  Also according to the poster, this bite which was not the first after-hours ape-inflicted injury that Shumaker has experienced.  He's apparently had his hand hurt by an orangutan in the past.

Zookeepers getting bitten or grabbed through fencing is, whether we like to admit it or not, something that happens, though we try to be careful.  Shortly after this made the news, there was a report of an orangutan biting a keeper at Woodland Park Zoo and a jaguar scratching a keeper at Brevard Zoo.  I myself have had my hand grabbed and (thankfully, lightly) clawed and mouthed by a clouded leopard.  I was trying to palm some meat against the mesh, keeping my hand flat and outside the fencing.  Which would have been a great plan - if the leopard hadn't been able to reach her paws out and grab me.  Looking back, it was not an ideal plan.  It was made worse because it was happening in front of our director, to whom I was trying to demonstrate how our new clouded leopard was really coming out of her shell.

A more successful hand-feeding attempt with said clouded leopard

Accidents are something to be avoided, but not always successfully, and you learn from mistakes.

What separates the Indianapolis incident from the others, however, is that Dr. Shumaker isn't the caretaker of the chimps and, if the Redditor is to be believed, shouldn't have been doing what he's doing.  Now, at a smaller facility the director may be more involved in day to day animal care.  But at a larger zoo (and if your title is "CEO," it's probably a larger one), that's probably not the case, and even if the President/CEO is a former animal person, they probably don't know those individual animals as well as the keepers do, and the animals probably don't know them.  

In these cases, the boss at the top is the decision maker and steward of the animals.  That shouldn't let them fool themselves into thinking that the animals are their pets, and that they should pop in whenever they want to feed some nibblies.

I hope Dr. Shumaker learned a lesson from this embarrassing (and, I assume, painful) experience.  Though if it is not, in fact, the first time that this has happened, maybe not...

Satire: De-Wokifying the National Zoo

What's so woke about the zoo?

"What's woke about the zoo?

Zoos have important lessons to teach, as they do to millions of children who pass through them each year.

Zoos teach us that, where there is no diversity in a species, a single virus or invasive predator can wipe it from existence.

Zoos show us that, where there is no equity or balance in a habitat, the whole ecosystem can be at risk of collapse.

Zoos put us on notice that, when we humans make no room for inclusion, we erase the natural world from the earth.

Zoos demonstrate that diversity, equity and inclusion are not just things that happen on college campuses or in your company's HR department, but are vital things from the natural world.

At the zoo, you can't look the other way, even when an animal is off-exhibit."