Halloween came early at the Wild Animal Park. On Friday, Izu, Oshana and Mina, three of the big cats at Lion Camp were given four pumpkins with little bits of ground meat tucked inside or on top to attract them. Oshana didn’t need any extra enticement! She’s never been one to shy away, which is why it was no surprise to see her immediately pick up a whole pumpkin in her mouth and run off with it. Izu, the male, followed close behind, nipping at her tail hoping she would drop it, but of course Oshana did not. When she did finally put it down Izu tried unsuccessfully to take the pumpkin, but Oshana, whose name means ” strong,” illustrated how she got her name.
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Kenai is an arctic wolf. He is two years old and lives at the Hunte Amphitheater at the San Diego Zoo as one of our animal ambassadors.
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Some of you have noted that Bai Yun is a rather large bear. She is typically weighing in at about 100 kg (220 lbs) these days. She isn’t the leanest animal at our facility by a long shot. However, we aren’t alarmed by her size for a variety of reasons.
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Standing at the exit of the Giant Panda Research Station often makes me the recipient of some wonderful glances and comments. A fellow with a ball cap and a beard grins and says “Thank you.” A woman in her ECV squeezes my hand and comments, “You must love your job.” I respond that I would do this for free…but don’t tell my supervisor.
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With all of the attention focused on the new panda cub and her mother, Gao Gao and Mei Sheng may seem to be out of the spotlight. However, those of you who have visited us lately know that ” the boys” are our resident on-exhibit stars, entertaining our guests each day with their antics. For fans of our male pandas, I thought I could offer an update as to their activities.
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Zoo visitors (and blog readers!) often ask what kind of meat we feed the tigers. I would like to go into further detail about the diet we offer. Every day (except Tuesdays) we give the tigers a USDA-inspected, carnivore meat that is precisely weighed out by the gram. The meat is one-half ground beef and one-half beef heart, with added vitamins, minerals, and amino acids (taurine, in particular). On Tuesdays the tigers receive either a leg of lamb or a rack of ribs. On Sundays they are offered a whole rabbit (frozen and then thawed) along with their carnivore meat. On Mondays and Thursdays we add a large cow femur bone to their diet, which they will gnaw on for a couple of hours.
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Today we were all pleased to welcome a newborn gerenuk calf. The gerenuk herd lives opposite the okapis in the Heart Of Africa exhibit at the Wild Animal Park. In the wild, they are found in East Africa, from Somalia to Kenya. The dam went into labor around 11am. We brought her inside to give her privacy and the calf was born about 1/2 hour later. Within another 45 minutes he was up and nursing.
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Yesterday the camera and monitor system was set up at Lion Camp so we can keep watch over Etosha as her pregnancy reaches it’s conclusion. Tomorrow is her first possible due date, but there can be up to 10 days variation in gestation periods, from 100 to 110 days. We will be making late checks (2 a.m!), so it is important to be able to check on her but not disturb her in the process. The camera system works well, even in low light. The monitor is in the office, so she won’t even know we are there. The system also records 24 hours a day, so we can review the times we weren’t around as well. The first time she saw the camera, there was a very ” up close and personal” recording of her nose and mouth as she got as close to the camera as possible to check it out!
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A recent genetic analysis of more than 130 tigers in several locations throughout Asia has proven that the tigers in peninsular Malaysia are different from others on the rest of the continent, different enough to be considered their own subspecies: the Malayan or Malaysian tiger Panthera tigris jacksoni. This means that there are nine tiger subspecies (instead of the previously recognized eight), three of which became extinct in the 20th Century mainly due to poaching and habitat loss.
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It is very easy to forget that we as people are animals–primates very closely related to the gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and chimpanzees. But this past week, the Girls In Science met with keeper Yvette Kemp to learn about visual communication from the primates in Monkey Trails, and a little about themselves in the process!
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