San Diego Zoo Blogs

Thanks to all of you for your comments about Uganda giraffe calf Majagi and her mom (see post Bottle-fed Giraffe). Also, thanks for recognizing all of the keepers this past week during National Zoo Keeper Week! We all love our jobs and are privileged to take care of the animals. We do our best to always put the animals and their concerns first. YOUR support of the Zoo and Park makes that possible!

I’d like to answer some of the questions readers had, so here goes:
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Recently, one of our readers asked us how much bamboo Yun Zi is eating at this point. At nearly a year of age, our littlest panda is beginning to use this foodstuff as a source of daily calories. Although this is a recent development for him, he has been engaged with bamboo for many months.
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Be sure to read Part 1, Wild CSI: Pandas!

Wednesday
On day three, the students were back in the lab learning about behavioral biology and a very important tool used in this discipline, the ethogram. An ethogram is a detailed list of behaviors and activities of a particular species. As a panda behaviorist, I use our panda ethogram on a daily basis. It’s an invaluable tool that can help us understand why an individual animal is engaged in a particular behavior, as well as understanding the general behavioral patterns of a species as a whole.
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Wow! I have now finished my surveys of koalas on all the islands and mainland near Mackay in the state of Queensland, Australia, and can report that the damage done by Cyclone Ului back in March 2010 was quite impressive. The week on Rabbit Island and the adjacent mainland last month was a real eye-opener for me. I have been studying koalas in the relatively benign environment of St. Bees Island for over 10 years and the nearby islands for 4 years. In that time I have not seen any cyclones hit the islands this hard, so I had no idea of the kind of damage these storms are capable of.
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Tuya, the San Diego Zoo’s Bactrian camel calf, has been gaining about 2 pounds (0.9 kilograms) a day since she was born in March, and it was time to give her some more room to run. (Read Laura’s previous post, Baby Camel Meets Adults.) Camels love to run and kick their legs out in every direction. It is something we affectionately call the “happy camel dance” in our area. It almost seems like they are throwing all four legs out at once and then rocking from front to back. It is one of the more comical aspects of the Bactrian camel!
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Have you ever wondered about the beautiful landscapes you see at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park? The Park’s gardens are tended to by a team of 28 hard-working horticulture staff, broken into eight teams. One team maintains the large field exhibits and the Journey into Africa trail path, while others work on the greenbelt area of botanical gardens, irrigation, and integrated pest management. There is a team of arborists who care for the many trees on grounds, and two teams of horticulturists that maintain the central Nairobi Village area. With a total of 850 acres of trees, shrubs, flowers, and other plants to maintain, the horticulturists stay very busy.
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Did you know that the third week of July is recognized as National Zoo Keeper Week? Well, you probably did if you were at the San Diego Zoo or Wild Animal Park (or just about any other zoo facility in the nation) this past week!

If you are a San Diego Zoo member, you may recall in the July 2010 ZOONOOZ there was an article about National Zoo Keeper Week. Here in San Diego, there were several things set up to celebrate the unique career of being a professional zoo keeper. A big event not at the Zoo or Park was being part of the opening ceremonies for a Padres home game on July 17—we even brought along some of our animal friends for the pre-game activities.
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The first time I explained biomimicry to a stranger, I was in an airport waiting for a flight. My copy of Janine Benyus’ book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature sat on my lap. The fellow waiting next to me asked what it was about. Being a relatively new convert at the time, I was at a bit of a loss for how to quickly and succinctly explain the concept to him. “The author says, ‘It’s about looking to nature for inspiration for new inventions. It’s not really technology or biology; it’s the technology of biology. It’s making a fiber like a spider, or lassoing the sun’s energy like a leaf.’” My efforts to explain the concept were rewarded with a blank stare, assuring me I had completely baffled him.
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A few weeks ago, the San Diego Zoo’s Conservation Education team kicked off their annual, week-long Wild CSI Summer Camp for San Diego middle school students. As I mentioned in my previous blog, Panda Lab for Students, I have been working with the conservation education group to help create a fun and exciting giant panda module that will teach the kids about conservation science and about the multidisciplinary approach we use to conduct our panda research here at the San Diego Zoo. Here’s what we did:
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I’m happy to say the Pet Desert Tortoise Hotline is really catching on, giving us the opportunity to save more stray and unwanted desert tortoises and educate folks on the proper care for their pet tortoises. Manned by staff at the San Diego Zoo’s Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC) in Las Vegas, we’re also really excited to have a new employee join the team! Marissa Musso has come on board as the hotline assistant, and she’s doing a great job out on the front lines educating and working with the public. Marissa’s excellent people skills and cheerful demeanor have been a great asset for many of our hotline calls, especially when we’re faced with challenging cases of extreme pet desert tortoise neglect.
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