Mondays are one of our favorite days at the cheetah research station at the Wild Animal Park: beefshank day! While Quint and Quando happily gnaw away on these massive bones, I’m there with my clipboard taking notes on their behavior during the construction of the iguana barn. There has been a lot of progress since my last blog (see Ria’s previous blog, Cheetahs to get Neighbors), and the Iguana Barn looks a lot less like a concrete maze and more like a cozy place to call home.

Since iguanas burrow underground to beat the heat, build a nest, or find protection from potential predators, the barn foundation had to be deep enough to allow this natural behavior. Now that the groundwork is done, the building itself is popping up quite fast. The iguanas’ U-haul should be rolling in by the end of the summer!

So, are cat naps being disturbed and cheetahs getting perturbed? Given all this development, the Q boys actually appear to be quite resilient to the ruckus. In fact, on some days the brothers’ behavior seems to be more directed at breakfast than at drills and saws! Once our data collection is finished, we may be able to sort through some of the more subtle differences in behavior. For example, during construction do the two brothers spend more time in more protected parts of the enclosure, do they spend more time close to the other cheetah, do they produce more stress hormones, do they pace more/nap more/are they more alert? It may sound like a lot of questions but in this case curiosity can help save the cat by teaching us more about how this exotic species responds to the surrounding environment.

I have also been spending a lot of time in the Endocrinology Lab, figuring out what’s the scoop on poop. We have a lot of different kinds: bird turds, elephant dung, cat scat, rhino patties, and poop from all different types of animals kept in the collection! We use feces to monitor hormone levels that, depending on the hormone we look at, can tell us a lot about the animal. Cheetah reproduction is pretty complicated, and monitoring reproductive hormone levels is important to determine when breeding should occur or if females are pregnant. With a couple of chemicals, a few lab machines, and a test tube or two, we can measure reproductive hormones in both the Q boys and our other breeding cats!

We are currently tracking changes after our recent breeding program to see what the scoop is and we are hoping for a breeding success! Only time will tell, so stay tuned for more updates!

Ria Boner is a CRES Neeper Summer Intern in the San Diego Zoo’s Behavioral Biology Division.

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