There are some exciting things happening here at the Wild Animal Park this summer that you shouldn’t miss. This first bit of news I am just thrilled to talk about: we are honored to have here, from the Mbirikani Group Ranch in Kenya, Maasai tribesmen and women. Every time they walk by my shop (the Plant Trader) I get giddy with delight! They are such warmhearted and beautiful people.
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Greetings! My name is Maressa Takahashi, a fourth-year student at the University of California, Berkeley. I am majoring in biology with an emphasis on animal behavior, and I am excited to be working with Dr. Fred Bercovitch and Jen Tobey of the Behavioral Biology Division at the San Diego Zoo. This summer, you can find me at the San Diego Zoo observing my research animal, generally spotted as a fuzzy gray ball perched in a eucalyptus tree.
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As we get ready to flip the page on the calendar to a new month, we find that not much has changed with Bai Yun (pictured). She is still behaving normally and doing just fine. Behind-the-scenes at the panda facility at the San Diego Zoo, she goes out into her off-exhibit classroom enclosure daily for a little fresh air and sunshine. She is eating heartily. She participates in regular ultrasounds as the veterinarians reacquaint her with the process. This regular routine will pay dividends later, when her hormones make her more cranky and lethargic; establishing a routine of such exams now will make it easier to coax her into ultrasounds as late as the last week of her pregnancy.
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The San Diego Zoo offers student fellowships each summer to help undergraduates, recent graduates, and graduate students gain research experience. The Fellows enjoy doing research outside of the university without having to juggle classwork on the side!

“One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.”

Unlike Dr. Seuss’s mythical story, I count real animals. Some of them, though, do look a bit strange! My name is Blair and I am joining the San Diego Zoo this summer as an intern in the Behavioral Biology Division. I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, this spring with a B.A. in biological anthropology. While at Washington University, I served as an intern at the Saint Louis Zoo and worked closely with the research staff there on a behavioral study in which we compared the reproductive behavior of the Somali wild ass and Grevy’s zebra.
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Kinah has been in her new home on exhibit in Ituri Forest at the San Diego Zoo for about three weeks now (see Kecia’s previous blog, Kinah Meets the Otters). She couldn’t be a happier little swamp monkey! Not only does she have her family of Mr. Toad, Dixie, and “Mom,” Bunzi, she has four adolescents who are all too happy to play with and babysit Kinah! Msafiri, Jaribu, Sitawi, and Ota were all previous residents of this exhibit, and are all now part of Kinah’s extended family. Jaribu and Ota, the youngest of the four, have taken the most interest in their new little friend. They are as happy as Kinah to have a new playmate! Ota has even been seen trying to bundle up Kinah and carry her, playing “Mom.”
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Spring is here and with it the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center’s (KBCC) busiest time of year. This year was especially exciting. The Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program hatched its smallest chick yet! On May 31, 2007, the staff at KBCC hatched a Hawaiian ‘akepa (ah-KE-pa) weighing in at only 0.94 grams (less than 1/30 of an ounce). While the ‘akepa is thought to be the smallest passerine ever artificially incubated and hand-reared, in the past the hatchlings have weighed about 1.1 grams. To put this into perspective, here are a few items that also weigh 0.95 grams: 2 thumbtacks, 2 Q-tips, or 2 small paper clips. Or how about 1½ M&M’s (regular, NOT peanut!). A dime is more than twice as heavy as the little ‘akepa chick.
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Su Lin has reached a milestone this week: she now weighs 50.1 kilograms, which is around 110 pounds! Since her move back into the public eye in late May, our girl is adjusting very well back on exhibit, learning “the routine” down at the San Diego Zoo’s Giant Panda Research Station.
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Once Kinah and her group had been successfully introduced to the four juvenile swamp monkeys (see Kecia’s blog, Kinah’s New Home), it was time to put the spot-necked otters back on exhibit with them. Our otters have always gotten along with our swamp monkeys in this exhibit. In fact, the young otters and young monkeys have a great time playing with each other and making the crowds laugh with their antics. There was some apprehension, however, due to the fact that Kinah is so small! Would the otters accidentally cause her harm as she is much smaller than the juveniles the otters were already living with?
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Just a few weeks ago, Kinah made the move from her human caretakers to living with her family of fellow Allen’s swamp monkeys. Bunzi is doing great as Kinah’s new “mom,” and Mr. Toad and Dixie are excellent adult role models for little Kinah.
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An exciting change to Ituri Forest at the San Diego Zoo is the recent addition of more Allen’s swamp monkeys. Our older De Brazza’s guenon female, Sprite, was showing signs of anxiety from being in an exhibit with young swamp monkeys and otters. Discussions began about which animals WOULD enjoy living in Ituri Forest. It was decided to introduce another group of Allen’s swamp monkeys to the four young ones we currently have to make a very nice group of eight. The DeBrazza’s guenons Sprite and Chumu were relocated to another area of the Zoo, and swamp monkeys Mr. Toad, Dixie, Bunzi, and baby Kinah (yes, little Kinah from the Children’s Zoo) came to us! (Read Kinah Moves Out.)
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