Hot Pots and Pandas

Name: Kelly Jackson

Class/Year: Class of 2017, Junior

Hometown: Waterford, Wisconsin

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

Internship: Animal Behavior Research

            Macie and I definitely got a taste of Chengdu last week. From the food, to the people, to the places, we explored all the wonderful aspects of the city. On Monday, we met two other interns at the panda base. Their names were Fe-Fe and Shelly. Fe-Fe had been here for a whole month, and it was her last week there. Shelly was going to intern there for a week, and recently came back to China after her term at Penn State in America. Both of them are interested in veterinary medicine, and Shelly is even in vet school!

They asked us if we would like to eat at a restaurant with them. In the Sichuan Province, especially Chengdu, “hot pot” is a very famous dish. Some hot pots have raw food and you dip it into the sauce to cook it. This is what dish we had on Monday with our new friends. It was so interesting, and we had A LOT of different foods! There were duck intestines, kidneys, all sorts of vegetables and noodles. It was really good! I especially liked the little sauce Fe-Fe told us to dip it in. :)

On Wednesday, we were invited to also eat dinner. The library director here at Southwest Jiaotong University, asked us to eat dinner with her son and her friend. We went to the mall near us, where we ate a delicious duck meal. Basically, you have the duck and a “pancake,” which is essentially a mini-tortilla. You put the duck sauce on the tortilla, along with cucumbers and other vegetables, add the duck and wa-la! A very tasty meal. I also had chicken heart while we were there too, and it was surprisingly really good!

Macie and I went to see Jurassic World on Wednesday night. The movies here in China are awesome. First off, the tickets are very cheap compared to what you would typically spend in America. When you buy a ticket, you also get a free coupon to have popcorn, two waters, and a little coconut candy treat. You also get to pick what seat you sit in, and the movies are actually in English! We also got the full cinematic experience in the IMAX theatre with 3D glasses. :P

Trying to identify the pandas this week is a little bit easier. Macie and I have a list of different facial features, actions, and traits each of the nine pandas has so we can better know which one is which. The photographers and zookeepers here have also helped us with identifying the pandas, which is very helpful! Macie and I have also started running some test trials of the study. Instead of conducting an instantaneous scan sample, we have come to the conclusion focal sampling would be a better way to capture the behaviors of the cubs. Trying to watch several tuckered out little pandas is easy, but when they are rambunctiously playing it gets very difficult. When running the test trials, we have noted some aspects that need to be added to the ethogram, such as “playing with the keepers.” Sometimes when they come into the enclosure, the pandas will chase them around and try to latch onto their legs! It is funny to watch, but not so funny for the ones being chased!

Friday was especially an exciting day at the panda base, because it was Songrui’s birthday! She is one of the researchers that works in James’ office and they are really good friends. She mainly works with the red pandas, so we don’t see her much throughout the day, as we are at the giant panda exhibit. We helped her out a little bit and did a little work for her though. That morning, we went into the red panda enclosure and collected feces. Yes, panda poop. Songrui, as well as other vets on the base, will use the fecal matter to analyze their hormonal levels, for pregnancy purposes and further research. James and another zookeeper distracted the pandas with treats like squash and apples. Macie and I took plastic bags and once we found our special surprise, we picked it up, put in in the bag, and labeled the bags. Basically it was like Easter, but instead of hunting for plastic eggs filled with candy we were looking for poop. Good old dandy, bamboo filled, red panda poop.

Saturday was truly an adventure though. Macie’s mom is a teacher in her hometown, and had a student that was from Chengdu go to her school a little while back. His mom offered to drive us to Jinli Square, a very popular tourist market in the South part of Chengdu. When we arrived at Jinli, it was so pretty! There were so many little market stations that sold different items. Food, jewelry, you name it, they sold it. Naturally, Macie and I did some shopping there. One of the stores there was devoted to selling all pearl jewelry. If you don’t know me or haven’t seen me, I am ALWAYS wearing my (fake and cheap) pearl earrings. So of course, I had to check out the store and ended up buying a new pair. It was very expensive in Chinese currency, but in U.S. dollars it wasn’t that pricey. I’m still not certain if they are 100% real or not (I’m leaning towards probably not), but at least I’m one step closer of owning my own REAL pearls! :)

The best part of the day was when Macie and I saw this glorious tree. It was covered in hundreds, if not thousands of little red bags with Chinese written on them. There were so many bags you could walk through a tunnel of them underneath the tree. That is when Macie noticed the woman at the stand. We found out all of the bags on the trees were wishes. The different colored bags stood for different wishes, such as good health, fortune, and academic success. Macie and I decided we would make a wish. We bought the bag and wrote out what our wish was. (I can’t tell you or otherwise it won’t come true!) Then on the outside of our bag, we wrote our names and “Otterbein 2015.” We walked through the forest of red wishes and hung our wish in the tree. We figured we would start a tradition; each year Otterbein students come to Chengdu they could travel to Jinli Square, make a wish, and hang their bag next to ours! It would be like having our own little Zoo-bee tree. (:

I am really looking forward to what more the city offers us, and what shenanigans the cubs get into next! ;P 

Putting our wish on the tree :)

Our wish :)

Jinli Street entrance

All of the food we got from the hot pot!

Hot pot! :)

Panda pile! :P

Burn Baby Burn

Name: Courtney Dover
Year: Sophomore Class of 2018
Hometown: Springfield, Ohio
Internship: The Wilds Scholar Internship
Location: The Wilds, Cumberland Ohio

Hello again!

Recently the restoration ecology department at the Wilds invited myself and the other interns to learn how to safely manage a controlled burn, and they invited us to participate in a small controlled burn. So, why would we want to some of the prairie here at the Wilds?
Prairies actually benefit from fire. The fire burns up leaf litter and allows prairie plants to come back and grow taller and healthier. The fire also increases nutrients in the soil because of the ash. Controlled burns can be used to remove invasive plant species so we can replace them with native plants.

After learning the reasons to burn and safety procedures, we met again later that evening to get suited up for the burn. It is important to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the burn.

 Here I am gearing up for the burn.

Here I am wearing the suit, minus the water backpack.

The burn boss (the person in control of the burn and the person in charge) needed people to wear water packs and make sure the fire did not spread out of control. That's where I came in! I wore a giant bag filled with water on my back and it had a nozzle and hose connected so I could spray the water at the fire. This bag was SO heavy. Everyone's shoulders were sore the next day from the water!

The fire was a great success. The weather was very ideal (not too humid or too windy) and we had plenty of people to make sure the fire was under control. With animals nearby, too much smoke was a big concern but there was hardly any smoke.

This is a good picture of the burn. The flames were not too big and very easy to control. 

Here I am, carefully adding more fire to the burn. I was nervous to hold to torch at first, because fire is literally shooting out of it, but after a minute it was very easy to use and shoot fire toward the prairie.

I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to assist with a controlled burn. It is fun but also beneficial to the earth at the same time. 

Our Great Chengdu Adventure!

Name: Kelly Jackson

Class/Year: Class of 2017, Junior

Hometown: Waterford, Wisconsin

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

Internship: Animal Behavior Research

Nî hâo! For those of you who don’t know that means “hello” in Chinese Mandarin. It’s been a crazy first week here in Chengdu, China! After a LONG trip here (roughly twenty hours in flying), we are finally settled into our home for the next two months. We are currently living just outside of Southwest Jiaotong University, in a hotel like complex. Macie and I share a room, where we have hot water, air conditioning, and (thankfully) a western toilet. 

            Since we have been here, a lot of the students have been very nice with showing us around and helping us with the language. Learning Chinese is much more difficult than any other language, because there are four different tones you have to use. If you say a word using the wrong tone, it could mean a completely different word. So far we have learned a lot of phrases, such as how to order food and basic conversational words. We have also started to cover numbers, which will be very helpful for us when we buy things. Macie and I also got Chinese names. Macie’s Chinese name is very similar to her name. It is spoken as “may shi” which means something along the lines of “beautiful flower.” My Chinese name is the word for “butterfly,” which is ‘hú dié.’ We also asked the Chinese students to write out our names, which I’ll try to post later! (this website is actually blocked in China which makes posting pictures a tad bit difficult)

            Not only are the toilets and the language different, but the food is too. In Chengdu, they like things that are VERY spicy! From noodles to meat, they like things that have a kick to it. Next to where we live is a little restaurant Macie and I have been to a couple times. There they have a chicken we really like that is a bit more on the spicy side, but very delicious! We also live about a ten to fifteen minute walk from a mall, which has a Walmart, Starbucks, and KFC in it. Next to the mall is also a very delicious place we have eaten at a few times. There we get steamed and fried dumplings, which have lettuce and pork in them, and are smothered in spicy sauce. We’ve also had a wide variety of drinks, from soy milk to tea. Hot but still very good!

            In addition to the students, our research advisor, James, has also been a huge help at getting us accustomed to the lifestyle here. He has shown us a few places around the city, in addition to the panda base. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been too. The whole base itself is giant, at least three times the size of Otterbein’s campus, if not bigger. The people that we have been introduced to here are very friendly, and speak English well! And obviously, the pandas are absolutely adorable. During our time here, Macie and I will be studying the one year old panda cubs, specifically looking at their behavior. The past few days we have been working with James on developing our ethogram and the layout of the study. We will be conducting an instantaneous scan sampling, which means we will be looking at all nine of the panda cubs within their enclosure and recording their behavior at certain time intervals. As of now, we are going to be watching the pandas both outside and inside, depending on how hot it is. It is very difficult to tell the panda cubs apart, so hopefully next week we will be able to better tell who is who. :)

            Aside from food and some culture aspects, China is basically like America. People have dogs and cats, and love to go shopping. They play sports like tennis and basketball (they adore Lebron James for all you Cleveland fans). And they especially love pandas, which I mean who doesn’t? For now Macie and I will continue to appreciate our fame here, getting pictures taken of us everywhere we go, and enjoy our time here in the wonderful city of Chengdu! :)

Panda mid fall! :o

Selfie with the pandas! :P

Xing Yu posing :)

First day at the panda base! :D

The first panda I've ever seen! :)

Our Chinese names! Macie's is on the top and mine is on the bottom. :)

Ni hao from China!

Name: Macie Smith

Year: Zoo and Conservation Science, class of 2016

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China 

Internship: the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding; animal behavior research 

Ni hao from China! Kelly and I are the two lucky students interning with the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We have only been in China for about a week but we have already seen and learned a lot! From learning how to order food to trying to use chopsticks to identifying the different panda cubs to figuring out how the heck one uses the toilets here, everything is a new adventure and a great learning experience!

We are staying just outside of the Southwest Jiaotong University from which several English translation students have taken it upon themselves to attempt to teach us Chinese. My Chinese name (ignore the spelling) sounds like “may-shi.” In translation; “may” is a type of flower and “shi” means beauty. I guess this means my Chinese name is “flower beauty.”  I don’t remember how to say Kelly’s Chinese name, but hers translates to “butterfly.” I find it interesting that the same word can have a different meaning based on the inflexion of your voice. This makes the language difficult to learn, so we may not be fluent by the end of our trip but hopefully we will be able to get around on our own a little more easily. So far we have made excellent use of gestures and pictures. 

For the most part, Kelly and I have spent the past few days at the panda base getting to know our research advisor, James, meeting people, building our ethogram, and practicing using this ethogram to observe the behaviors of one year old panda cubs. We have also spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out which panda is which. I’m hopeful that by this time next week, we will be able to identify each cub fairly quickly. 

With this study, we will be using scan sampling to observe the behaviors and proximities of all nine panda cubs at one minute time intervals. So far it has been relatively cool in the mornings, so all nine cubs have been together in their outdoor enclosure for our morning observations. After our two hour lunch break, which I can definitely get used to, it is generally much warmer so the pandas go into two or three separate indoor enclosures. The animal care staff has been kind enough to allocate two positions from which we can observe the pandas in their indoor enclosures without having to worry about the crowd obscuring our view or interrupting us to try and take our pictures, which happens surprisingly frequently.

Monday morning (now this morning) will be our first day collecting data that will potentially be used. I’m excited to see what we will be able to figure out through this study!

 Here's a few of the little one year old cubs Kelly and I are observing this summer! 

Hello from The Wilds!

Name: Courtney Dover
Class Year: 2018
Hometown: Springfield, Ohio
Internship: The Wilds Scholar Internship
Location: Cumberland, Ohio

Hey everybody! I'm Courtney Dover, a sophomore in the zoo and conservation science program at Otterbein. This summer, I will be spending 10 weeks living at The Wilds as a wildlife ecology intern. All of the wildlife ecology interns got to pick a project to work on this summer. I am very excited to start my project because I will be doing predator avoidance training with head-started hellbenders! Now, let me explain what this means.

Eastern hellbenders (Cryptobranchus allegiensis) are a giant species of salamander native to the Eastern United States. They are completely aquatic and exchange gases through their skin. The Wilds is one of the few facilities dedicated to conservation of the species. We have hundreds of young hellbenders at the Wilds, and one of my tasks this summer is to help care for these little guys as well as researching them. The hellbenders at The Wilds are "head-started", meaning they have been cared for from eggs to larvae and to juveniles. Many of these animals would have been prey when they were young in the wild. We are giving them a head start to help ensure survival.

Photo courtesy of Purdue~Help the Hellbenders

When any animal is raised in human care, there is concern that it will not know how to behave in the Wild or that the behavior will differ from an animal raised in the wild. This applies to hellbenders as well. Larval and even juvenile hellbenders can fall prey to many different animals in the wild. When hellbenders are released into the wild, a big concern is that the young have not been exposed to these natural predators and will not know how to behave when a predator comes near them. It has been hypothesized that the larval hellbenders lack of predator avoidance skills is one of the main reasons for death in individuals released into the wild.

This is where I come in! Apprentice Tucker and I will be conducting research on predator avoidance training of the larval hellbenders at The Wilds. I will give more details on the procedure later, but for now I can say that we will be using a combination of mink gland secretions and an otter puppet to train the hellbenders.

Another cool aspect of the internship is that the wildlife ecology interns get to venture out into the world and survey for wild hellbenders! I was in the first group that got to go all the way out to West Virginia to search for these awesome salamanders under the giant rocks in creeks and streams. The site that we went to was not promising, as a hellbender had not been found there for over 50 years. But, Joe Greathouse, my advisor, was able to do eDNA testing to see if hellbender DNA could be found in the water of the site we were surveying. His test was positive, which meant hellbenders were in the creek, but we could not find any. We were lucky to find a mudpuppy, which is another species of large salamander similar to hellbenders. Enjoy some pictures of our trip!

Searching for hellbenders under rocks and using nets to block their escape routes.

Me holding the mudpuppy we caught. Since I was the one who caught him, we named him Courtney.

A close up of this cutie. After we took a few pictures and measurements, we released Courtney back under his rock.

Also, here are some cool pictures of the other animals housed at The Wilds.

Budgies!

Przewalski's wild horses

Sichuan takin

Ostrich

Reticulated giraffe

Pere David's deer

Bactrian Camel. The babies name is Wednesday (its a hump day joke). Also this is a great picture of her mother shaking drool everywhere. How graceful and majestic. 

A Day in the Life of an Elephant

Name: Mara Eisenbarth
Class Year: 2017
Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
Internship: Animal Care Intern, Perth Zoo
Location: Perth, Western Australia

Hello again! 

So last time, I said I was going to talk about my experience with the elephants here at the Perth Zoo.  I want to talk only about the elephants in this post because Perth Zoo has a rare approach to elephant husbandry in this day and age.  First though, I'll introduce you to the Ellies! 

To start, there's Tricia.

As you can see from the birthday cake, she is 58 years old.  Tricia came from Singapore to the Perth Zoo in 1963 and is one of the oldest elephants being cared for by zoos in Australia.  

Then, there's Siput who is half Tricia's age at 25.  The two girls are best buds and just adorable together.  

What's special about the Ellies here in Perth, is that they are cared for through free contact. Free contact (in zoo terms) means that there is no protective barrier between you and the animal.  Obviously with an animal the size of an Asian elephant there has to be a fence between them and people right? Well, a lot of zoos (if not all) used to be free, or semi-free contact, until recently.  As safety risks are realized and fatal accidents occur, there is more and more pressure to have protected contact where the keeper and elephant interact through a barrier.  Either way can work, if the right procedures are followed.  

At Perth Zoo, they are fortunately able to take the two female elephants on a walk through the zoo a few mornings a week.  These walks are vital to the animals' health and just natural behavior of walking for most of the day.  The keepers use positive reinforcement to train the elephants and make sure they can perform most behaviors needed to care for them like foot checks and other procedures.  

So they have two female elephants, but they also have a male.  The bull elephant is under semi-free contact.  This means that most of the keepers (except one) never share the same space as the ellie, but they do interact with him through a barrier and can hand feed him.  Watching the keeper practice behaviors with the bull elephant was just amazing.  With just a few phrases she could have this elephant go across the yard, hold water in his trunk, stand on his back legs, and spray the water into the crowd.  And then he would happily come back to grab a few apples for his hard work.  

Before this bull elephant reached sexual maturity, they had free contact with him as well as the other girls.  But once bulls reach maturity, it's dangerous to continue to have free contact with them.  Unfortunately for the younger female, there won't be anymore elephant walks once Tricia passes away.  The young female is just a little too nervous to safely walk through the zoo without Tricia to keep her calm.  The 30 to 45 minute walks are just so beneficial for these amazing creatures who can walk 50 miles a day or more.  There are other ways to ensure captive elephants get enough exercise, but none that are practical for a zoo that is landlocked in a city.  

Anyway, my day with the Perth elephants was an amazing opportunity that I will always remember.  I learned so much from the dedicated keepers and who knows, maybe someday I can give that experience to another hopeful zookeeper. :) Thanks for reading. 

  

(Silup the male in the left picture; then me with Tricia on the left and Siput on the right) 

   

OWC hospital

Name: Victoria Turbyfill
Class Year: 2017
Internship: Ohio Wildlife Center
Location: Columbus, OH

I have known for a long time that I wanted to work with animals but I have debated going in a veterinary direction since coming to Otterbein. I loved my internship at the Columbus Zoo last summer but after working at OWC the past year I learned that having veterinary knowledge would benefit me no matter where I work with animals.  I have considered going into vet teching so I thought OWC hospital would be the perfect place to start. I enjoyed my time there as a student and quickly decided interning would give me the experience I need. I spend two wonderful weeks in Belize with the coral reef ecology class and experienced some of the most beautiful nature and animals. When I got back to Ohio I jumped right into the internship. I have spent most of my time there so far feeding babies (of course). There is one experience that I found particularly funny (and annoying). There is a red squirrel there that is an escape artist. While we tried to catch him, he climbed up my jeans, back and shoulders and eventually came to resting spot on top of my head. Only at OWC can I say I had a squirrel on top of my head and fed baby bunnies for 8 hours straight. I think this internship has started off well and will steer me in the right direction.