Try to think ahead, or else, before you can react, it will be ” going, going… gone.” No, that is not the advice of a baseball coach to some little league pitcher, but the message of head of the Genetics Division at the San Diego Zoo’s CRES, Dr. Oliver Ryder. In his presentation he told us that there will never be a magic phone call from the future telling us what animals will go extinct, so we must do all that we can now to save species. For many species there really is no time to lose before they go the way of the dodo.
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Have you ever gone to the San Diego Zoo and seen a blue polar bear, or wondered why there is a large area full of broken branches in the corner of their enclosure, or even why there is food strewn across the exhibit, under logs, in the water, and hidden behind rocks? Kelly Murphy, senior keeper at the Zoo’s Polar Bear Plunge, has informed us that all of these are different ways that the keepers give the bears enrichment and teach them ways to get rid of bad habits.
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If you’ve visited the cows at the San Diego Zoo recently, you probably have seen a cloned cow and just didn’t know it. Through this cloned cow (Javan banteng) and the other cows, the Zoo InternQuest interns once again had an opportunity to connect with the animals through a first-hand experience. Feeding the Javan bantengs and being so close to them allowed me to recognize the distinctive features in such a common animal. I was most surprised by their speckled tongues which they used to pull leaves of the branches we were feeding them.
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My trip to the Genetics Division of Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) was an eye-opening experience for me, especially because it is similar to the field I hope to be working in some day (molecular and cell biology). This career is extremely competitive, with only the Ph.D.s being able to do their own research without supervision. Most who work in this division with their own projects, however, are in a master’s or Ph.D. program. Others, such as Emily Mork, have their bachelor’s in biology and work as lab technicians.
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