All this is very normal behavior for a pregnant polar bear. What we don’t know is if she could be experiencing a pseudo (or false) pregnancy. At this point, the only way we know to tell the difference is when we see the cubs. And before you wonder….Yes, we are beginning to perform ultrasound checks on Chinook. We really don’t know what to expect or when we might see something. It’s very reminiscent of the first time we performed ultrasound on our giant panda Bai Yun! The big difference is we’ll be looking for a fetus about the same size as a panda baby in a body currently at 650 pounds (295 kilograms)!

The preparations for the den and adjacent bedrooms are almost complete. The den is ready for installation as soon as Chinook gives the word; the bedrooms adjoining the den are closed in, darkened, and have sound protection; and yes, the camera mount for the den is ready! We don’t yet know if we’ll be able to have a live camera feed, but we’re working on that.

The polar bear management yard will be completed within the next few weeks. This yard will be the first place Chinook will take her cubs outside. The pool is designed specifically for cubs learning to swim. And, most importantly, the yard is all natural dirt. Can you imagine the pigpen lessons Chinook will give her cubs? Oh, the art of how to get really, really dirty!

Keep an eye on things, and when you see us put a hush over the area and ask, “Can we have quiet, please?”, you’ll know we are getting closer to knowing “Is she or isn’t she?”!

JoAnne Simerson is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Watch the bear daily on Polar Cam

Remodeling Polar Bear Plunge

New fence poles

Out come the glass barriers!

A plastic ball is wedged into the bears' stash pipe.

Inside the bedroom area, the final preparations for Chinook’s den are being completed. The den is now equipped with a camera and microphone. All the controls and monitors are now in the keeper kitchen. We are still hoping for funding for the Internet cable and cameras for the new management yard. The final work is to install all elements of the den and outer chambers. This will happen when Chinook tells us through her behavior she is ready to be secluded. Right now, she still shows she wants to go out on exhibit for short periods every day and then is quite content coming in and sharing her day with her keeper.

It takes teamwork to perform ultrasound on a cooperative Chinook.

Good girl, Chinook!

Tatqiq explores the new yard.

Yes, all is complete inside for Chinook to remove herself whenever she wants. Every day our girl lets us know how she is doing. Mostly she is content hanging out with her keeper in the bedroom area while we work. But sometimes she still wants to go out to the yard or the exhibit to enjoy a quick soak and rub and then come back inside. Yes, she is still very cooperative for ultrasounds each week. And we’ve not yet been able to detect a pregnancy. So keep your fingers crossed! Remember: with the delayed implantation and length of gestation, we may not see cubs until next year if we count from the last day of breeding. Oh, a long wait may be ahead!

So far, Chinook isn’t showing any interest in spending time in her den. We built it in one of her favorite sleeping areas. It is completely covered so no light comes in except through the doorway. We have a thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature so it stays comfortable for her. The floor is made of recycled plastic and is raised up just enough to allow for any moisture to travel beneath and into a drain. Polar bear cubs have no ability to thermo-regulate at first, so it necessary to protect them from cold but still keep the den cool for Mom.

Chinook is still making beautiful beds for sleeping. Her preference has always been Bermuda hay, but lately she is choosing pine needles we collect from around the area. Chinook is from the western Hudson Bay population of polar bears; this means the den she was born in was first dug in frozen peat with tree roots as the roof support. Her mother would then have dug a second chamber into the snow after it drifted into a deep pile outside the earthen den. Chinook’s den is built adjacent to another bedroom we have darkened, and she could use it as a second chamber. Right now, though, she prefers to sleep in another area of the building. Oh, what will our girl choose?

What happened when we first gave the bears access to the new management yard? Chinook went out when her keeper was out by the exhibit and went back in when her keeper went inside. An interesting behavior for our independent girl! Kalluk only stuck his head out and was more interested in his kiddie pool inside, but Tatqiq became queen of the hill! She explored and rubbed on the bushes and made great muddy paw prints from the pool. We give Chinook access to the yard every day. You may sometimes be able to see her in the yard from the Polar Cam. She looks absolutely beautiful with the trees and bushes alongside.

Kalluk and Tatqiq are keeping themselves well occupied out front. Tatqiq is filling the “dirty” bear role for Chinook. This is not a role that is unfamiliar to her. When she was a cub, she would get so brown that guests would sometimes ask, “At what age do polar bears turn white?” And Kalluk has commandeered all the kiddie pools. He has used them well. We have only one left that can be recognized by any original shape! We’ll have to wait until next summer to get new ones. Until then, both are now enjoying sleeping in the mulch piles and sandy beach area of the exhibit and making pillows from the palm wraps and ginger branches our horticulture department provides.

JoAnne Simerson is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Tina puts a trunk up to check in with travel partner Jewel in their new home at the San Diego Zoo.

APHIS, the agency that enforces the federal Animal Welfare Act, chose the San Diego Zoo as the receiving facility for these elephants because the Zoo can provide the elephants with the care that best matches their particular needs. The newly created Prebys Elephant Care Center is a state-of-the-art facility designed with the care of older pachyderms in mind. The elephant move occurred under the auspices of APHIS and was observed by San Diego Humane Society officials.

Once the truck arrived at the Zoo, it was opened, and the elephants were invited by animal care staff to come into their new home. It took a couple of hours for them to decide to take advantage of the offer, but finally both girls were in the Elephant Care Center together, munching on bananas, chirping, and checking each other with their trunks.

Jewel and Tina are not expected to be available for public viewing for the next few weeks as they acclimate and receive thorough health examinations. Zoo officials hope that the two will integrate well into the existing herd of seven elephants current housed in the new exhibit.

Christina Simmons is the public relations manager for the San Diego Zoo.

Here’s video of their first veterinary exam at the Zoo.

Tina opens her mouth for our vet's visual exam.

Both elephants like most of the fruits and vegetables that have been offered. We have also given them three varieties of hay and several types of browse material. Both elephants love raisins, which the keepers have used for some training procedures. Apples, carrots, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, squash, cucumbers, celery, and romaine lettuce are just some of the varieties the new girls can enjoy.

The quality of the produce we give all of our animals at the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park is the same quality that you would buy for your own table at home. Each elephant receives approximately 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of food daily!

Rod Owlett is an animal care supervisor at the San Diego Zoo.

Ranchipur and Cha Cha

As of now, we have successfully introduced Sumithi, Devi, Cha Cha, and Cookie together, and they can be seen most days in yard one until about 10:30 a.m. or longer. Elephant intros can be tedious and do take awhile to accomplish. Cookie and Devi provide most of the activity. Devi is challenging Cookie for dominance, and Cookie, being the wise old girl that she is, isn’t taking the challenge lying down. There are lots of interactions between the two: some rough ones, some fast ones, with Cookie chasing Devi the length of the yard; and some quiet ones where they stand side by side.

Sumithi and Cha Cha have decided to be neutral and are getting along pretty well. Cha Cha really wants to be friends, but the verdict is still out with Sumithi, although she doesn’t mind that Cha Cha is standing near. Devi and Cha Cha are really fun to watch. So many little nuances: Devi standing quietly next to Cha Cha eating, dusting, touching, then Devi swats Cha Cha just for good measure. Cha Cha doesn’t mind, for it is all part of elephant behavior. Each day gets better and more fun to watch them all interact.

We have had Tembo in with the group, and it was pretty chaotic. Tembo was afraid of the others and charged and pushed them around, but did not carry it too far. We had Tembo and Cookie together by themselves today and it went okay. Tembo definitely was the aggressor, but Cookie did not give in, and after about 45 minutes, they were standing side by side.

This is just a brief overview of how the intros have been going. We try them almost every day with some combination of the girls. It will take quite awhile for everyone to get accustomed to each other, but we have all the time in the world and a top-notch facility to allow these wonderful elephants time to work things out on their timetable. For those who have visited and seen elephants separated into other exhibits, it is because Ranchipur is in musth and can be very aggressive toward the other elephants. Cha Cha is his favorite, and she keeps him company. Our goal is to have everyone together and have access to all of the exhibits and let them determine where they want to hang out and with whom. Choices…that’s what it’s all about, and soon, Tina and Jewel will be a part of those choices!

I have been given the task, along with several other keepers in our program, of introducing Tina and Jewel into our facility and our elephant family and they are responding great. Both are great girls and seem to like their new surroundings. Over the next several weeks, we will be working toward improving their health and getting them used to our methods of caring for elephants before we attempt to introduce them to the rest of our group. Stay tuned!

Ron Ringer is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

For those of you not familiar with the special needs area within Elephant Odyssey, where Tina and Jewel are currently living, the floors inside the stalls are made of state-of-the art rubberized flooring. They also have access to a dirt yard where toys and other enrichment devices can be placed. We look forward to introducing them to the rest of the facility and elephants later this year.

Stacy Conery is a keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Although the San Diego Zoo has a significant amount of experience and a tremendous amount of success hand-rearing great apes, we recognized that we could only teach an infant gorilla so much about how to become a successful adult. We weighed the pros and cons of our level of interaction and determined the threshold for how much impact our influence would have compared to that of his family. We knew we could teach Frank some of the tools he would need to keep him healthy, but we knew we would never be able to teach him how to “speak” gorilla. The fact that the females in his family (mom Azizi and aunts Imani and Ndjia) were all inexperienced moms, we hoped that raising Frank as a team would allow them to get practice in the skills that make a mother successful. (Read post, It Takes a Village to Raise a Gorilla.)

As a bunch of self-described “primate nerds,” we looked for some of the more subtle signals that would indicate a mutual learning process. The most obvious was transportation and locomotion. Generally speaking, we look for milestones in physical aptitude, and we start with the most basic: knuckle walking, climbing, and riding on the adult females’ backs. Although the physical adaptations for knuckle walking already exist, it does take some practice to get it right, and most infants begin their first forays into walking with an open hand (or palmer) approach. It takes a few months of practice, but one can see the subtle movements that lead to a more curled under, traditional knuckle walk.

We waited and watched, and Frank grasped this skill right on time. The trick then becomes determining when to open your hands for climbing and gaining enough balance to knuckle your way up onto an uneven surface (logs, rocks, etc.). When you look at some of Franks photos, you can see how his hands are much more parallel with the ground than the adults’ hands are when he climbs. Although he is using his knuckles to make contact, he is still putting most of his weight on his palm and hands. Subtle, but really fascinating if you’re a primate nerd!

Climbing was a little bit easier and came on much more effortlessly than the whole knuckle-walking thing. We made sure he had plenty of climbing opportunities in his bedroom area, and of course grasping is one of the first physical skills that develop in infant primates. As soon as a baby primate is born, he or she needs to be able to grasp on to Mom even while sleeping. The transition from using this skill on Mom to using it on a rope or a tree is generally a smooth one. This was certainly the case with Frank, and we often marveled over how someone that was so ungainly on all fours could happily suspend himself by one hand. This has now evolved into some pretty tricky moves in which he can suspend himself by his right hand while beating his chest with the left. Then comes the need to coordinate the feet in the whole climbing process, sometimes keeping a firm grasp on one object with his foot while negotiating a gap with his upper body. This still results in a sloppy tumble about half the time, but he maintains the confidence to keep trying, which is another trait that is reinforced by his close relationship with his family.

Being transported dorsally (on the back) or ventrally (on the chest) by one of the females is also something that takes a team effort. The females do most of the work to get him into position, but he needs to recognize the signals and cooperate a bit when the position gets awkward. Most female primates develop their own style when it comes to transporting a baby, and these three girls are no different. Azizi is the master of the ventral hold and is not real keen on the dorsal hook up. Ndjia is pretty good with both, but often prefers what we call the “furry football” approach in which she carries him by the rump with his arms and legs wrapped around her forearm. It’s a bumpy ride and Ndjia’s limp (from a leg injury as a juvenile) makes it look pretty uncoordinated. It suits her personality, however, and it sets her up nicely for a perfect tumble in which she ends up laying on her back with Frank in perfect tickle position.

Aunt Imani gives Frank a lift.

Paul Donn hangs out with his little son.

Before Frank was born, it was not uncommon for the three females to spend most of the day in proximity to one another while Paul rested in his favorite nap spot on the other side of the exhibit. About two months ago we started to see a subtle migration of the females to the periphery of Paul’s nap spot. Now, more and more frequently we can see the troop within visual contact of one another and the females spending less time out of range from their silverback. Paul and Frank have an incredible bond, and when they are inside it is usually the two of them who spend the most time together, which in turn draws the females in closer due to Frank.

Once again, the little guy’s impact on the entire troop has been almost immeasurable and has been the key to our goal of allowing these magnificent animals to express natural, normal gorilla behavior so that we can share that special connection with our guests. Please join us for the San Diego Zoo’s Discovery Days: Absolutely Apes, presented by Bridgeport Education, September 17 to 20, and learn more about all of our amazing great apes. Frank is serving as the San Diego Zoo’s ambassador for the WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) 2009 Year of the Gorilla celebration.

Greg Vicino is an animal care supervisor at the San Diego Zoo.

Read more posts about apes and monkeys

The San Diego Zoo is very excited to announce the birth of one of the more unusual creatures in its collection: an okapi. On June 10, 2009, Safarani gave birth to her third offspring, a baby boy. At a month old, Sekele (meaning “secret”) is already weighing in at about 100 pounds (45 kilograms). An old pro at motherhood, Safarani is taking wonderful care of her young one. After nearly a month of being held in the “maternity yard,” mother and child have recently been introduced to their exhibit in the Zoo’s Lost Forest zone.

Sekele’s older sister, two year-old Sukari, and unrelated female Kelle were VERY interested in this new addition and spent a great deal of time at the “howdy” fence separating them. (Read a previous post about Sukari, Okapi Calf’s Big Adventure, Day One.) Soon, the fence will be removed and Sekele will be free to investigate the full enclosure as well as his new okapi family.

Once known as the “African unicorn”, the okapi was believed to be only a thing of myth. One of the more recent mammals to be discovered by Europeans, famed explorer Henry Stanley described it as a sort of donkey, and other Europeans who caught glimpses of its striped legs thought it to be some sort of forest zebra. The okapi, however, is the only living relative of the giraffe. Indeed, they share a lot of characteristics: an elongated neck, a lengthy tongue, and the males have ossicones (”horns”). Although not currently listed as an endangered species, the okapi lies precariously on that cliff. Living in a very isolated part of a single country in central Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo), they have a rather long gestation period, and their habitat is threatened by deforestation and human encroachment. Exact numbers in the wild are hard to come by because these creatures are so elusive, but it is estimated to be between 10,000 and 20,000. In managed care facilities, there are roughly 60 individuals, 40 of which are in the United States.

Other recent additions to the Zoo’s okapi exhibit are Luke and Mae, a pair of black duikers, one of the smaller of the duiker species. But what they lack in size, these two more than make up for in personality!

Sekele is already showing some of the rambunctiousness of his father, Biscotti, who now resides at the Wild Animal Park (see post, Exciting Times at the Okapi Barn!). But I am working hard to make him as tractable as possible. It is paramount that we get him used to having his legs and feet, ears, and mouth handled by his keepers. The more we get him used to being handled, the more routine medical procedures we will be able to perform without the use of anesthesia. In the end, it will be much safer for him and much less stressful for us.

Nate Schierman is a keeper at the San Diego Zoo. Read his previous post, One Pig, Happy Family.

Co-author Marcia with Zuri

The okapi barn at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park has been a bustling place of late. Our training program has been coming along beautifully; we can now perform a variety of husbandry procedures with the okapis without anesthesia. We can take temperatures, lift and examine feet, perform ultrasounds, and undertake many other procedures designed to help us care for these very special animals. We have even drawn blood from two okapis with their cooperation!

Zuri, our male calf, turned one on June 17. We have handled him a little differently from our past calves. Using a technique called imprinting, we have methodically accustomed him to human contact and various stimuli, beginning when he was just 24 hours old. His mom, Makini, an experienced female, has had no problem with any of these handling sessions. She stands calmly by while we work with her baby, often licking him (and us!) at intervals during the sessions. Best of all, Zuri is also halter trained. He can now be lead and happily follows us to pretty much anywhere we want him to go, even into confined spaces such as a trailer. We can also do full hoof trims with his cooperation, while someone holds his halter and reassures him. This is a novel and crucial breakthrough because okapis need occasional foot care, and animals that are not trained need to be completely anesthetized. Imagine if you had to be asleep to trim your toenails! We can now take care of okapi feet without putting them to sleep.

The most anticipated event, however, is the arrival of Biscotti, a seven-year-old male that has been living with our okapi group at the San Diego Zoo. He is coming to the Park as part of our ongoing breeding program. As well as being welcomed into the Wild Animal Park’s group, he is also being included in our bioacoustics study (see previous posts, Secret language of the Okapi and How the Okapi Spends Its Day).

As part of this study, a camera and a special microphone (which can “hear” the low-frequency calls) will be installed in his new stall in order to capture vocalizations between Biscotti and all the other okapis. This specialized equipment is capable of recording all sounds made by the okapis, including the calls which are so low in frequency that we cannot hear them without the help of a computer. Most exciting is the fact that we are now recording okapi behavior around the clock (for the very first time!) so that we can finally begin to unravel what these rare and endangered animals are doing (and saying) at any moment, night or day. This approach is going to provide very important insights into interactions between the new male and the rest of the herd and aid our understanding of okapi biology.

One final announcement: Ayana, a 6-year-old female, is expecting! Her calf is due mid-November of this year. For whatever reason, the last eight calves born at the Park have been males, so Think Pink for Ayana, because we need all the girls we can get!

Marcia Redding is a senior keeper at the Wild Animal Park.
Matt Anderson is a scientist in the Behavioral Biology Division at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.