My Research Project and Even More Animals!

Name: Keitha Lear
Class Year: Senior
Hometown: London, Ohio
Internship: Keeper Development Intern
Location: Dallas, Texas  

I am halfway through my internship! It has gone by so fast; I still feel like it is my first week here! Since my last blog, I went back to the routes I have been on to learn how to disinfect their enclosures, food dishes, and enrichment items. In the Keeper Development Section, we have a full week where we disinfect everything because there aren’t enough hours in a day to disinfect each animal’s enclosure before we have to put them out by the time the zoo opens. So, we get a week to get it all done. After that week, I went back to work with the goats in the Blue Barn for a more in-depth tour and to learn their names (all of them are named after cities in Texas and I am really bad at geography)! I also went on a browse run, which is required for keeper who are in the “Blue Barn” route (shout out to Dr. Lehman and his “Trees of Ohio” class where I got to use my knowledge of identifying trees to find food for the goats). Then this past week, I helped out in the Program Animal Room (or PAR). These animals are only seen during summer camps and when the Education departments have talks. Therefore, these animals are found behind the scenes. We have many species in PAR, from Rabbits to Guinea Pigs to Scorpions to Blue Tongue Skinks and many more! I helped with the usual feeding, cleaning, and giving out enrichment. I have not yet learned how to handle them, but I hope to by the end of my internship! The only issue is that I am allergic to rabbits and guinea pigs, so I have to wear a face mask every time I enter the room. It is really a bummer for me because all of them are so cute and irresistible!

In this blog, I want to talk about my research project. All interns are required to complete a project by the end of their internship. Some interns have a research project, while others have a project that needs done in their section/ around the zoo. It was assigned to the intern by their mentor. My project is research based. The Dallas Zoo got a pair of Keel-Billed Toucans a couple months ago and just 3 weeks ago, a family (Mom, Dad, and Son) of Bearded Emperor Tamarins were introduced to the toucans. This mixed species habitat has never been done before and it is my job to study the behavior of the toucans and tamarins and where they are in the enclosure, then analyze the data. I practiced recording the behaviors for my first two weeks, then I am going to be taking observations for 8 weeks, then finally I analyze my data and present it to my section in my last two weeks. I am very honored to have gotten assigned this project and I can’t wait to share the results, despite being nervous about presenting in front of the Keeper Development Section! I’d like to thank Dr. Young for having my class do behavior observations at the Columbus Zoo my freshman year, without having that knowledge and practice, I would have been even more nervous! I have been using a tablet that has the pre-set behaviors on it. That way, I don’t have to worry about writing down the behaviors; I can just touch a few buttons and keep focus on the animals!

In my next blog, I will share more routes that I will get to go on and then the other perks of being a Dallas Zoo Intern as well as more animals I got to work with outside of KDS! Thanks for reading! Bye Y’all!

Week Five: Lab work and Strikes

Name: Ashley Uselmann

Class Year: Junior

Hometown: Carmel, IN

Internship: National Pretoria Zoo

Pretoria, South Africa

Our group at one of the national heritage sites in Mokopane

These last few weeks have been packed. Every day Tia and I get up and go to the student research center to start our day. This last weekend was a blast with I, Tia, Marriane, Dr. Jeff, and Dr. Michelle going to the Mokopane park once again. Dr. Jeff is another current resident in the accommodations house that Tia and I stay at. He is an American vet from Florida. Dr. Michelle also brought her family along, so we had a packed house. However, we had an amazing time going on a safari through the park and exploring the national heritage sites of Mokopane. We saw an array of animals on our trips. We saw giraffe, zebra, bushbuck, roan antelope, eland, nyala, kudu, springbok, monkeys, wildebeests, baboons, mountain hyrax, mongoose, and bush babies. Back in the states, we don’t have many large, wild antelope species. It was a beautiful site seeing these large animals in the wild. We also visited a national heritage site in Mokopane. This national heritage site consisted of a vast array of caves. Each with their own story to tell. One cave was an old limestone mining operation that was halted after the discovery of bones fossilized in the rocks. Another cave was a hideout for native Africans when they started a war with one of their neighbors. We found out that the chief survived the war and actually faked his death, and later the area was named after him. We finished the great weekend with a Bri, or a barbecue as we know, and made our way back to the zoo.

While Tia and I love working with the vets, we still have work that has to been done in the lab. Thankfully, I have been making great progress with the bushbuck microsatellite project. Dr. Sonia has been a patient teacher in helping me understand microsatellites and what are the best techniques to use in a lab setting. I give a big thanks to all my lab courses, because these last few weeks I have been micro pipetting… A Lot. These last few weeks consisted of me, under the watchful eye of Dr. Sonia, extracting DNA from bushbuck samples, combining said DNA with the experimental microsatellite primers, putting them through PCR, and analyzing how these said microsatellites interact with each other after amplification.

This current week has been interesting to say the least. Due to a recent change of management, the Pretoria zoo is in the middle of the transition. As a result of the transition, many promised changes are slow to happen. Apparently one of those changes was creating equity among the workers’ wages. Since that promise has not happen yet, many of the zoo’s staff decided to go on strike… Tia and I did not see that coming. Because of many keepers becoming part of the strike, the zoo enlisted the research center to help out in keeper duties. On the first day back, my fellow roommates and I were also enlisted to help in keeper duties. The first day of keeper duty was hard work. Jamie and I were assigned to the penguin enclosure. There are about 50 African penguins in this enclosure. Each of them have their own name and identification tags. The first part of penguin duty was quite the work out with us cleaning out the penguin pool. Imagine a small drain on one side of the pool that you are trying to push water down. Even if you pushed a lot of water towards the drain, most of it would miss the drain and bounce off the wall. It took an hour for me, Jamie, and one of the keepers to brush and fully clean the pool. It took rounds of soap and bleach, to fully clean the pool. I would take scooping my cat’s litter box over this any day.

Me cleaning the penguin enclosure

 The second part of penguin duty consisted of de-thawing the fish and stuffing supplemental pills in the gill slits. After we are all done, there are two buckets of fish. One bucket has all the supplemental fish with pills, while the second bucket has regular fish. Each penguin has to have one from the supplemental fish, but can have fish from the other bucket if they are still hungry. The penguins have three feeding sessions a day. If one penguin does not feel like eating at one session, they can try another session.In order to properly account which penguin eats, the keepers hand feed every penguin. The keeper sits down with a clip board and records every penguin that gets a fish, how many fish, and at what time. It was incredible that the keeper knew every single penguin by just how they look and ate. The last part of penguin duty consisted of us gathering lavender that the zoo grows and depositing it in the penguin enclosure. Apparently, they like to use lavender as nesting material and when we came back the following day, all the lavender was gone. 

The sweet African penguins that I was assigned to

Another section that our group was enlisted to help was the seal section. There are about 18 seals in this section. 13 of the seals are South American fur seals, while 5 of them are Cape fur seals. The South American fur seals are smaller than the Cape fur seals, but don't let their size fool you. Both the keepers and the seals themselves have demonstrated how much personality they have, especially if they don't want to do something. Seal duty was a little more extensive than penguin duty. The day starts similar as the penguins with de-thawing the fish. However, seals have a more intricate diet. They get two types of fish, squid,and gelatin. Each seal gets different amounts of all food based on their species and size. In addition, the seals are also given supplemental pills inside their fish specific to each seal. After the food is prepared, the seals are called in their respective, smaller enclosures. The seals are than let out and fed one-by-one based on personality. You have to let out the seals with the dominate personalities first, so they do not get competitive with other seals. Once the seal eats all its food, the keeper yells, "All done, [insert name]", and open the door to release them into the bigger pool area. If the seals do not follow the command and decided to wander the feeding area, you are directed to ignore them until they decide to follow the command. If they don't gain anything, they won't want to stay in the area. The head keeper, Elsie, also works with each seal on training. While feeding the seals, she uses the food as positive reinforcement when giving commands. These training sessions prepare the seals for vet visits. The importance of the gelatin was something I didn't know before. The seals actually require a great amount of salt in their diet for a healthy seal. The gelatin contains salt and is fed to the seals along with the fish. In addition, the seals require salt water to swim in. One of the common health problems in these seal species is blindness. The blindness is a greater risk if the seals don't regularly swim in salt water. This internship has been a dynamic time. I have been with the researchers in the lab, in the enclosures with the keepers, and in the operating room with the vets. No one knows how long the strike will continue, but one thing is true, you really don’t know what to expect here in South Africa!

You've never seen...Bear Style!

Names: Eileen Connon and Lindsey Keehn

Class Year: 2019 and 2020

Hometowns: Mandeville, LA and Crystal Lake, IL

Internship: Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Ni hao again! We’re checking in from the Panda Base as the weather gets even hotter and the pandas get even cuter. Our observations are getting both easier and harder as we go along- easier, because we’re more confident in our data recording skills, but harder, because it’s getting a little more repetitive. It can be a little difficult to stare at a sleeping panda for half an hour at a time without falling asleep yourself! In some ways, though, the boring focal sessions are a relief compared to the ones where your focal panda keeps moving and you have to run around, standing on your tiptoes and (politely) pushing through crowds just so you don’t miss your point-time sample. 

The nice thing about the past few weeks has been the ability to really get into a rhythm here. Our first few weeks in China, everything felt so strange and foreign and different that it never seemed like we would find ourselves making a home here. Now, though, we’re regulars at a couple of restaurants, we have friends who live nearby, and Lindsey can recognize every single street cat on our commute to work (ask her about how many cat photos are on her phone. seriously). We also have control over our own schedules, so that if one of us hits a roadblock- usually keepers cleaning at an odd time that cuts into our focal time- we get to choose to wait it out or go back to our office to work on data entry or other computer-based work like these blogs! This in independence has been nice over the past few days as the temperatures has started to pick back up. House 1, where we spend half of our time, has almost no shaded viewing for the outdoor yard, so when the pandas are outside on a sunny, 35 degree (no Fahrenheit here) day with 90% humidity, we can choose to remain inside and double up on observations at House 2 or work on data entry. We always check in with James, but we typically get to decide for ourselves. 

We were also lucky enough to take a day off of work a couple of weeks ago and have a field trip to James’s old workplace: The Chengdu Bear Rescue Center! The Bear Center is a sanctuary mostly for Asiatic black bears, also called moon bears, as well as a few Tibetan brown bears and Tibetan macaques. We got a private tour from one of their wonderful employees, Ryan, who we found out has also worked at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia! We were very excited to share that a couple of our classmates are there this summer as well. During the tour, we were able to see their bear hospital, commissary, teaching vet hospital, education building, and, of course, lots and lots of bears. Most of the bears have been rescued from horrifying conditions in bile farms. We don’t want to get too detailed here, as the treatment of the farmed bears and the methods of harvesting bile are really gruesome, but suffice to say, the bears have a much better life at the Center. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge of international animal welfare issues, bile farming is a big concern here in Asia, and we definitely recommend you read up on it! 

An Asiatic black bear!

Don't you wish you could get this comfortable?

A Tibetan brown bear- an extremely rare subspecies 

A moon bear missing a paw from mistreatment in a bile farm

One big change that’s happened recently is that our friend Miranda went back home to New York! The trials for her project wrapped up last week, and we took her last day off to explore Chengdu with her one last time before seeing her off to the airport. It was definitely a bittersweet day. We’re going to miss Miranda a lot, but now we each get our own room! 

Before we sign off from this blog, since we really want you all to get a feel for how hard this stuff can be, we thought it would be fun to help you all learn a bit about how to tell pandas apart! Making sure we’re watching the right panda is still one of the toughest things about our job, but some are easier than others. So: there are a few different ways to tell the pandas apart. 

The first, and the most convenient, is distinguishing features. Only a few pandas have traits that are so different from the others we can tell who they are immediately. The easiest one to see is Qi Yi, who has a little tuft of fur sticking straight up on her head. Before we knew who was who, we used to call her Alfalfa! The other easily distinguishable trait is the black line on the side of Fu Lai’s face. Mao Tao has somewhat distinct traits, but they’re a little more subtle. He has white armpits that you can see behind his arms when he walks and on his chest when he lies back, and he has a scrunched up nose that gives him a good rugged handsomeness, like a movie bad boy with a mysterious past. His twin Mao Dou, on the other hand, has a much darker chest than all of the other pandas, and his “white” parts are also a bit of a darker color. Ya Yun always has some raggedy looking fur around her mouth and sometimes on one paw due to a licking behavior, and Ya Zhu has extremely wide-set eyes and a noticeable overbite that makes her snout look very pointy. 

The second way to tell the pandas apart, after identifying the more noticeable ones or if they’re all inconveniently turned away from the viewing area, is by the relative size and shape of standard traits. This may be the eyespots; some pandas have much rounder spots, some much longer, some are even particularly rectangular. This may also be the back band. This is really hard to use without another panda for reference, but it can come in handy. For instance, Cheng Shi has a very, very slim back band. Yuan Yue and Wen Wen have similarly-sized bands, but Wen Wen’s is very straight across his back, whereas Yuan Yue’s is slightly pinched in at the middle. You can also use the spots/cowlicks between their eyespots, but this is tricky to see at a distance. If all of the pandas are grouped together, you can also use relative body size. Cheng Shi is the biggest panda in House 1, and Ya Yun is the smallest there by far. 

A third way is just by process of elimination. This happens on those tough days when your focal panda is wildly far away, behind a bush, or sleeping on top of another panda, or, on really bad days, all three. Sometimes, all you can do is run around identifying all the other pandas just to figure out where the one you’re looking for is. This is the most common method used to identify Fu Shun, as well, because he lives with a group of pandas (Qi Yi, Fu Lai, Mao Tao, and Mao Dou) who are all very easy to distinguish, so it’s usually quicker to find the other four first.

The last way is not exactly reliable, but it is fun when you get it right. James calls it the “gestalt,” or the general feel/personality of the panda. It’s the vibe you get, you know? Sometimes you just know who a panda is because you see them walking and recognize them. It only really happens with animals you’ve worked with for a while, and its DEFINITELY pretty arbitrary, but sometimes it’s kind of easy. We’ve found that Ya Yun has a sort of anxious “gestalt” that you can recognize in the way she walks, how she looks around, the way she sits, etc. James also insists that Ya Zhu’s “gestalt” is stupid- he straight up taught us to recognize her as “the one that looks kinda dumb”- but we think she’s perfect the way she is. In any case, the “gestalt” is something we use to guess, but we never start recording until we confirm based on the physical traits.

So, what do you think? Think you could identify a panda with (seemingly) the exact same markings as every other one? Let’s give it a shot! We’ll put a couple of pictures here that we identify, and then a couple you’ll have to guess using the clues above. The answers will be posted with our next blog!

All of the pandas in Number 1: The far back left is Wen Wen, the two leaning on each other are Yuan Yue (left) and Ya Yun (right), the one in the back right is Ya Zhu, and the one in the front right is Cheng Shi.

All of the pandas in Number 2: Looking directly at camera is Fu Shun. To the right of him is Mao Tao. The one who you can see most of the back of is Qi Yi, and the one to the left of Fu Shun with just a 3/4 view of the head is Fu Lai. Mao Dou is hiding between Mao Tao and Qi Yi

So, who do you think this is? The one in front will be #1, and the one in back is #2. (hint: this is in House 1) 

How about this one? We think we gave you an easy one here for #3 (hint: this is in House 2)

Alright, #4 is a little tougher. Got a guess? (hint: this is in House 2)

And for our trickiest ones: #5 in front, and # 6 in back. You can do this! (hint: this is in House 1)

Check back in soon to see if you got them right! If you're struggling, don't worry! We took literally two full work weeks to identify them. All we did the whole time was just walk back and forth between number 1 and number 2, getting help from Miranda and James to figure out who was who. If this is the kind of challenge that you enjoy, maybe you'll want to come intern here!