Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Let’s imagine a trip to the Zoo. You pay for your ticket, slap on some sunscreen, and begin making your way through the park. You peer into all of the exhibits, and quickly find that something just isn’t quite right. There’s a deer carcass in the giraffe exhibit, fish in the anteater trough, and hay with the lions! Just like humans, animals require the proper nutrition to live healthily and happily. As the Zoological Society of San Diego’s head animal nutritionist, it’s Dr. Michael’s Schlegel’s responsibility to ensure that its residents are fed the appropriate diet for shiny coats, strong bones, and a happy disposition.

Dr. Schlegel has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and both a master’s degree and Ph. D. from the University of Michigan. As chief of nutritional services both at the Park and the Zoo, he manages a staff of 20 personnel, which includes warehouse managers, storekeepers, and food preparers. This team of twenty makes it possible to feed the vast array of animals their daily meal- over 600 individual plates of food each day!

Depending on the species, the contents of the meal can range from fruits and vegetables, to wax worms and crickets, or even an entire rabbit. Though it may seem like he’s playing chef, Dr. Schlegel’s job actually entails quite a bit of research. According to Dr. Schlegel, animals don’t need specific foods, but nutrients. He has to design diets to meet the animal’s nutritional needs, while working in such factors as availability, price, and the animal’s own individual preferences. After all that work, you can be sure that not just any food makes it’s way onto the animals’ plates. Each shipment is carefully inspected for what is called “biosecurity” to ensure that the food isn’t spoiled or contaminated. The perishables are then sorted and stored at low temperatures to maintain their freshness while the dry goods and hay are stacked in their own barns.

We actually entered one of the storerooms, lined with bins of fruits and vegetables, some of which I had never seen before. Among the array of foods was a mysterious fruit, which turned out to be a dragonfruit (right). I’ll have to say that it looked more like an alien pod than a dragon, more mutant than delicacy. But I’m sure that underneath it’s wildly pink skin lies a wealth of critical nutrients. And besides, who doesn’t like a little color in their diet?

Claire, Careers Team

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Stepping into the fridge room, I was able to see the vast amount of vegetables and fruits for all the animals at the San Diego Zoo. Dr. Michael Schlegel, Head Animal Nutritionist, was explaining how much food and time to check and prepare the food for all the animals; supporting his talk was the many shelves piled with the fruits and vegetables. Dr. Schlegel also showed us the meat room; this was not as pleasant as the vegetable room, for it was a considerable amount colder and, I don’t mind meat, (I’m an omnivore) but the fact that the “meat” in this cooler still had the heads attached, was a little weird for me. The vast quantities of food were quite the sight to see; especially since I knew at that point that together it fed over four thousand animals at the San Diego Zoo.

Dr. Schlegel is the Head Animal Nutritionist at the San Diego Zoo, as well as at the Wild Animal Park. The Animal Nutrition department’s mission statement is to provide safe, nutritious, science-based and appropriate diets for all the animals at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park. His job also crosses over into the bio-security, diet preparation, clinical nutrition, conservation and education.

Dr. Schlegel’s job helps with animal conservation by providing appropriate nutritional diets that ensure the health, reproduction, and sustainability of a species. So through keeping the species healthy at the Zoo and Park, he is able to contribute to the reproduction of species and making sure that they are healthy and filled with nutrients to reproduce. I feel that this job is definitely important in the fact that unhealthy animals don’t breed, or if they do, the female may not be able to provide necessary nutrients to the offspring.

Kate, Conservation Team

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Animal reproduction is incredibly important when it comes to increasing the population of an endangered species. It is no wonder then that the Zoological Society of San Diego goes to great efforts to know exactly when the endangered animals under their care are ready to reproduce. This is where the scientists of the Reproductive Physiology division come into the picture.

Dr. Chris Tubbs brought us into the endocrinology lab where he wasted no time in explaining how to study hormone levels of a particular animal by examining various samples from the animal. Hormones can be extracted from everything from animal blood to even urine and feces. Dr. Tubbs introduced to us one of the investigative procedures he uses on a regular basis: the enzyme immuno assay, or EIA. An EIA can be used to quantify the amount of progesterone, a particular hormone found in female animals, present in a sample. Depending upon the assay results, Dr. Tubbs is able to tell whether the animal is going through her normal reproductive cycles, if she is pregnant, or if something might be causing her to be non-reproductive, in which case further investigation is warranted.

Dr. Tubbs even prepared some mock assays for us to experiment with! These artificial assays gave us a good example of how involved the process really is. Once all of our samples had been mixed and the reactions had taken place, we compared our samples with several control mixtures to determine how much progesterone was in our samples based on color changes. It was difficult, but we managed to get through it just fine. After graphing our results, Dr. Tubbs helped us interpret the data to establish the reproductive status of our study animal. While our mock assays were a simplified version of Dr. Tubbs does, they gave us a clear picture of the importance of his work and that of his fellow scientists as well as the collective efforts of the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park in helping endangered species.

Stephen, Careers Team

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Dr. Chris Tubbs is a postdoctoral fellow in the Reproduction Physiology Division. He studies the roles of hormones in animal reproduction. This is used especially for endangered species at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park to help save species from extinction. Dr. Tubbs deals mostly with the study of progesterone, known also as the pregnancy-maintaining hormone. Studying this hormone helps researchers assess whether or not an animal is pregnant.

To study these hormones he uses an enzyme immuno assay, or EIA. He adds this colorimetric assay filled with a progesterone tracer into an extract of progesterone from an animal’s urine or feces. If the sample color comes out very dark, then there is more tracer than progesterone, which indicates that the animal is not cycling. Conversely, if there is very little color change in the sample, then there is more progesterone than tracer in the sample and the animal is either normally cycling or is pregnant.

Dr. Tubb’s job is very important not only to the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, but also to the entire world because each biome relies upon individual animals to keep the ecosystem strong. He is especially interested in hypotheses about why some rhino species are having a tough time breeding in captivity. One of his theories is that it may have something to do with chemicals in their food. Chemicals in our environment can negatively affect reproduction in various species. He is working to gain more information about rhinos, as well as other animals, to help the animals reproduce more effectively in captivity. You can do your share in helping Dr. Tubbs help wildlif by recycling, not littering, and being acutely aware of the chemicals you release into the environment. He made a point in telling us not to flush dirty cat litter down the toilet as it may contain a pathogen called toxoplasmosis which can kill animals such as sea otters!

Eric, Real World Team

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Last week we got a scientist’s perspective on one of the most important aspects of the San Diego Zoo’s mission- the conservation of endangered species. Dr. Chris Tubbs showed us how scientists use the level of progesterone, a reproductive hormone, in an animal’s body to determine when an animal is cycling or is pregnant. Toxins from an animal’s environment can sometimes cause hormone levels to change, and even stress has been known to be a factor in hormone regulation. Of course, reproduction is a key part in the survival of a species, so when an animal does not cycle, this can cause major problems for breeding success.

We also assisted in the Frozen Zoo cryopreservation program. Samples of gametes, or reproductive cells, of many species at the Zoo and Wild Animal Park are frozen in liquid nitrogen, preserving them for future uses, such as artificial insemination and studies on many essential species. Extensive measures are taken to ensure the viability of the samples, both before and after freezing them. We were guided in the process of evaluating these cells after thaw and running several tests under a microscope. Some criteria for a good sample include an intact outer membrane and a certain degree of motility to the cells. Saving the sperm of species that may shortly become extinct may give the Zoo a way to bring them back to flourish in the future, with the many technological advances occurring all over the world as well as in the United States.

Wendy, Conservation Team

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

When you think about diets, you don’t usually think about a specialized team lead by PhD’s, but that’s essentially what the nutritional department at the Zoo is. Nutritionist Dr. Michael Schlegel took us on a tour of the food warehouses and told us all about the unique challenges of being a zoo nutritionist. Just the idea of trying to figure out how to properly feed ALL of the animals at the Zoo and the Park gives me a headache!

What’s more, most of the animals in the Zoo’s care don’t exactly have a guidebook on how to feed them. The exact dietary needs of exotic animals have to be extrapolated from nutrition guidebooks for more common animals and field studies. For example, to feed a rare wild cat, you would start by looking at the dietary needs of house cats. So that bag of cat food in your garage might mean more to endangered species than you would think.

To make things even more complicated, when multiple species are housed together, the individual dietary needs and restrictions for all of the animals have to be considered. If one animal needs to eat lots of insects, for example, and one of the other animals in the exhibit can’t eat very many insects without suffering from health problems, the nutritionists have to figure out the exact amount of insects that are to be fed so that neither animal gets sick. Luckily, the animals and nutritionists don’t have to worry about where those insects will come from. The Zoo has its own cricket “farm” (pictured) and other insects are purchased in bulk and stored in massive refrigerators.

In addition to these massive refrigerators, the Zoo has massive storage rooms to hold hay, grains, and dry food. What’s funny about the dry food is that a few popular pet food companies produce specially formulated pellets and biscuits for the Zoo. So, Lion Chow isn’t too far-fetched of an idea. However, these pellets don’t make up all of an animal’s diet. Fresh foods are a big part of the animal’s diet as well. The Zoo uses only restaurant quality produce and supplements this with fruit and foliage grown on Zoo grounds. Keeping this in mind, remember not to pick or otherwise damage the plants at the Zoo when visiting.

Despite all of the fuss over the animals at the Zoo, your pets and their more exotic cousins have more in common than you may think, including the fact that it’s easier to overfeed animals than to underfeed them. Because keepers like to give food as rewards and treats, the nutrition staff has to make sure that treats are included in each animal’s daily rations. This ensures that keepers can give the animals rewards and treats without inadvertently causing them to be overweight. This practice can easily be adapted to how you feed your pets at home, because I’m sure it’s hard to refrain from giving Kitty and Fido treats, and they’re probably a little rounder than you may like. By feeding your pets a little less and calculating into their calorie count those “I love you” treats that your cute little kitty or doting doggy deserves, your pets may just shed those few extra pounds.

Madolyn, Real World Team

Corinne Pisacane is a research technician in Endocrinology. She currently has an intern, Ria, who is studying with Corinne with the hope to one day to become an endocrinologist. They are currently working with the cheetahs at the Wild Animal Park testing them to discover if any are pregnant. Successfully breeding the cheetahs is proving to be difficult however and only one out of four trials has resulted in a birth. During our time spent with Corinne and Ria, we were taught how to analyze cheetah feces to document traces of hormones that would be present only if an animal is pregnant.

Working with feces can be a smelly job especially when dealing with carnivores. But examining the poop for hormones is a very important aspect of an endocrinologist’s job. Because hormones sometimes exist in higher concentrations in certain parts of the feces, they mix the poop sample by “smashing” it, as in the picture above. The next step is to add various chemicals such as methanol, ethanol, and maybe even ether, to the poop powder, weight it, and then measure the hormones.

We were given the opportunity to conduct a trial of our own. We were given vials of colored water that represented the different solvents that would bind to different hormones if a cheetah were pregnant. We measured the concentration of hormones present in our samples. This was the most exciting activity of the day and although we weren’t working with the animals themselves, just their poop, we felt like real scientists!

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

When Corinne Pisacane gets home from work, she truly can say that she is pooped out! Mrs. Pisacane works at the Wild Animal Park in the field of endocrinology, which is the study of hormones. Studies in human endocrinology are quite common, but the techniques and parameters for studying hormones in other species are not so well established. Most commonly, Mrs. Pisacane uses feces and urine from animals to examine levels of reproductive hormones in the body for mating purposes or as a warning of potential health issues.

Documenting levels of reproductive hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone, is important for helping animal keepers implement the best breeding methods for successful reproduction. During an animal’s pregnancy, Mrs. Pisacane can continue to document the hormones to ensure that the animal has a successful birth. For some animals, gestation periods are only a few weeks long, however, for other animals such as African elephants, pregnancies last up to 24 months. Can you imagine toting around that baby for two years?!

Mrs. Pisacane’s mission is ultimately to help conserve animals. With all of the many issues facing species in the wild, she works to keep animals alive and well not only at the Wild Animal Park, but in the wild as well. A few of the ways you can help with the success of Mrs. Pisacane’s research is to volunteer your time cleaning up trash and preventing pollution, planting trees, donating money to conservation efforts, and just all around living green.

Eric, Real World Team

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

We went behind the scenes at the Endocrinology department at Conservation and Research for Endangered Species, or CRES. Endocrinology, or the study of hormones and their effects on the body, is more important to the conservation of endangered species than you might think.

Much of the work in the endocrinology department is done through noninvasive testing. The most common medium of tests is feces. Before you say “gross”, take these facts into account: It’s easy to obtain, and the animal does not have to be put under anesthesia or contained in any way. It may be smelly work, but it certainly is less stressful on the animals involved. In order to process the feces, it must be dried, and then ground into a fine powder. It is then put through the process of a Radio Immuno Assay, or RIA. This determines the concentration of specific hormones, such as estrogen or testosterone, in the animal.

The amounts of hormones, relative to their normalcy, are dependent on the condition of an animal. For example, if a female animal is going into estrus, then certain hormones will register higher on the scale. These values can be used to plan out breeding efforts for that animal. If an animal can be bred successfully, especially an endangered species, then the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park are doing their job- to aid in the reproduction and the health of endangered species populations.

The cheetah breeding program at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park is a great example of intensive breeding efforts to save a species. The cheetahs have bred successfully in the past, but in the last few years they have produced no cubs. There were some false pregnancies, in which the hormones were elevated but there was no embryo. This is one of the many challenges faced by the endocrinology department. Because they deal with such a wide variety of species, keeping track of relative hormone levels and samples can be very difficult. Pandas, for instance, only go into estrus three days out of the year! Fortunately, though, many breeding programs have been extremely successful, making the Zoo world-renowned for its achievements. Many thanks to the endocrinology department for their stinky, yet important work!

Wendy, Conservation Team

Getting the Poop on Behavioral Biology

Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Precision, precision, precision. If Corinne Pisacane had a motto, that would be it. Her work as a behavioral biologist for CRES (Conservation and Research for Endangered Species) at the Wild Animal Park requires a keen eye and a steady hand. Precision, you could say, is her middle name.

Just what does a behavioral biologist do exactly? Behavioral biology is the study of animal behavior through biological means- urine, feces, blood, urine, and other bodily fluids, even saliva! At CRES, however, the majority of samples that pass through Mrs. Pisacane’s hands are fecal samples from the many residents at the Zoo and Park. Though a bit on the smelly side, these samples are a valuable source of hormones, providing a wealth of information that indicate an animal’s level of health, and any important biological processes that may be going on inside its body. An increased level of estrogen, a reproductive hormone, for instance, indicates that an animal may be in peak fertility, useful for targeting the best time to breed an animal. This is extremely important in regards to increasing populations of endangered species. A female giant panda is fertile only three days out of the year, so it’s important that the Zoo staff know when those three days are coming around!

The future of many species lies in Mrs. Pisacane’s hands, who spends her days at the endocrinology lab extracting these hormones. We actually performed a mock assay under the watchful and guiding eye of Mrs. Pisacane- but with water tinted with food coloring instead of the expensive radioactive chemicals that she uses on a daily basis. Though it was only water, we worked as though it wasn’t, feeling all the more like behavioral biologists in our official lab coats and latex gloves. The real biologist in the room, though, was Mrs. Pisacane, who has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree under her belt. Though a bit tedious, the results from her assays are crucial to the well-being and survival of the Zoo’s animal collection. It’s a big responsibility, but a highly rewarding one.

Claire, Careers Team