Our little monkey has finally arrived! The keepers in the San Diego Zoo’s Ituri Forest have been anxiously awaiting the birth of our Allen’s swamp monkey Murrie’s first baby. Our wait was finally rewarded August 1, 2006 when we saw Murrie, high up in a tree, holding her tiny infant. Swamp monkey newborns are silver colored, with bright pink faces.
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As a San Diego Zoo bus tour driver/guide, my busiest time of the year is summer. About 40 percent of the guests who visit each day take the guided tour, and on a Saturday or Sunday in summer, that works out to around 70 tours a day! Thankfully, we have an excellent group of dedicated driver/guides to share the work. Our staff this summer includes a number of teachers, university students, year-round employees, and some folks who just thought it would be fun to work at the Zoo. We look for employees who are friendly and outgoing and have experience driving safely.
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When it’s a marsupial baby! So far you have read about smelly koalas and loud koalas (see Jen’s previous blogs: Smelly Koalas and Motorcycles and Koalas) and you have enjoyed learning about koalas in the wild (see Bill Ellis’ most recent blog, Koalas by Day, Koalas, by Night) but did you know how a koala starts it life?
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There are many reasons people love to flock to the Hawaiian Islands. For some, the smell of plumeria drifting in the night under a swaying coconut tree could equal paradise, while others find snorkeling with tropical fish in the warm Pacific Ocean a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But for gardeners, botanists, horticulturists, and other plant lovers, the true excitement lies in the flora!

Hawaii is the most remote archipelago, or chain of islands, in the world. Because of this, over the course of millions of years plants have evolved differently than in, for example, Africa or North America. Ocean currents, as well as birds, carried seeds from all points around the Pacific Ocean and distributed them to the islands. These seeds colonized and then morphed into new species more suitable for this new land. Unfortunately, because of the arrival of humans, native plants have been on the decline.
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It’s that time of year again! In China, some new panda cubs have already been born into the world. More are sure to come. Summer is the time when the panda females give birth to their youngsters, and from now through September we can expect news that cubs are arriving regularly at captive breeding facilities in China. Hopefully, many more unheralded births are also taking place in the mountains of Sichuan.
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Lion Camp has been a very busy place lately! We are pleased to announce that the pride has increased again, by three! (Read Marcia’s previous blog, Oshana’s Cubs Debut at Lion Camp.) Mina gave birth to her first litter on July 20. Izu, the father of Oshana’s litter, is also the sire of the new lion cubs. The family is housed in the maternity suite inside the bedroom area at the Wild Animal Park’s Lion Camp.
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It has been quite some time since my last blog about Mata and Rimba, the Malayan tiger cubs at the San Diego Zoo (see Bridget’s blog, Update on Tiger Cubs). The young boys are doing very well, and continue to grow. Rimba currently weighs in at 230 pounds (104.5 kilograms) and his brother, Mata, is 220 pounds (100 kilograms). (Pictured left to right are Mek, Rimba, and Mata.)
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Zoo InternQuest (ZIQ) is a high school work exploratory internship for juniors and seniors in San Diego County. Students are selected each spring for the following school year. This summer, in an effort to generate excitement for their upcoming internship, ZIQ interns were hosted to a tour of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Conservation Research, which houses the San Diego Zoo’s center for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES). Two blogs were written about this experience: Justin Tours CRES and Megan Tours CRES.
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When the Zoo InternQuest (ZIQ) interns visited the Beckman Center, it was our first opportunity to meet the other interns. We all know how difficult it was to get accepted to ZIQ, so it was fun to meet students with similar interests from all over San Diego County. Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) is housed in the Beckman Center and is something that all of the interns are genuinely interested in learning more about. CRES is the largest zoo-based research institute in the world.
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In July, when Zoo InternQuest (ZIQ) visited the Beckman Center, which houses CRES, I noticed that a number of things were larger than I expected. When I was involved in the Girls In Science program at the San Diego Zoo, I toured the original CRES facility located on San Diego Zoo grounds. While the research programs were amazingly successful, with the births of various endangered animals over many years, and amazing ground-breaking discoveries made in labs and in the field, the old building was cramped and contained only small laboratories.
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