Satire: De-Wokifying the National Zoo

 

Species Fact Profile: Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (Romalea microptera)

Eastern Lubber Grasshopper

                                           Romalea microptera (Palisot de Beauvois, 1817)

Range: Southeastern and Central United States

Habitat: Open Woodlands, Fields

Diet: Herbs, Shrubs , and Grasses

Social Grouping: Large cohorts upon hatching, less social as they age

Reproduction: Breeds in the summer.  Females lays about up to three clutches of 50 eggs in a burrow in the soil, which overwinter and hatch in the spring.  Undergo five molt periods (instars), each about 20 days long before becoming adults

Lifespan: 1 Year

      Conservation Status: IUCN Not Evaluated

• Largest grasshoppers in the United States (alongside western lubber, Taeniopoda eques).  Adults generally 4-7 centimeters long, but can reach up to 9 centimeters.  Females are larger than males.  Wings are fairly small, about half the length of the abdomen, and cannot be used in flight
• Coloration and patterning varies across range, with some individuals yellow or orange, others primarily black; some are intermediate, yellow with black banding.  Bright red color on the back beneath the wings, which can be flared to become more prominent
• Bright coloration warns predators of unpleasant taste.  Can also emit a foul, foamy secretion to deter predators (which can be sprayed up to 15 centimeters), as well as make a loud hiss to frighten enemies.  One predator is the loggerhead shrike, which impales lubbers on thorns or fences and leaves them there for a day or two, allowing the toxin to degrade
• While adults are less social than nymphs, they will still often aggregate into groups in the evening, possibly as a form of protection from predators
• "Lubber" means a slow, clumsy, or lazy person, likely bestowed upon this species because of its slow movements (not especially good at hopping, usually seen walking - but can be decent climbers).  Species name from the Greek for "Small Wing"
• Pose some threat as an agricultural nuisance when present in sufficient numbers, will feed on a variety of crops.  Control often consists of manual removal, as these grasshoppers are resistant to many pesticides, both due to their large size and their ability to detoxify natural toxins

The Balance Beam

I never wanted to think of zoos and aquariums are political entities, but on some level it's inevitable.  Political issues closely impact not only zoos and aquariums themselves (USDA inspections, regulations on the acquisition/transport of animals, government-owned species, etc), but on topics central to our core mission, such as conservation and education.  Still, I never suspected that the country would become so politicized that everything would start to be seen through the lens of right and left, red and blue, authoritarian or "woke."

I see a long, difficult walk ahead of us on a narrow balance beam, high off the ground.

On one side, we lean heavily into messaging that pushes for advocacy and change.  We continue to loudly and vocally express support for conservation initiatives, including calling out government and industry practices that harm species and their environments - as Monterey Bay Aquarium was willing to do over lobster-trapping, and now faces a lawsuit.  We advocate for continued reintroduction programs and habitat restorations, working with such government agencies as will still participate in these projects (I suspect more at a state level for the next four years).  We are open and honest about our history.  We continue to try to make our own campuses sustainable, and encourage visitors to do the same.  We continue to recruit, employ, and celebrate a diverse workforce, and strive to make our facilities open and accessible to all.

This is the position I favor - though I acknowledge that it carries the risk of angering powerful people if pushed too far.  Suppose, say, a zoo were to build an exhibit complex themed on the US-Mexican borderlands, with a giant, ugly wall running through some of the habitats that illustrated how such a construction would negatively impact ocelots, desert bighorn sheep, pronghorns, and other species.  It would be a bold, powerful statement.  It might also result in boycotts, funding pulled, and, the way things are going with this admin, legal harassment.

On the other side, we keep our heads down, just focus on exhibiting and breeding animals (for exhibit purposes) for the next few years.  We offer ourselves up as a fun, relaxing, and, above all, apolitical oasis for the next few years, a place where visitors can think about tigers instead of tariffs, rhinos instead of racism.  Scrub our signage of anything "political."  End our DEAI programs.  Some of our shadier colleagues would doubtlessly benefit from the reduced focus on regulation; I wouldn't be shocked if we saw less of USDA inspectors over the next few years.  Maybe more animals get kicked off the Endangered Species list, making it easier to do what they will with them without permits.  Maybe importing animals from the wild becomes a lot easier.  Heck, some people may be tempted to cozy up to the new admin with flattery and signs of fealty ("Presenting the President Donald J. Trump Lion House!") to curry favor.

Leaning this way takes us from our core mission, and turns us back to what our critics always said we were - animals in boxes, assembled for the amusement of the public.  We become the "circus" part of "bread and circuses."  When this political scenario is finally played out, we may be relatively unscathed - but we'll be remembered as cowards.  As magnificent as the facility was (well, before the bombs fell), people tend to remember the Berlin Zoo of the Third Reich in a certain, less-flattering way.

I know which direction I want to lean into... but I guess we'll all have to make our own choices.

Of Museums and Messages

 Trump executive order seeks to 'restore' American history through Smithsonian overhaul

I very much look forward to a day when I don't have to report so much on the White House on this blog, and yet, here we are...

Most folks reading this article are - quite naturally - focusing on the impact that this is going to have on the museums that teach American history - specifically, the National Museum of American History, National Museum of the American Indian, and National Museum of African American History and Culture.  But don't sleep on how this could impact the National Museum of Natural History... as well as the National Zoo.

Sure, the National Zoo doesn't seem like it has much to do with American history - but it still conveys educational messages that some in the administration would doubtlessly call "woke," perhaps even "anti-American" (in the very peculiar way that they define that).  What about signage about the restoration of American endangered species, such as red wolves and American bison (in some cases, including the stories of how those species were driven almost to extinction in the first place)?  Or messaging about coal mining and its impact on endangered species, such as in the Appalachian salamander display in the Reptile Discovery Center?  Heaven forbid climate change gets brought up.

How will this also impact messaging impact the sharing of stories about different cultures and how they relate to animals?  I can't help but think of the story of the Ganesha statue at the Tulsa Zoo, and how some local conservatives were infuriated that it "promoted" Hinduism to visitors.

Years ago, I remember seeing a video about a crazy conservative firebrand who took it upon herself to "audit" the Field Museum and the Brookfield Zoo, looking for liberal ("woke" wasn't in their vocabulary back then) messaging.  It's like that lady was just made Secretary of the Smithsonian.

I don't see zoos and museums bowing under too easily.  Instead, there may be opportunities to rewrap the messages in ways that slide past the censors, perhaps avoiding the buzzwords that seem to trigger them so (many of them seem to be intellectually lazy, if not stupid, and are probably just skimming more than reading and understanding).  I feel like the next few years are going to be a constant attempt to resist where we can, endure when we must.

To Go? Or Not To Go?

 Reading The Captive Sea has put me in somewhat of a philosophical bind.  I consider myself to be something of an amateur scholar about zoos, including the study of their history and evolution.  To that end, the Miami Seaquarium is one of the most fascinating facilities out there, and reading the book about its founding has left me with a desire to see the grounds, see how it compares to what Craig Phillips described, maybe even recognize some of the iconic structures.  

On the other hand, the owners of the Seaquarium, The Dolphin Company (original name) have been in the news a lot lately amid accusations of poor husbandry, including the deaths of animals.  I've made it a point in recent years to try and avoid zoos and aquariums that don't meet high standards of animal care.  Any and all AZA accredited facilities I'll green-light, and the non-accredited members I take on a case by case basis (just today, for example, I learned that El Paso Zoo lost accreditation, but not for any reasons relating to animal care, which was noted as being of high quality.  I expect them to regain accreditation, but if I have an opportunity to visit them before they regain it, I would do so with no qualms).  There are a handful of rare or unusual animals that I could see, but I have not because I don't want to support a place.

Gulf World Marine Park faces backlash amid dolphin deaths

I'd like to think that things will turn around for the Seaquarium, but they do seem to be in a bit of a downward spiral.  I might see if I can use any professional contact to get in and take a look.  As for paying and supporting the place, though?  That I might need to give a good long think about... and depending on what I read, and see, and hear from other folks, maybe it just isn't meant to be.

And What Do We Have Here? (No, Seriously, I Have No Idea...)

Reading The Captive Sea, I expected to be the most intrigued by stories about sharks and manatees and other big ocean animals - and those stories were, to be fair, pretty cool.  I think what I actually found the most intriguing, though, were the stories about the small fish and invertebrates that curator Craig Phillips and his divers collected.  Not only did I have no idea what they were, but in some cases neither did the marine biologists.

Today, the vast majority of our animals are born and bred in zoos and aquariums, though some are also obtained from private breeders and dealers.  Most of the wild-born animals that we take in are rescues and tend to be native species, in which case we generally know quite well what they are.  But back in the day when the majority of animals (almost all of them, in the case of aquariums and oceanariums) came from the wild, and via large collecting trips, rather than targeted acquisition, it was not uncommon for facilities to wind up with animals that they had no name for.  Sometimes, the species was one already known to science, but maybe only rarely, or as a museum specimen in a jar, not a live animal.  In other cases, the animal was completely unknown.

On one hand, having a "brand new" species offer tremendous scientific opportunities for a zoo or aquarium.  Every point of data that you can collect - a weight to add to a growth curve, a behavior to add to an ethogram - that's new to science.  That's data that you can't get from a dead specimen.

On the other hand, that brand new species very well might end up as a dead specimen sooner than you expect.  If you don't even know what an animal is called, you probably don't know too much about its needs, and that can make it very difficult to provide the care that the animal needs to thrive.  In some cases you can probably make a very educated guess, especially if the species has very close relatives which you are familiar with - if a new species of, say, piranha were discovered in the Amazon, for instance, we'd probably be able to offer a decent approximation of the correct husbandry using what we know about other piranha species.  But what if it is something completely new and unknown?

One of my favorite animal books ever is The Overloaded Ark by Gerald Durrell, which details the author's first collecting expedition to Cameroon.  Besides the expected monkeys and crocodiles and porcupines, Durrell encountered and collected several species that hadn't been kept before, such as the lemur-like angwantibo and the bizarre giant otter shrew (Not an otter.  Not a shrew).  In some cases he was able to deduce the correct care and bring the animal back to England successfully.  In other cases, he failed.  Failure is a natural and inevitable component of experimentation.  But experimentation can be much harder to justify when you're dealing in the lives of animals.

Book Review: The Captive Sea - Life Behind the Scenes of the Great Modern Oceanariums

Perhaps the most infamous facility in America has, for some years, been the Miami Seaquarium.  Sure, the SeaWorld parks draw their share of criticism, being the best-known of the marine parks, but their established and well-respected animal rescue program has also generated an equally-large body of supporters.  Miami, in contrast, seems to have been a facility that has come to symbolize the anachronisms of our old system of keeping marine life, especially its most famous resident, Lolita (Tokitae) the orca.  Lolita was a flashpoint of controversy with activists, and came to be the animal that essentially defined the park.  When she passed in 2023, it seemed like that might be the end of the Seaquarium

That said, almost two years after the orca's death, the Seaquarium still stands (albeit with a reduced collection).  Nor did the facility begin with an orca.  Nor did it have a cloud over its name for much of its history.  For the fascinating story of how this place came to be, I recommend The Captive Sea.

In the 1950's, marine biologist Craig Phillips was tasked with transforming mud and mangroves on the edge of Biscayne Bay into a world-class aquarium.  The book is the saga of building the campus, devising methods of caring for the animals, collecting them, and managing them.  As the title would suggest, this is a book of its times (many zoo and aquariums folks shy away from use of the C word these days), and some of the chapters may be upsetting for readers these days, such as the collection of dolphins from the wild (though it's interesting to see how in Phillips' era, it seemed completely uncontroversial; the only pushback he seems to have received was from a town in South Carolina that was worried that the capture of a local white dolphin would deprive them of a tourist draw).  A casual mention made of planned inbreeding also startled me a little, before I remembered that this was written before the effects of inbreeding were really established.

Phillips describes experiences working with a wide variety of marine life, from jellies to octopi to sharks to manatees.  I find it a fascinating read because it goes back to an era of animal-keeping when so much less was known, especially aquatic animals, and there was so much to learn, a more curious, scientific era of experimentation.  Of course, the flipside of that is that not all experiments are successful, and in cases like these, you're dealing with living things, so failure has consequences of life and death.  Even I, who know fairly little about marine animal management, saw a few passages and thought to myself, "Well that's not going to work out very well..." only for the author to discover the same thing on the next page.  I was particularly thinking of that when I was reading Phillip's descriptions of working with leatherbacks, the largest of the sea turtles and the one species generally not kept in aquariums.  Phillips actual had better success with this species than I thought he would, but it still seems like a species that, at least until there's some major breakthrough, is not meant to be.

One species conspicuously absent from Phillips' memoir is the orca.  Well, not entirely absent - he mentions the species and describes it, doing so in a manner that suggests that most readers of his era would have been very unfamiliar with the species.  He then simply says that it's never been kept in captivity, but that it would doubtlessly be a big sensation if it ever were.  Well, he wasn't wrong about that, I suppose.

If you're reading The Captive Sea hoping for insights in how modern facilities care for marine life, you're probably going to walk away disappointed - much has changed in the field since the 1950s (as one would hope).  It does, however, make a fascinating read (ok, some of the parts about salinity and filtration I skimmed a bit, but the rest was great!) about the history of one of the most ambitious zoological projects ever attempted- recreating ocean ecosystems on dry land.

The Captive Sea: Life Behind the Scenes of the Great Modern Oceanariums, at GoodReads

Not Everything is a Two Person Job

Nonsense.  Anything can be a two person job if you try hard enough (and, apparently, have enough disregard for personal space)...

Institute of Museum and Library Services

Sometimes, it feels like every day I wake up and wonder what new blow the current administration is going to strike against the world today.  Will it be aimed at the environment?  International norms?  Human rights?  The other day, the roulette wheel seems to have landed on... libraries.  Or so it would have seemed to most folks.  From where I was sitting, the stakes were a bit higher and a little more personal.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was founded in 1996.  It's mission is to provide federal financial support for, you guessed it, museums and libraries - but the definition of the former has been stretched in the past to also include zoos and aquariums, as well as botanical gardens.  Over the past thirty years, many zoos and aquariums have received grants from IMLS to carry out important work.  You might think that, with the name of the organization, grants would mostly go to education programs, but in the past they've also benefit conservation and research programs as well, including studies of the reproductive biology of endangered species.  The agency was one of several which Trump has largely gutted this month through his "Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy" executive order.

Brookfield Zoo, along with six partners, receiving a grant in 2021 to create a centralized database of radiology images, which help vets better understand the health of animals, in zoos and in the wild.

Zoo New England received a grant in 2025 to study the genetic causes of various diseases in animals.

Woodland Park Zoo received a grant in 2020 to help improve education programs for visitors with disabilities and make zoo programing more inclusive (there's one of those words that the new admin hates, being part of that dreaded DEI).

IMLS, in case you were wondering, represents less than 0.005% (or less than one two-hundredth of a percent) of the Federal budget.  When the Trump/Musk cuts first began, and fallout started to become apparent, I told a colleague that, at the very least, when all of the dust settled folks would start to have a better idea of exactly what it is that the Federal government does.  By the time people begin to appreciate that, however, the damage will already have been done, and may not be as easily undone.

Zoo History: A Whale of a Rescue

Years ago, I was on a whale-watching trip, my first ever, hosted by the New England Aquarium.  As we headed out to sea, the educator who was giving the narration was talking about the differences between the baleen whales, like the humpbacks that we'd most likely see that day, and toothed whales.  He commented that, unlike toothed whales, baleen whales did not do well in aquariums.  Which made my ears prick up.  When I think of baleen whales, I think of the giants of the sea - blues, fins, seis, humpbacks.  Had any ever been kept in an aquarium?

Not as any sort of planned exhibit, no.  But there was JJ.

In January, 1997, a very young gray whale was found alone and in distress in the waters off of Los Angeles, California.  The female whale - weak, covered with parasites, and wounded all over - was rushed to SeaWorld, in San Diego, the closest facility that had any hope of accommodating such a large patient.  No one really expected the little infant to make it - there was very limited experience in keeping gray whales in captivity, and with poor success - but the whale was clearly on death's door, and no other options were available.  To the surprise of many, the little (I mean, for a whale) whale rallied.  Staff named the days-old cetacean JJ, after a patroness of marine mammal rehab programs.

Photo Credit: Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute

When it became clear the JJ was, in fact, going to live, the question that arose of what to do with her.  The desired outcome would be to release her into the wild, but the question was how best to achieve this.  Gray whales are migratory, so the plan was to release her in March, 1998, so that she could join the gray whales as they migrated north past California, hopefully being adopted into their pods.  In preparation for her release, staff played recordings of gray whale songs to familiarize JJ with their vocalizations, which ideally would make her seek out the whales and feel safe in their company.

JJ was in SeaWorld's care for 14 months when the time came to release her.  At the time of her rescue, she was 4.2 meters long and weighed 758 kilograms.  At the time of her rescue, she was being fed a milk formula that SeaWorld concocted, a mix of water, milk powder, whipping cream, and diced fish. She was soon eating 300 kilograms of fish and squid a day.  At the time of her release, she was more than double that length, 9.4 meters, and over ten times the weight, 8,700 kilograms, more than a full-grown male African elephant).  900 of those pounds were gained in her first month.  She was the largest marine mammal ever to have been kept under human care.  

It was recognized the JJ provided scientists with a unique opportunity to learn more about the movements, biology, and social structure of gray whales, so she was fitted with a satellite tracker that ideally would have provided 18 months of data.  Unfortunately, it fell off soon after her release (zoos and aquariums often serve as laboratories for testing equipment such as this in controlled conditions before it is deployed in the field... but, sometimes things still fall apart.

For two days scientists tracked JJ's movements from the research ship Megalodon as she swam north, and they liked what they saw.  She was in good physical condition, swimming well and in the right direction.  She seemed confident and well-adjusted, and making vocalizations; perhaps she heard other gray whales and was calling out to them.  When they last saw her, she was heading north, in the direction of the migration.

Decisions about what to do with rescued marine mammals are in the hands of the federal government, so when I see people claim that SeaWorld "fakes" rescues in order to fill their tanks with animals that are deemed non-releasable, I have to shake my head.  That's not how this works - it's not their call to make.  If I'd had the chance, I would have loved to see JJ before her release.  I've seen gray whales in the wild off the California coast, but you gain such a different perspective of a creature like that when you see it in its entirety and are able to really study it, rather than gain a peek above the surface now and then (I'm a poor diver/snorkeler, which also limits my options).   If she had stayed in SeaWorld - and that was an option that was discussed, since it was not certain how likely efforts to release her would be to succeed - she would have been a star, the sort of animal that nerds like me would have made pilgrimages to see.

As it was, I'm happy that we got the best possible outcome - she was found when she was, she was rescued, she responded well to captivity, and she was released, apparently successfully.  This was almost 30 years ago, and she may yet be alive, swimming out there.  Hopefully, the knowledge and experience that was gleaned from her will be useful should another infant whale ever find itself in dire circumstance and be in need of rescue in the future.

Swimming in the Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  There are few sights in America more iconic of this holiday than the Chicago River died green (or, at least, greener than it usually is).  But what do the fish that live in that river make of the occasion?  Dr. Austin Happel of the Shedd Aquarium is here with his insights!

Empathy and Animals

 There's a story which has gone fairly viral over the last week, featuring an American tourist to Australia, her Aussie boyfriend, and, as their unwilling costars, a mother wombat and her joey.  The American woman gleefully runs down the joey and snatches it up for a photo-op while her boyfriend films, the mother wombat racing after them, wailing piteously.  The video has generated a lot of outrage, with calls for the young woman to be deported (if not worse), coming at a time when opinions of Americans around the world seems to have, shall we say, soured.

I've spent most of my life working with and around wild and domestic animals, and instantly saw this as the bad idea as it was.  To be fair, so did most people, even without any specialized knowledge, but I wanted to be fair, here, because I've also come across an amazing number of people over the course of my life who have zero animal sense.  I could, to be charitable, understand how someone who is particularly vapid, or doesn't think of animals as autonomous beings, rather than props, might not realize that grabbing the youngster would be so upsetting, both for the joey and for its mother.

But to hear the mother wombat crying, to feel the joey frantically trying to free itself from your grasp, and to not, in that instant, realize what you're doing is wrong and to stop, but instead to laugh and ham it up for the camera?  That's not stupid.  That's just... well, wrong.

US Army psychologist Captain G. M. Gilbert, assigned to assess the defendants at the Nuremberg Trails after World War II - some of the most infamous war criminals of all time, said "I was searching for the nature of evil and I know think I have come close to defining it.  A lack of empathy... Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."  Not saying that this dumb young couple are Nazis, of course, or on that tier of badness, but I think there is a question that you have to ask about some folks - can they, or can they not, actually understand that other living creatures - humans or other animals - have feelings and awareness?  And, if they can understand this fact, do they care?

You live a charmed life as a zookeeper without coming across a few folks who come to the zoo to bully or tease the animals.  Sometimes you come across a straight up sadist.  Zoo animals are more vulnerable, of course, because they have limited avenues of escape, but at least they also have advocates watching over them in the form of keepers, curators, and vets.  I've seen and heard of bizarrely cruel behavior aimed at wild animals.  Last year, for instance, a wild wolf in Wyoming was chased down, tied up, and dragged around a bar for the amusement of the patrons, still alive and struggling.  I've likewise seen footage of baby dolphins dragged onto the beach for photo ops, and not surviving the experience.

I'm not a vegan, and I'm aware that participating in animal agriculture raises major welfare concerns.  I've had to euthanize many animals over the course of my career.  There are times when I've had to perform procedures or transfers which I know have been stressful or upsetting to animals, though I like to think that all of those were done for specific purposes, usually the health and well-being of the animal.  People who can inflict fear, pain, or death on animals for personal amusement - or for social media clout - will be something that I will never understand.  I'd happily see the enaction of new animal cruelty laws that make the harming of an animal for the purposes of social media carry extra penalties - including the permanent banning from all social media platforms, to hit these would-be influencers where it would really hurt them.

Fortunately, in this case, the wombat joey and mother were reunited and escaped off into the bush together.  The next animal that comes across some idiot with an Instagram account may not be so fortunate.

Species Fact Profile: Wolf Eel (Anarrhichthys ocellatus)

                                                                  Wolf Eel

                                           Anarrhichthys ocellatus (Ayres, 1855)

Range: Northern Pacific Ocean

Habitat: Marine Caves, Rocky Crevices, Reefs, up to 225 meters deep

Diet: Marine Invertebrates (Crustaceans, Bivalves, Urchins), Fish

Social Grouping: Pairs

Reproduction: Monogamous, often for life.  Breed in fall and winter, with the male wrapping around the female and fertilizing her 10,000 eggs as she expels them.  The pair coil around the egg mass (about the size of a softball) for 3-4 months, taking turns to leave the eggs to feed, with the female circulating air around the eggs and massaging them to oxygenate them.  Larva may drift in water column for up to 2 years.  Young mature at 7 years

Lifespan: 20 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN

• Grow up to 2.5 meters in length, weigh up 18 kilograms.  They have a single dorsal fin that runs the length of the body, a long, flexible, eel-like body, a small caudal fun, and no pelvic fins
• Males differ from females in having large lips and a protuberance on the top of the head
• Adults are greyish-brown or dark olive green with dark spotting.  Juveniles are orange with large dark spots.  Because of spotting, sometimes called the peacock wolf eel
• Pairs live in caves which they may remain in for their lives, unless forced out by a larger wolf eel
• Predators include large sharks and seals.  Main defense is hiding in crevices, powerful jaws.  Juveniles, which have smaller, weaker jaws, are more vulnerable to a variety of predators
• Prey is crushed with the hard teeth at the back of the jaw (captive specimens have shown a preference for eating softer prey than they would in the wild, such as squid)
• Despite its name, it is not a true eel, instead belonging to a separate family of ray-finned fish, the Anarhichadidae.  Unlike real eels, they have paired gill slits and pectoral fins
• In parts of the Pacific Northwest of America, wolf eels were called "doctor fish," as it was believed that only tribal healers were allowed to eat them; the flesh of the eels would enhance their healing abilities
• No commercial demand for a fishery; protected in some areas because of their popularity with divers and underwater photographers, as they can become quite tame

The Serenity of Water

I spent a little time mulling over the question of why aquariums - on a large scale and a small one - seem so prevalent.  As attractions, your average fish ranks much lower than your average bird or reptile, certainly less than your average mammal.  I doubt most visitors could name more than a handful of species (not vague types, but actual species) of marine life.  Apart from touch tanks, which are not applicable to all species, it's a lot harder for most visitors to directly interact with aquatic life.

Sure, aquariums have the advantage of (usually) being all-indoors, which makes them more reliable year-round attractions, and their keeping isn't as tightly regulated as it is for many other groups of animals, but all of that applies to amphibians and reptiles as well.  So why don't more cities build serpentariums to spearhead urban renewal?  (Yes, many visitors are scared of snakes, but people are also scared of roller coasters, and tend to be drawn towards what they fear).  Why doesn't your dentist keep geckos instead of clownfish?

I think it comes down to a simple fact.  Aquariums are peaceful.

I'm not particularly a fish person, but there is something incredibly calming about watching fish swim.  Many people find being near the water calming - the popularity of oceanside resorts predates the popularity of ocean swimming - so imagine the bonus of being safely, comfortable, under the water, or surrounded by water.  Unlike reptiles and amphibians, or birds and mammals, for that matter, fish in an aquarium tend to always be in motion, always visible.  Many possess fantastic colors and gorgeous patterns that can't be matched by terrestrial animals, and they come in shapes and forms that are very unfamiliar to us.

I often feel that being immersed in an underwater world is as close as we'll likely come to experiencing extraterrestrial life - an unlike diving or snorkeling, you're doing it from the comfort of a safe space where you can easily talk with and share thoughts and feelings with your friends and companions.  When people see fish in an aquarium tank, they are seldom also really seeing and noting the individual species, except for a few larger, stranger forms.  It's more like seeing the plants in a garden, or the individual colors on a painting, that all come together to form an impression on the viewer, with that impression usually being targeted as calmness, beauty, and wonder.  (Except for a few species, such as the larger sharks, where the exhibit designers tend to go for a different impression...)

I love zoos and aquariums and have chalked up well over 150 facilities so far, but there's only a tiny number of exhibits that have literally taken my breath away.  Probably the most recent of those was the main tank, Ocean Voyager, at the Georgia Aquarium.  Walking through the tunnels, or sitting in the theater-like viewing gallery and watching fish of all shapes and sizes cruise by, I felt like I was slipping into a meditative trance.  It was simultaneously so imposing, and yet so... serene.

So that's why dentist office waiting rooms - environments that are known to be fraught with tension and anxiety - have fish tanks.  Many visitors don't find fish to be particularly exciting - but they do find them calming, whether the experience is on a large scale or a small one.

Ornamental Aquariums

My interest throughout life has largely been focused on zoos and terrestrial animals, though in recent years it feels like I've been spending just as much of my spare time visiting aquariums - including several surprisingly large ones that I didn't even know existed before I went out looking for them.  There might be a few reasons for this.  One is that, whereas a new zoo is a pretty rare occurrence these days, aquariums seem to be popping up left and right.  Another is that it seems that our societal expectations of aquariums are a lot different from those of zoos.

There seems to be this cultural norm that fish and aquatic invertebrates are ornamental.  We'd all probably be pretty surprised if we went to the dentist's office and there was a small aviary attached to waiting room, certainly if there was, say, a cage of tamarins or marmosets, but a fish tank seems normal.  A crocodile pool or tortoise yard would seem out of place at a fancy restaurant or a hotel, but a fish tank is normal.  It's like on some level we've drawn a line and said that some animals are ok to be seen purely in terms of entertainment and aesthetics, and others aren't.

A large part of the aquarium bonanza we've seen are new aquariums being built as anchors for retail space or urban renewal.  Merlin Entertainments, perhaps best known for its LegoLands and Madame Tussauds Wax Museums, operates the chain aquarium Sea Life, with locations around the world.  Cities are building new aquariums to revitalize old properties or re-energize old districts, such as the relatively new aquarium in St. Louis, or the planned one in Syracuse, New York.  

Furthermore, apart from the entertainment world, aquariums pop up in museums and nature centers, sometimes as a tiny feature, sometimes as a major component.  When I visit a zoo, I know I've visited a zoo.  With aquariums, I sometimes find myself wondering if a place I just visited counts as an aquarium or not.

A major factor, I suppose, is that compared to other animals, aquatic life is fairly unregulated in the US.  Assuming it's even legal in your state as a private business, you'd have to jump through some crazy hoops to get permits for, say, monkeys or exotic cats, and then if you did get them, there's a lot more public scrutiny on the keeping and welfare of those animals (not a lot, maybe, but it seems like things are tightening up, to judge from the crack down on some notoriously shoddy facilities in recent years).  But fish?  No one really seems to care.  If an aquarium steers away from marine mammals, it's almost as if the animals that they do have aren't seen as animals - more like living pieces of art. 

Zoo Review: Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk

Located on the waterfront in Norwalk, Connecticut, the Maritime Aquarium is built on the site (and partially incorporating) an old ironworks.  At the time of its opening in 1988, it was billed as the Maritime Center and was more of a general museum, with the name changing in 1996 to place more focus on the live animal exhibits which were quickly becoming central to the facility.  It's hard to describe, but when I visited, it seemed like the aquarium had a somewhat different feel from many others that I'd visited - much brighter, airier, maybe more of a kid-friendly vibe to the whole facility than I've seen in many others, which tend to be somewhat dark.

The aquarium is a two-level facility, with much of the emphasis being on the native wildlife of nearby Long Island Sound.  Immediately inside the lobby you pass through a corridor of gift shops, snacks, and a theater; this mall-like atmosphere gave me a case of deja zoo, immediately reminding me of the Oklahoma Aquarium, a similarity that stuck with me for much of the visit.  In the heart of the aquarium is probably its star exhibit, an indoor/outdoor two-level habitat for harbor seals, with viewing through underwater windows as well as a catwalk around the surface level.  Daily feeding demonstrations are offered several times daily.

A meandering hallway past the seals leads through a series of habitats of Long Island Sound marine life, from the residents of the salt marshes that live where the rivers meet the sea to the deep water haunts of sea turtles, sand tiger sharks, and other large oceanic residents.  The 110,000 gallon shark tank offers tall viewing windows that provide excellent viewing of the sharks as they cruise by.  (When I visit aquariums, I often find that the shark exhibit is the exhibit that I spend the least time at, both because they all sort of look alike to me, as well as my unwillingness to push myself through the enormous crowds that they gather).  The aquarium is, by and large, fairly boilerplate in most of its other exhibits, including giant Pacific octopus, seahorses, a jellyfish gallery (in their standard, eerie glowing tank), a shark and ray touch tank, and Atlantic sturgeons in a separate touch tank.  

Being a New England facility, it seems almost obligatory that there's an impressive specimen of American lobster on display.  I really enjoyed seeing the various local fishes that I'd never heard of or had the chance to photograph, though seeing Atlantic salmon was also a bit of a treat; outside of my visit to the Pacific Northwest, I don't think I'd seen salmon in aquariums before, or at least with much regularity, considering how important the species is to us.  A small gallery features native reptiles and amphibians, with my favorite being a handsome display of diamondback terrapins.  I also liked the horseshoe crab exhibit, with a window into a culturing lab.

Perhaps the least-impressive exhibit is the river otter habitat; by no means the worst I've seen (and certainly better than Oklahoma Aquarium, the first comparison that I made), but I've just seen to many relatively plain, smallish, all-indoor river otter exhibits in aquariums and nature museums, and it would be nice to see something better for the animals.

Like many aquariums I've been to, it sometimes seems that the Maritime Aquarium isn't totally convinced in the star power of its own aquatic species, and feels the need to branch out a bit.  A gallery on the second floor is said to focus on how water connects different habitats, but as far as I can tell it mostly serves as a good enough excuse for the aquarium to feature an assortment of non-fishy species, such as meerkats, small primates, porcupines, and tortoises.   Which, to be fair, this is hardly the only aquarium to do... To be honest, I was mostly just surprised that it didn't go all in on being an Amazon rainforest exhibit to complete the standard aquarium checklist of required exhibits.

The Maritime Aquarium won't knock the socks off of an zoo or aquarium hobbyist on the search for new species or very striking exhibits, but it is a pleasant, attractive facility with a decent collection of native and exotic species in habitats which are, by and large, decent, and the visitors that I saw that day all seemed to be enjoying themselves.  Maybe not worth making a pilgrimage just to see, the way I would some of the truly spectacular aquariums out there, but still well worth a visit if you're in the area.

Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk

Zoo Review: Aquarium of Niagara

This month, instead of featuring a two-part review of a facility, as I often do, I'll be doing two reviews of two smaller facilities that I recently visited while traveling through the northeast.

A stone's throw away from its famous, namesake falls (please do not throw stones), the Aquarium of Niagara perches on the parkland that overlooks the raging river.

This is a fairly small aquarium which is largely situated to take advantage of the tourism that comes to see the Falls.  At the time of my visit it was slated to become a fair bit larger, as a second building was under construction.  This building, Great Lakes 360, focuses on the native fish and herps of the Great Lakes region, and I'm sorry that it wasn't complete by the time that I visited.  I find that a lot of small aquariums are a bit repetitive in terms of species, so native sections are usually my chance to see new species (my timing of this trip was set based on other factors, so it was either visit the more-limited version of the aquarium, or potentially never see it, so my review is focused on what I could see).

Outside of the aquarium is a small pool for harbor and gray seals.  It is, to be frank, one of the less-impressive seal pools I've seen, small and set low, so you're kind of looking into a pit.  More pinnipeds are seen indoors in a circular enclosure for California sea lions with underwater viewing.  I'd heard that the aquarium used to have Amazon river dolphins, and I assume that this was their exhibit.  The exhibit struck me as a bit stark, in addition to being entirely indoors, but I saw some work being done that suggested that more complexity was being added in the form of more haul-off spaces.  I've seen a few other aquariums (including some major, very well-regarded ones) that have similar set-ups for sea lions.  Part of me wonders if aquariums feel that, since they get so much training, interaction, and enrichment, sea lions don't require the habitat size and complexity that one might suspect.  I've never worked with pinnipeds, so this is speculation.

The fish and invertebrate exhibits are seen in the galleries that line the walls on two floors (the sea lions can also be viewed from the second floor).  The tanks varied between freshwater and saltwater species, with notable occupants including Kemp's ridley sea turtle (with a large remora riding on its carapace - an aquarium staffer told me that they were often found this way, with no negative impact on the turtle), Asian arowana, electric eel, lake sturgeon, and lined seahorse.  No large sharks were present, though there was a small touch pool with rays and bamboo sharks.  There was also a small gallery of jellyfish.  Signage was a bit lacking, which I regrettably find to be true of a great many public aquariums.

Apart from the sea lions, the building's biggest attraction is the Humboldt penguin exhibit.  This is also perhaps the best of the aquarium's exhibits, and compares reasonably with indoor penguin exhibits I've seen at other facilities.

One fun fact I learned about this facility - when it opened, in 1965, it was originally planned as a test facility for keeping marine life in artificial seawater.  A few other facilities had dabbled with it, but this was the first aquarium, based on its distance from the sea, to exclusively use the formula.  This has greatly expanded the ability of inland cities to build and maintain marine aquariums, and is certainly a noteworthy contribution to zoo and aquarium history.

All in all, this is not an aquarium that will take too long to go through (again, without speaking to the Great Lakes 360 expansion).  I don't know if I'd go out of my way for a repeat visit, and there's so much to do at Niagara Falls (I mean, you could look at the falls all day) that I don't know if I was there with a group I'd recommend taking much time for the aquarium.  But if you have some time, enjoy looking at aquatic life, and want to drop a few bucks to support a nonprofit and help it care for its animals, it can be a pleasant enough place to meander for an hour.

Aquarium of Niagara

War of the Lobstermen

For years, one the iconic educational hallmarks of many North American aquariums has been Seafood Watch - the program pioneered by the Monterey Bay Aquarium which seeks to drive awareness about sustainable seafood choices.  It breaks down fish and aquatic invertebrates into categories based on whether or not they are environmentally sound options.  I don't eat an enormous variety of seafood, but what I do eat has largely been driven by that little card and its recommendations.

Over two years ago, the Aquarium announced that it was concerned that New England lobster fisheries were posing a threat to whales, which could get entangled and drown in their lines, and recommended folks stop supporting those fisheries until the concerns were addressed.  The impacted industry, to put it mildly, did not take that well.  There's been a brouhaha about it since then, which just came to head  - a US District Court judge in Maine has decided that yes, a coalition of lobster fishermen can sue Monterey Bay Aquarium for defamation, as their accusations have harmed their business.

Main lobster fishermen can sue environmental group for defamation, judge says

The outcome of this case could have a tremendous impact on seafood sustainability programs.  For one thing, I'll be fascinated to see what kind of impact MBA and Seafood Watch have had on lobster sales - can it be demonstrated that they actually drove down lobster consumption?  If they did not, then there is no case... but if they did, it would show that people really do listen to this campaign.  Also, for something to be defamation, it has to be demonstrated to be untrue - so, are we going to see evidence of what kind of impact lobster fisheries are having on whales?  If so, this could potentially backfire on the lobster industry, as it may force a spotlight on their practices and how whales are being impacted.

I'm not thrilled about this case - I don't like the idea of an industry trying to stifle real concerns about harmful practices by threatening lawsuits.  I think all of this time and energy and money would be better spent trying to find ways to make lobstering and whale conservation more compatible.  Still, I'm hoping that some good comes out of this case, such as an increased awareness of the lobster industry's impact on whales, or a new appreciation for the power of Seafood Watch.  

Because of the Aquarium loses, and any fishing industry learns that it can sue or browbeat its way off of the list, then there really won't be much of a future for Seafood Watch.

Warts and All

"Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but it was heaps better than obscurity."

- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

When researching the Colorado river toad, it was difficult to find as much info as I would have liked about the actual natural history of the species.  Most articles that I read about it were primarily focused on the properties of the poisons secreted from the toad, and what happens to curious humans who ingest those secretions.  Which, I guess is kind of fair.  There are thousands of species of frogs and toads in the world, many of which very little is known about.  What puts this species on the radar of so many folks is that fact that some people, ill-advisedly, have taken to licking them.

There are a number of species out there which have, through one way or another, achieved some kind of notoriety.  Ask a layperson about bonobos, and you may hear them tell you a lot about the sex lives of the apes.  Ask about the cassowary, and you may get a lecture about how lethal they can be.  I don't think I've ever seen a social media post about hippos (including pygmy hippos, for which the fact really doesn't apply) that didn't have tons of comments proclaiming them Africa's deadliest animals.  And there's a ton of crazy info out their about the sex lives and reproductive anatomy of animals that I'm not even gonna touch here...

And sometimes we, as zoo professionals and educators, get a little lazy and use these scandalous facts as a hook to attract visitors to a species... but we don't really dive deeper than them to show the visitor the whole, actual animal.  Instead, the animal gets reduced to a quirky fact, which often gets exaggerated out of any proportion, might actually be very inaccurate, and in some cases comes to define the animal.  

Our animals are complex.  They are unique.  They are multifaceted.  And there's more to them than whether or not they are lickable.

Species Fact Profile: Colorado River Toad (Incilus alvarius)

                                     Colorado River (Sonoran Desert) Toad

                                           Incilius alvarius (Girard, 1859)

Range: Southwestern United States, northwestern Mexico

Habitat: Desert, Semi-Desert.  Usually found near water, such as irrigation ditches

Diet: Invertebrates (especially beetles), Small Vertebrates

Social Grouping: Asocial

Reproduction: Breeding triggered by rainfalls, usually in July.  Congregate around temporary bodies of water to breed; the males gives his (very weak) call.  Female lays up to 8,000 jelly-like eggs in strings, deposited in still or slow-moving bodies of water.  Tadpoles hatch in 2-12 days.  Metamorphosis complete in 6-10 weeks.

Lifespan: 10-20 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Largest native toad in the United States (the introduced cane toad is larger), measuring 18-20 centimeters long and weighing 300 grams
• Greenish-brown with some mottling; a few large, wartlike growths, especially on the hind legs, but skin is overall fairly smooth and leathery.  White lump at the corner of the mouth on both sides of the face.  Underside is creamy white.  Eyes are gold
• Active by day during the cooler months, nocturnal during the warmer months.  Take shelter in rodent burrows.  Aestivate during extreme heat.  Most active in rainy weather
• Primary defense from predators is a poison secreted from the parotoid glands, powerful enough to kill a large dog.  Some predators, such as raccoons, have developed the technique of flipping the toad over the attacking the belly, far away from the poison glands.
• Though dangerous (potentially fatally so), it has been noted that ingestion of the poison (in pop culture, usually referred to as "toad licking") can lead to hallucinations.  Possession of the toxin, Bufotenin, is outlawed in much of the US, as is possession of the live toads, especially if thought to be for the purpose of using them as a psychoactive agent

Don't Lick the Toads

In the practice of handling amphibians, it's worth noting that you need to keep hands clean not just for the safety of the animal, but for you as well.  Granted, you should wash your hands after touching any animal, but with amphibians there is a special imperative.  Many species secrete toxins through their skins - the poison dart frogs are the most famous examples, but so do a wide variety of other species.  

Again, these secretions are poisonous, which means they are absorbed - assuming it doesn't bite you, you could pet a king cobra or other venomous snake all day with no ill effect, as those toxins need to be injected.

It's the absorbent nature of amphibian venom which has, among other things, given rise to the trend to licking certain species of toad to get high off of their toxins.

These poisons aren't just a potential safety concern for keepers and predators.  They can also pose a threat to exhibit-mates.  Some amphibians can be a challenge to house in mixed-species exhibits, as they may, say, soak in a water bowl and secrete their poison, to the deleterious effect of other species in their enclosure.

Save the Frogs, Wash Your Hands

 I was showing a visitor around the backside of our reptile house one day when, upon opening the back of a python display, a saw a pile of poop on the floor of the cage.  Without a second thought, I reached in, grabbed it up, and tossed it in the trashcan.  I then turned around to the sink immediately behind me and scrubbed my hands.  When I turned back around, my companion was staring at me, horrified.

"Did you just pick that up with your bare hands?" she asked.

"Do you ever forget to wash your hands before you eat, or before you touch your face?" I replied.

"Well, yes."

"I don't."

Working at zoos has made me a compulsive handwasher.  This is not a profession-wide trend, and I think I'm actually something of an outlier.  Sometimes, it's to my detriment.  I remember working on a hard project in one of our exhibits with our team when our manager brought us a box of donuts as a thank you break.  While my coworkers immediately tore into them, I had to sprint across the zoo to find a bathroom... one that wasn't out of soap... and race back in time before they were all gobbled up.  My coworkers, with no such qualms, had already dug in.  I really hoped that those brown smears on the box were chocolate, as opposed to... other things.

I've tried carrying little things of hand sanitizer with me, but dang it, it just doesn't feel the same cleanliness after.

As I demonstrated with the python, washing my hands so much means that I really don't care about getting them dirty at work, since I know they'll be scrubbed clean soon.  But it just means that the scrubbing is essential and non-negotiable.  

Washing your hands doesn't just keep you healthy - it's also important to wash your hands in between animals that you handle to reduce the risk of transferring diseases or parasites.  It also has the benefit of removing the smell of other animals from your hands so as not to entice a reaction you might not want - like, say, a snake biting at your hand because it smells small mammal or bird on them.

The one group of animals that I'm most fastidious about washing around are the amphibians - even though I try to handle them as little as possible.  With their permeable skin, they are likely to absorb environmental contaminants, so I want my hands clean - and that also means rinsed thoroughly so that they don't absorb any soap residue.  Also, their soft skin is easily damaged, so I want my hands to still be wet so I don't inadvertently tear their skin.  This, of course, makes the naturally slippery frogs and salamanders even trickier to hold.

During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, I was happy to see that handwashing and basic hygiene came into fashion, if only briefly.  That said, I was also horrified to learn how many people weren't washing their hands before and had to be taught this basic skill.

Species Fact Profile: Blanding's Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii)

                                                         Blanding's Turtle

                                           Emydoidea blandingii (Holbrook, 1838)

Range: Northeastern/Nort Central United States, Southern Canada

Habitat: Wetlands (preference for clear, shallow water with plentiful vegetation)

Diet: Crustaceans, Fish, Frogs, Carrion, Berries, and Vegetation

Social Grouping: Asocial

Reproduction: 1-2 clutches of 8-15 eggs (range 3-22, varying across range) in a year, females usually reproducing every other year.  Usually nest in sunny areas with well-drained soil.  Incubation period 82-96 (range 65-128, again varying across range) days.  Hatchlings about 3.3 centimeters at hatching.  Sexually mature at 12-20 years based on size, with males maturing earlier than females.

Lifespan: 80 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Endangered, CITES Appendix II

• Males have a carapace length of 28 centimeters, females up to 22 centimeters.  Carapace is domed but slightly flattened along the midline, appears oblong from above.  Plastron is hinged, but does not close up tightly, sometimes called “semi-box” turtle
• Carapace is dark with numerous yellow or white streaks, while the plastron is yellow with symmetrical dark blotches.  The exposed skin is dark green-brown with some light speckling and a characteristic bright yellow chin and throat.
• Overwinter under or near the water, either buried in the mud or in vegetation and debris.  During the nesting system, females may travel up to 1 kilometer from the water to lay
• Predators include raccoons and foxes.  The turtles leave strong scent trails, which makes them more vulnerable to tracking by predators
• ·Only member of the genus Emydoidea, but sometimes placed in Emys with the European pond turtle and Sicilian pond turtle, rather than North American species.  Species name honors American naturalist Dr. William Blanding (1773-1857).
• Declining due to a variety of factors, including loss of habitat and fragmentation, mortality from roads (especially a problem for females on their way to lay), and increased predation of eggs and hatchlings by artificially-elevated populations of raccoons and other meso-predators.
•  Not widely sought after in trade, but even occasional collection for consumption or export can further reduce populations.  Often caught as bycatch during snapping turtle fishing.  Sometimes captured for sale on pet trade, with gravid females, being away from the water and exposed, being the most vulnerable to capture
• Raymond Ditmars described the species as very common in parts of the US when he wrote his Reptiles of the World and found it “erratic in habits” – noted that some species seemed to be primarily aquatic, others were primarily terrestrial (perhaps males vs females, seasonally?)
• Several US facilities – including Brookfield, Cosley, Shedd Aquarium, and Toronto – work with government agencies on a head-start program to collect gravid females, collect their eggs and raise them in safe conditions, and release them back to the wild years later (this supplementing the SSP breeding program).  Released turtles have been found years later, indicating their survival and the success of the program