It has been a while since we last updated readers on the status of the mountain yellow-legged frog Rana muscosa recovery program at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research (see post, Frog Blog). The long-term goal of the program is to reintroduce the offspring of our managed-care colony back into the wild to supplement the critically endangered Southern California population of mountain yellow-legged frogs.
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How long will Stephens’ kangaroo rats keep drumming their feet in Southern California?

Talk about charismatic microfauna! This animal has to be the most attractive animal in Southern California weighing less than a pound. The Stephens’ kangaroo rat, known as SKR by those in the know, is the subject of one of our new conservation programs in the San Diego Zoo’s own backyard.

Just up the road from San Diego, at Lake Skinner in Riverside County, the endangered SKR lives in one of its few remaining strongholds. The Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency manages lands for the express purpose of saving this little-known rodent. It may be a rodent, but despite its name, it’s more closely related to pocket gophers and squirrels than it is to rats and mice.

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Bai Yun continues to progress toward her birthing window in a predictable fashion. Part of this progress means she is “denning up” in preparation for the birth. Over time, she is spending more and more time in the den resting, eating, and nest building inside. In the last 24 hours, she spent 680 minutes (over 11 hours) in that den, but soon enough it will be 1,440 minutes (a full day!).
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I am not artistic at all, but I love to watch people who are! This summer, both the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park have artisans from around the world demonstrating their skills. The other day I was mesmerized as Leonor Alfonso, a tagua nut carver from Ecuador, demonstrated her craft in front of the Zoo’s Treehouse Trader gift shop. Using a sander and Dremel tool, Leonor can take a plain-looking brown tagua nut and transform it into a turtle just emerging from its shell, a hummingbird sipping nectar, or an iguana on the prowl. It’s amazing to watch her in action!
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During the years I have spent working with desert tortoises, the one thing that I am continuously asked is “How do you know if it is a female or a male?” Well, it’s not an easy answer because there’s more than one way to determine the sex of a desert tortoise, and it can take some practice to get it right.

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We have been excited to discover that Bai Yun is pregnant with twins! Our veterinarians confirmed via ultrasound that there is a fetus in each of her uterine horns (the panda has a bifurcated uterus, shaped like a Y). When they were first discovered, vets could see that one fetus was well developed, with a robust heartbeat, and the other was smaller with a well-developed placenta but no heartbeat yet detected. A subsequent ultrasound revealed a fetal heartbeat on both sides. This morning, only the more developed cub could be seen. Does this mean that the other embryo is lost? Or was it just hidden from view? We can’t say for sure either way.
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One of the best parts of visiting the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park is seeing all of the amazing animals in large, natural enclosures, and the okapi exhibit in the Park’s Heart of Africa is no exception. Okapis, which are so elusive that they were once thought to be a myth like the unicorn, are extremely difficult to find in the wild. They live in dense forested areas, and with their deep chocolate color and striped legs they blend into the background.
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Currently, Bai Yun is still under close observation for any further signs of pregnancy. Female pandas will typically come in to their estrus around the same time of year, and gestation can take anywhere from three to six months. With Bai Yun, so far all of her offspring have been born after a four-month gestation.
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Have you ever wanted to ask a rhinoceros how sensitive its skin is? Or have you ever wanted to ask a cheetah why it has spots and not stripes? Or maybe you want to ask a ground hornbill how to properly catch a snake? Well, in all honesty, you can ask them all the questions you want, but you may never get an answer. That is, until now.
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With enough rope to make the 550-foot (170-meter) rappel to the cliff base, Juan Vargas and I moved steadily downward to this year’s only condor nest in the Baja California, Mexico, California condor release program (see post, Condors: Quest for the Egg). Situated in a 6-foot (1.8-meter)-deep cave punched into a massive granite wall, it was the same cavity this pair attempted to nest in last year but failed in the egg stage of incubation. This season they incubated an egg successfully, and the cave now housed a startled, month-and-a-half-old chick that began hissing and lunging at us as we landed at the cave opening.
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