Location: Dallas Zoo
It is the beginning of week nine, which is bitter sweet
since I am only here for ten weeks. While I am really sad to be leaving this
wonderful internship that I have greatly enjoyed, I am looking forward to these
last two weeks. Coming up in these two weeks I will get to do a switch day
where I go to tigers, I will present my project to the hospital staff, and of
course I will be able to observe more procedures, training, and treatments.
While
at the hospital, I have gotten to see a lot of training sessions with animals.
The vet techs have a regular schedule of training sessions so that they can
have a relationship with the animals to do some routine procedures such as
blood draws, injections, and hoof trims. This makes it less stressful for the
animals since it completely voluntary. The animals that I have gotten to see
blood draw training on have been tigers, snakes, cougars, anteaters, and emus.
I have gotten to see hoof trim training with giraffes and okapi, and injection
training with okapi. During my switch days I have also gotten to see husbandry
training on ocelots, lions, and cheetahs.
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| Acid Fast Staining |
On a
slower day, I can find myself in the lab on occasion. The techs do a lot of
work in the lab to monitor animal health and to keep the hospital running
smoothly. In almost every procedure there is a blood draw and the techs run a
CBC (complete blood count) and a chemistry analysis on the blood. The animals
that are trained for blood draws also have blood samples submitted to the lab
for the same reason. Keepers will also regularly submit fecals to the lab to be
examined by the techs,
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| Rufus! |
who will then do both a direct and a float analysis of
the fecals. Routine water collections also occur around the zoo, and the techs
process these water samples to make sure that the water chemistry is what it
should be. During my time, the techs have taught me how to do some of the lab
work. I have been taught to set up fecals, set-up and read the water sample
testing, and I have learned acid fast stains, which tests for the presence of
bacteria in the genus mycobacterium. When I am in the hospital, if the techs
find anything interesting in their tests, they show me what it is that they
see.
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| Lakai |
One
afternoon, I got to go on a tour of Barn 8, which is located in the Wilds of
Africa. Barn 8 holds the incubator room for bird eggs. This makes it so that if
an egg gets rejected, the keepers are still able to give it a chance by
providing
supplemental care. Barn 8 also holds some of the breeding pairs of
birds that Dallas zoo houses. This allows the Dallas Zoo to create optimal
breeding environments for the birds, and reach many achievements such as being
the first institution to successfully breed saddle bill storks under human
care.
I love
cats, so my “hospital mom” Diana set up a switch day where I went to cat row
for a day. This was so much fun for me as cougars are my favorite animals, and
they are housed in this section of the zoo along with ocelots and the bobcat.
Cat row itself is a historic building which means that it cannot be torn down,
nor make it drastic modifications. The cougars are named Apollo and Lakai, and
they were originally from Canada where they were found abandoned. The bobcat is
named Rufus and
 |
| Lina and Jasari |
the ocelots are Malagre and Joaquin. In the morning, I got to
observe Malagre’s primary keeper, Libby, train Malagre. Currently she is
working on getting Malagre to open her mouth for husbandry purposes. After
that, the diets were fed out and we cleaned the exhibits before we cleaned the
back holding areas. After finishing cleaning, Libby and I went over to the
carnivore building on the other side of the zoo to help the lion staff with the
demo (predator encounter). The cheetahs were the ones that were coming into the
demo yard to be trained. The Dallas Zoo only uses positive reinforcement which
means the animals have the choice of
whether they want to go into the training
session or if they want to give the behavior, and if they don’t, there will be
no consequences. The primary carnivore keepers opened the demo yard for two
cheetahs, Bonde and Kilima to come in, but only Bonde chose to participate in training. After the demo, I went to the anteater
building for a little bit to see the work that is done there, and then we went
to lunch.
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| Otter at Sea World |
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| Orca at Sea World |
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| Azul |
After
lunch, we went across the zoo to do another demo. This time the lion sisters,
Lina and Jasari, were invited into the demo yard for training and they both
came in! While they both came in, only Jasari really felt like participating in
the training. After the demo, we headed back to Zoo North to feed PM diets at Cat
Row. In the middle of feeding PM diets, Diana came to do blood draw training
with the cougar boys. This training is set up so that the voluntary blood draw
can be a less invasive way to monitor the health of the animals. After the
training, we finished PM diets and then cleaned the dishes before heading home
for the day.
Not
only do I have a passion for felids, but I also am very interested in herps.
Due to this,
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| Live oak at the Alamo |
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| Riverwalk |
Diana also set up a morning where I got to go to the reptile
building. In this switch morning, I learned so much about reptiles and
amphibians by going section through section through the reptile building. I
starting in section one and the keeper and I fed chameleons their diets, and
then went and misted the other reptiles in his section. After that I went to
another keeper’s section where I got to many amphibians including the large
collection of dart frogs that the zoo houses. When I finished with that I went
to yet another section and I got to see a large group of non-venomous reptiles
that included the reptiles that are held by volunteers and during the keeper
talks. This section also housed the zoos Texas Horned Lizards. The zoo has been
successful at breeding these native lizards and wholeheartedly stand behind
them. Then I headed off to my final section of the day that housed a large
number of venomous species. This is not that surprising as the Dallas Zoo
houses the largest venomous collection housed in a Zoo in the Unites States.
This section houses king cobras, spitting cobras, and
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| Ducks at the Riverwalk |
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| Riverwalk Duck |
argentine racers. Other
venomous snakes housed at the zoo are eastern diamondback rattlesnakes,
Ethiopian mountain vipers, and my personal favorite, bushmasters. In this last
section I got to learn a lot about antivenom, snake venom itself, and the
process to become a venomous snake keeper.
 |
| Riverwalk |
While
Dallas is a great city, I have developed a fondness for the city of San
Antonio. Abigail, Myra and I spent a weekend in San Antonio and we went to Sea
World San Antonio, the Riverwalk, the Alamo, and Downtown San Antonio. This was
the first time that I had been to Sea World and I was really impressed by all
the training that they have completed with their animals. The relationship that
they built with their animals was great. The shows were really cool as well,
with my personal favorite being Azul. Azul included a combination of the
animals performing the behaviors they were trained to do, and aerialists and
divers putting on a spectacular show. The Alamo was a great stop as well. It
was super pretty and there was a lot of history built in. After that we also
wandered around downtown and did the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk may have been one
of the prettiest things we have seen all summer. As a Zoo major, I of course
spent half the time looking at the wildlife while being sure to look at the
surroundings as well.
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| The view from Reunion Tower |
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| Riverwalk |
Abigail
and I also went to Six Flags and to Reunion Tower. These are both things that
are located in Dallas County and are definitely worth the trip. Six flags had a
lot of great rides and we had so much fun. Reunion tower was really exciting as
well. It started out with a light show to announce the baby elephants name,
Ajabu, and then the Zoo set up the opportunity for us to go up in the tower.
Thanks to this, we got to get and aerial view of the city at night which was a
spectacular sight to say the least. We are definitely living up our time in
Dallas and I am sad that it is coming to an end.
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| Downtown Dallas at Night |
Name: Eliza Hanes
While
at the hospital, I have gotten to see a lot of training sessions with animals.
The vet techs have a regular schedule of training sessions so that they can
have a relationship with the animals to do some routine procedures such as
blood draws, injections, and hoof trims. This makes it less stressful for the
animals since it completely voluntary. The animals that I have gotten to see
blood draw training on have been tigers, snakes, cougars, anteaters, and emus.
I have gotten to see hoof trim training with giraffes and okapi, and injection
training with okapi. During my switch days I have also gotten to see husbandry
training on ocelots, lions, and cheetahs. 
I love
cats, so my “hospital mom” Diana set up a switch day where I went to cat row
for a day. This was so much fun for me as cougars are my favorite animals, and
they are housed in this section of the zoo along with ocelots and the bobcat.
Cat row itself is a historic building which means that it cannot be torn down,
nor make it drastic modifications. The cougars are named Apollo and Lakai, and
they were originally from Canada where they were found abandoned. The bobcat is
named Rufus and
the ocelots are Malagre and Joaquin. In the morning, I got to
observe Malagre’s primary keeper, Libby, train Malagre. Currently she is
working on getting Malagre to open her mouth for husbandry purposes. After
that, the diets were fed out and we cleaned the exhibits before we cleaned the
back holding areas. After finishing cleaning, Libby and I went over to the
carnivore building on the other side of the zoo to help the lion staff with the
demo (predator encounter). The cheetahs were the ones that were coming into the
demo yard to be trained. The Dallas Zoo only uses positive reinforcement which
means the animals have the choice of 
Diana also set up a morning where I got to go to the reptile
building. In this switch morning, I learned so much about reptiles and
amphibians by going section through section through the reptile building. I
starting in section one and the keeper and I fed chameleons their diets, and
then went and misted the other reptiles in his section. After that I went to
another keeper’s section where I got to many amphibians including the large
collection of dart frogs that the zoo houses. When I finished with that I went
to yet another section and I got to see a large group of non-venomous reptiles
that included the reptiles that are held by volunteers and during the keeper
talks. This section also housed the zoos Texas Horned Lizards. The zoo has been
successful at breeding these native lizards and wholeheartedly stand behind
them. Then I headed off to my final section of the day that housed a large
number of venomous species. This is not that surprising as the Dallas Zoo
houses the largest venomous collection housed in a Zoo in the Unites States.
This section houses king cobras, spitting cobras, and
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