A Zoo Man's Notebook, 2025

[Aardwolf]

For today’s post, we’ll talk about one of the most popular of all zoo mammals in the US, the North American river otter. It’s easy to see why this species is so popular – they are very active and engaging, tolerant of a wide variety of climatic conditions, and, by virtue of their broad geographic range, can be incorporated into native-themed exhibits across the country. Being aquatic, they are also often seen in aquariums, as well as nature centers.

My experience with river otters (NAROs, as they’re often called) at one AZA facility. We managed 1.1 (for the most part – more about that at the end) in an outdoor exhibit that consisted of a large pool, about three feet or so at the deepest, and an adjacent land area that was soil substrate with some rocks and sparse vegetation. A nest box with shavings was the main shelter, but they also often used a large hollow log as a sleeping space, especially in the warmer months.



The natural substrate was a favorite part of mine for the exhibit – I see a lot of otters in indoor exhibits, especially at aquariums and nature centers, and I dislike all of the concrete. It seems like some of those exhibits are designed with the idea of showing visitors otters swimming underwater, and don’t think beyond that as far as the animal’s needs. Left to their own devices in a naturalistic setting, otters will dig in dirt, climb low trees, roll through piles of raked leaves, and spend lots of time on the ground (a lot of this applies to polar bears as well, I find). A good otter exhibit isn’t just a pool, and should incorporate varied land area as well. We didn't have underwater viewing at our exhibit, and to be honest, I was okay with it.

Cleaning the exhibit was very easy - just rake up a few small piles of poop (usually colored bright orange because of the carrots, and a bit slimy because of the fish), and strip out the next box once a week or so. Once a week, we'd drain the pool, power-washing as needed (it was an older exhibit, so it was a dump and fill rather than having a filtration system).

Otters are very active, so not surprisingly they burn lots of calories. When I started at the zoo, we fed the otters twice a day; by the time I left, we were doing it four times a day (same amount of food, just broken up more). This had the added advantage of making the otters more active throughout the day, so they weren’t treating the middle of the day as dead time. Diet was mostly fish-based (like the pelicans, we tried keeping the otters on a diverse mix of fish species – capelin, herring, sardines, butterfish, trout) – as well a carnivore diet (ground horsemeat-based), and a little chopped produce, especially carrots. Life fish (especially eels) and shellfish, as well as bones, were used for dietary enrichment.

Figuring out how to slow down the feedings was a challenge, as otters are ravenous. We used a lot of enrichment features to extend feeding, such as putting small fish in water cooler jugs that we’d sink into the bottom of the pool, or putting carnivore diet in PVC pipe feeders.


Otters getting chopped fish out a puzzle feeder one of our keepers made of out PVC caps. It was always a challenge coming up with new enrichment for the otters, as they quickly learned how to solve most puzzle feeders.

Being so intelligent and so inquisitive, it’s not surprising that otters respond very well to training, which also provides good enrichment. We trained for a variety of behaviors, such as scale-training (getting an otter to actually sit still is a challenge!), opening the mouth, showing paws, and standing for injections.

We had hoped to breed our otters, but this was unsuccessful. At first we’d hoped that separating the pair for a month prior to breeding would be the trick, but it wasn’t. The male would enthusiastically mate with the female both on land and water, but she never got pregnant. The SSP has since determined a likely cause – many otters in zoos and aquariums are wild born, non-releasable animals (one of other birds was a hurricane orphan), and males and females from different parts of North America are brought together as pairs. Different parts of the country have different climatic conditions, and as a result an otter from, say Louisiana and one from, say, Massachusetts might come into cycle at different times of the year. The SSP is now working to pair animals that are closer in geographic origin.

We very seldom, almost never, went into our otter exhibit with the animals, which wasn’t too big of a challenge as they shifted very well due to their food motivation (I always enjoyed watching them in holding, flipping in loops as they waited for us to let them back out for feeding). Our male was a bit… slow, to the point that we joked that he was dropped on his head, and often seemed to be in his own little world. I sometimes wondered if he was partially deaf or something, since the female was always ready to shift, but he seemed to not know that we were there, especially if he was in a log or nest box. Sometimes, I’d have to go in and look for him to drive him to the shift area. The fear of going in with the otter was caused by the experiences of a former keeper, many years earlier, who was badly bitten by an otter, even falling into the pool as he tried to escape it.

Towards the end of my time at this zoo, a local community museum was looking at replacing its large fish tank with an indoor otter exhibit, and asked us to come and consult. We came and offered our advice, which was, in general, don’t do it (or, since I’m a bit more diplomatic, you could do it, but to do it well would involve a lot more expense and effort than you seem to want to put into this). They… opted not to listen. More frustratingly, they also opted to get their otters before the exhibit was done, and someone sweet-talked our director in having us hold the otters while they finished up. This pair of youngsters had just been wild caught down south, and they were as squirrely and slippery as you could imagine, to say nothing of terrified of us and everything.

We didn’t really have a place to put them, so they were at first housed in one of our covered waterfowl holding pens, off-exhibit. They dug out the very first night, but thankfully into the keeper area, rather than the great outdoors. I was quite relieved when we finally packed them off to their new home in the museum.

Being part of our native wildlife exhibit, it wasn't surprising that we occasionally saw wild otters locally, once even swimming on the creek that ran through the zoo. On another occasion, we received a call from a nearby resort town that had a waterpark - a female otter had recently been found dead there, and a few days afterwards, her two young pups were found wandering about. We went down and captured them, bringing them back to the zoo to care for in our hospital. We then worked with the SSP to find placement for them, together, an another facility.


Otter pups in the zoo hospital

It's interesting to me that NARO are an SSP, actually. For so many other native species, such as black bears, bobcats, and bald eagles, the expectation is that there will always be non-releasable animals in need of placement, and so zoos SHOULDN'T breed those species, in order to keep spaces free for wild-born animals. Otters (as well as beavers and North American porcupines) are managed as SSPs, even though it's quite common that non-releasable animals are found and brought into zoos - which also means that those populations get constant influxes of wild genes that most SSPs could never obtain.

 

[birdsandbats]

I suspect the SSP is probably because NAROs, while common in many areas, are still extirpated from vas areas of their former range - therefore, zoo animals still can be, and sometimes are, used for reintroductions.

 

[Coelacanth18]

We very seldom, almost never, went into our otter exhibit with the animals

The fear of going in with the otter was caused by the experiences of a former keeper, many years earlier, who was badly bitten by an otter, even falling into the pool as he tried to escape it.

Not surprised at all by this; it can be easy to forget how dangerous otters really are. A few years ago when I visited Lassen Volcanic NP, half of Manzanita Lake was closed to the public because of a NARO attack... and then last year there was that attack in Singapore by a pack of Smooth-coated Otters. They're part of the mustelid family after all, and even though they seem distinct they have that same tenacity weasels and badgers often do!

It's interesting to me that NARO are an SSP, actually. For so many other native species, such as black bears, bobcats, and bald eagles, the expectation is that there will always be non-releasable animals in need of placement, and so zoos SHOULDN'T breed those species, in order to keep spaces free for wild-born animals. Otters (as well as beavers and North American porcupines) are managed as SSPs, even though it's quite common that non-releasable animals are found and brought into zoos

I suspect the SSP is probably because NAROs, while common in many areas, are still extirpated from vas areas of their former range - therefore, zoo animals still can be, and sometimes are, used for reintroductions.

I've always assumed it was because NAROs were so popular in zoos that some breeding was needed to meet demand.

 

[Zhao yun]

Not surprised at all by this; it can be easy to forget how dangerous otters really are. A few years ago when I visited Lassen Volcanic NP, half of Manzanita Lake was closed to the public because of a NARO attack... and then last year there was that attack in Singapore by a pack of Small-clawed Otters. They're part of the mustelid family after all, and even though they seem distinct they have that same tenacity weasels and badgers often do!




I've always assumed it was because NAROs were so popular in zoos that some breeding was needed to meet demand.

The attack in Singapore wasn't ASCO, which have been extripated from mainland Singapore, but Smooth-coated Otters.

 

[Great Argus]

I've always assumed it was because NAROs were so popular in zoos that some breeding was needed to meet demand

This is the correct reason - even now with some 250 otters across 104 facilities (plus 4 more still working with the SSP despite losing AZA status) the population is still slated to increase due to interest. Demand for NARO remains high, to the severe disadvantage of all the more endangered otters we've dropped. There is only one otter out of 250 currently slated to return to the wild, all other pups are going to zoos. The SSP makes no comment about breeding for release - indeed rather this is a wild import dependent population that takes in multiple problem/orphaned otters every year.

 

[Strathmorezoo]

For today’s post, we’ll talk about one of the most popular of all zoo mammals in the US, the North American river otter. It’s easy to see why this species is so popular – they are very active and engaging, tolerant of a wide variety of climatic conditions, and, by virtue of their broad geographic range, can be incorporated into native-themed exhibits across the country. Being aquatic, they are also often seen in aquariums, as well as nature centers.

My experience with river otters (NAROs, as they’re often called) at one AZA facility. We managed 1.1 (for the most part – more about that at the end) in an outdoor exhibit that consisted of a large pool, about three feet or so at the deepest, and an adjacent land area that was soil substrate with some rocks and sparse vegetation. A nest box with shavings was the main shelter, but they also often used a large hollow log as a sleeping space, especially in the warmer months.

View attachment 774951

The natural substrate was a favorite part of mine for the exhibit – I see a lot of otters in indoor exhibits, especially at aquariums and nature centers, and I dislike all of the concrete. It seems like some of those exhibits are designed with the idea of showing visitors otters swimming underwater, and don’t think beyond that as far as the animal’s needs. Left to their own devices in a naturalistic setting, otters will dig in dirt, climb low trees, roll through piles of raked leaves, and spend lots of time on the ground (a lot of this applies to polar bears as well, I find). A good otter exhibit isn’t just a pool, and should incorporate varied land area as well. We didn't have underwater viewing at our exhibit, and to be honest, I was okay with it.

Cleaning the exhibit was very easy - just rake up a few small piles of poop (usually colored bright orange because of the carrots, and a bit slimy because of the fish), and strip out the next box once a week or so. Once a week, we'd drain the pool, power-washing as needed (it was an older exhibit, so it was a dump and fill rather than having a filtration system).

Otters are very active, so not surprisingly they burn lots of calories. When I started at the zoo, we fed the otters twice a day; by the time I left, we were doing it four times a day (same amount of food, just broken up more). This had the added advantage of making the otters more active throughout the day, so they weren’t treating the middle of the day as dead time. Diet was mostly fish-based (like the pelicans, we tried keeping the otters on a diverse mix of fish species – capelin, herring, sardines, butterfish, trout) – as well a carnivore diet (ground horsemeat-based), and a little chopped produce, especially carrots. Life fish (especially eels) and shellfish, as well as bones, were used for dietary enrichment.

Figuring out how to slow down the feedings was a challenge, as otters are ravenous. We used a lot of enrichment features to extend feeding, such as putting small fish in water cooler jugs that we’d sink into the bottom of the pool, or putting carnivore diet in PVC pipe feeders.

View attachment 774950
Otters getting chopped fish out a puzzle feeder one of our keepers made of out PVC caps. It was always a challenge coming up with new enrichment for the otters, as they quickly learned how to solve most puzzle feeders.

Being so intelligent and so inquisitive, it’s not surprising that otters respond very well to training, which also provides good enrichment. We trained for a variety of behaviors, such as scale-training (getting an otter to actually sit still is a challenge!), opening the mouth, showing paws, and standing for injections.

We had hoped to breed our otters, but this was unsuccessful. At first we’d hoped that separating the pair for a month prior to breeding would be the trick, but it wasn’t. The male would enthusiastically mate with the female both on land and water, but she never got pregnant. The SSP has since determined a likely cause – many otters in zoos and aquariums are wild born, non-releasable animals (one of other birds was a hurricane orphan), and males and females from different parts of North America are brought together as pairs. Different parts of the country have different climatic conditions, and as a result an otter from, say Louisiana and one from, say, Massachusetts might come into cycle at different times of the year. The SSP is now working to pair animals that are closer in geographic origin.

We very seldom, almost never, went into our otter exhibit with the animals, which wasn’t too big of a challenge as they shifted very well due to their food motivation (I always enjoyed watching them in holding, flipping in loops as they waited for us to let them back out for feeding). Our male was a bit… slow, to the point that we joked that he was dropped on his head, and often seemed to be in his own little world. I sometimes wondered if he was partially deaf or something, since the female was always ready to shift, but he seemed to not know that we were there, especially if he was in a log or nest box. Sometimes, I’d have to go in and look for him to drive him to the shift area. The fear of going in with the otter was caused by the experiences of a former keeper, many years earlier, who was badly bitten by an otter, even falling into the pool as he tried to escape it.

Towards the end of my time at this zoo, a local community museum was looking at replacing its large fish tank with an indoor otter exhibit, and asked us to come and consult. We came and offered our advice, which was, in general, don’t do it (or, since I’m a bit more diplomatic, you could do it, but to do it well would involve a lot more expense and effort than you seem to want to put into this). They… opted not to listen. More frustratingly, they also opted to get their otters before the exhibit was done, and someone sweet-talked our director in having us hold the otters while they finished up. This pair of youngsters had just been wild caught down south, and they were as squirrely and slippery as you could imagine, to say nothing of terrified of us and everything.

We didn’t really have a place to put them, so they were at first housed in one of our covered waterfowl holding pens, off-exhibit. They dug out the very first night, but thankfully into the keeper area, rather than the great outdoors. I was quite relieved when we finally packed them off to their new home in the museum.

Being part of our native wildlife exhibit, it wasn't surprising that we occasionally saw wild otters locally, once even swimming on the creek that ran through the zoo. On another occasion, we received a call from a nearby resort town that had a waterpark - a female otter had recently been found dead there, and a few days afterwards, her two young pups were found wandering about. We went down and captured them, bringing them back to the zoo to care for in our hospital. We then worked with the SSP to find placement for them, together, an another facility.

View attachment 774952
Otter pups in the zoo hospital

It's interesting to me that NARO are an SSP, actually. For so many other native species, such as black bears, bobcats, and bald eagles, the expectation is that there will always be non-releasable animals in need of placement, and so zoos SHOULDN'T breed those species, in order to keep spaces free for wild-born animals. Otters (as well as beavers and North American porcupines) are managed as SSPs, even though it's quite common that non-releasable animals are found and brought into zoos - which also means that those populations get constant influxes of wild genes that most SSPs could never obtain.

I've worked with Asian Short Clawed Otters, though they were never overly aggressive, they were very playful, particularly pulling my shoe laces and on occasions shredding them.

 

[Aardwolf]

Others have said it, but yes, NARO are an SSP because of the high demand, not for reintro efforts. I've long felt that if zoos do not have a specific geographic reason, such as a native wildlife exhibit, for housing certain species, such as river otter, American alligator, and bobcat, they would really consider using that exhibit space to support other species. Even moving a tiny number of NARO holders to other otters, or bobcats to other species, or what have you, could really move the needle on the sustainability of some of our managed species.

As I may have let on in my reminiscence about some species, such as the gibbons, I’m not that big of a primate person. There was one monkey species, however, which I absolutely adored working with, and that was the Bolivian gray titi monkey.

When I started a job at one AZA facility, the zoo had been breeding titi monkeys for years in an exhibit, shared with sloths, curassow, and green iguana (keepers would describe the iguanas chasing the titi monkeys across the branches). The exhibit space was all outdoors, but there was a holding building attached to the back. The interior of the building was divided into a general use area, and a separate section where the titis could retreat to and the sloths couldn’t eat their food (a mix of canned and dry primate chow, fruits and vegetables, and hard-boiled egg; as with most of the small primates I’ve worked with, water was provided by a bottle fixed to the outside of the caging). I thought the slow, placid monkeys were very sweet, and the way that the pair intertwined their tails like a couple holding hands was adorable. Unlike many other monkeys that I’ve worked with, you could work freely around them and even turn your back on them, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t do anything crazy. When they took food from your hands, it was calmly and politely, not the frantic snatching of other monkeys. Also unlike many other monkeys, I never saw any bullying or fighting. When the pair presented us with a baby, I was over the moon.



Unfortunately, the titi exhibit had a major biosecurity weakness. It was located right up against the creek, and raccoons loved to pass around – and over – the exhibit as they foraged at night. The raccoons were shedders of Baylisascaris procyonis, “Baylis” as we usually called it, a raccoon roundworm which proved fatal to the monkeys (and which I have mentioned previously on this thread). The female died first, not too long after the baby was born. I was coming by to drop off the evening diet for the sloths and I found her unresponsive on the floor of the exhibit. I couldn’t tell if she was alive or not, and not having a crate or anything handy, I was afraid to remove her from the exhibit, in case she suddenly perked back up and bolted. I called on the radio for help, and remember being very frustrated to later find that the senior keeper on duty that day had been in the office with her feet up on the desk, having decided that since she couldn’t clearly understand what I was saying over the radio (the exhibit area was a bit of a patchy area, reception wise, there was no need to do anything).

We tried to support the male with raising the infant as best as we could, but it passed away soon after (Samoa and the infant are the titis depicted in the photo for his profile). As a result, I took the lone male on what would be the first of many zoo animal road trips over the course of my career and brought him to a new zoo where he could be re-paired. It’s worth noting that, to the best of my memory, every exhibit I’ve seen of this species – or any species of titi monkey - in a US zoo since than has been an indoor exhibit.

A few years later, I was at a different AZA facility for another animal transport, and was being shown around. We were walking through an exhibit building when she stopped to point out their titi monkeys – and introduced them by name. Sure enough, it was our old male. I was very happy to see him doing well and happily repaired years later. Titi monkeys have a reputation of handling stress very poorly, as well as pining from the loss of mates, so to see him adjusted in another new home and with a new mate was very rewarding.

 

[Coelacanth18]

the way that the pair intertwined their tails like a couple holding hands was adorable.

Love this about them too. Your behavioral description of them makes sense, they always struck me as a calmer primate - similar to their White-faced Saki cousin. I've often wondered why they aren't quite as popular or common as the saki, now I wonder if the fragility you describe has something to do with that?

It’s worth noting that, to the best of my memory, every exhibit I’ve seen of this species – or any species of titi monkey - in a US zoo since than has been an indoor exhibit.

This is interesting to hear; I know of at least two zoos I've been to with Bolivian Grey Titi that house them in outdoor exhibits (Henson Robinson and Charles Paddock) so it must not be a universal trend... but I know a lot of smaller monkeys are kept indoors year-round out east.

-----

A tangential question, but I figured this might be a good place to ask. From the sounds of it, you have experience working at zoos in both warmer and more temperate climates (and maybe also at zoos that are only open seasonally?). I'm curious to know if you've made any observations about how animals react to being kept off-show during the winter, either for winter holding or zoo closure. Does having animals away from visitors for months of the year seem to affect their behavior or well-being?

 

[Aardwolf]

An interesting question, @Coelacanth18. I can’t say that I noticed much behavioral difference at the facilities that closed during the winter between the open season and closed (or at least not one that I could attribute to the presence or absence of the public, as opposed to other factors, such as temperature, sunlight, access to outdoor space, etc). Some animals respond to the privacy in different ways, which is something I think we’re just beginning to appreciate more than we’re putting more and more cameras up to monitor what animals are doing when we aren’t around. I’ve definitely worked with some animals, such as the Chinese alligator I mentioned earlier, who I would see out and about when I came to work in the morning, but who would retreat to a hiding spot as soon as we opened up for the day (and who I assume came back out as soon as we all headed home). And there are some species which are much more likely to breed and raise offspring when out of the public eye. But I think winter closures are just too short-term to have much notable impact on the behavior of most animals, especially since it’s not like they understand that they’ll have a few months off, then everything is back to normal again for a while.

Of the four ratite species I’ve worked with, the emu is the one that I’ve always managed to most easily overlook. There’s a reason that these birds are so popular with exotic pet owners compared to, say, rheas. Both sexes tend to be very docile, in my experience (not necessarily the case with rheas, as we’ll see when we get to those birds). They’re very hardy birds, though like ostriches, their cold-hardiness tends to be somewhat exaggerated. They get along very well with a wide variety of species. Yes, they are often housed with various macropods in Australian exhibits, but I’ve worked with emus in safari park settings as well, where they mix quite easily with a variety of cervids, bovids, camelids, and equids. I’ve had a single experience of an emu getting gored by an unidentified assailant in one of those mixes, but that may have been a freak accident.

My first emu was a lone male at an AZA facility, where he shared a habitat with an older gray kangaroo and an absolutely ancient red kangaroo (the latter I introduced in an earlier post). He was a very friendly bird… perhaps a bit too friendly… the sort of friendly that made you want to perpetually keep you back against the fence when you were in the exhibit, if you catch my meaning. I recall once leaning against a tree while I scrubbed out a water trough, only to realize that the emu was on the opposite side of the tree, pretending that it was a female emu. That may be chalked up as, if not one of the most uncomfortable moments in my zookeeping career, than at least an early introduction to the sexual depravities of some of our animals.


Our love-bug emu in a moment of relatively platonic bliss with one of his keepers

I next worked with emus at a non-AZA zoo, where they were simply kept in a large field with a shed. Cleaning after them is fairly simple – they produce several piles of poop which resembles chocolate soft serve ice cream every day – and the diet a feeder full of grain, with some supplemental produce. At another non-AZA zoos, the emus were in a separate pen in a farmyard area, before eventually being released into the main safari. At both non-AZA facilities, visitors could feed the emus grain, though few people seemed to enjoy the experience. As I mentioned with the ostriches, ratites tend not to take food very gently, but repeatedly strike at the proffered bucket (or hand) with a force and focus that many people find unnerving, which often results in grain buckets being dropped or, more dramatically, flung into the air in a panic.

If emus have one bad habitat that I find exasperating, it’s a tendency to pace along fencelines, which in some cases churns up a muddy mess which they seem to sink into. They also have an occasionally tendency to get themselves tangled up, and I’ve seen a few birds with scratched up beaks, presumably from being startled while right next to the fence. It doesn’t seem to matter how large the paddock is, and I wonder if they just feel safer having something against them, so that they only need to watch for danger from one side Emus have a pretty loose definition of what danger can be, and I would occasionally see one in our safari get startled, jump up, and then bolt in the opposite direction after what seemed to me to be a relatively minor disturbance.

Because of some of the behaviors I’ve mentioned, there’s an assumption that emus are pretty stupid birds, which I don’t think is necessarily true. There’s been a lot more focus on ratite training and enrichment in recent years, and emus have been seen to respond well to both. Sometimes, I think that their perceived stupidity is just like their supposed cold tolerance; it’s a convenient lie that some people tell themselves so that they don’t have to do better or try harder.

Emus belong to a class of animals, one that transcends taxonomy, that I call “the basic exotics.” These are species that are so commonplace in private hands that their care and husbandry seem to be taken for granted; it’s just assumed that they will do well. And, to be fair, they usually do get by fairly well without too much expenditure or effort. Still, I sometimes wish that we as a profession would devote a little more time and energy on this species; I’d like to see someone, maybe a smaller zoo that doesn’t have the resources for many of the bigger ABC species, to say that they’re just going to build a great emu exhibit, or a great sulcata exhibit, or what have you.

 

[Wisp O' Mist]

Emus belong to a class of animals, one that transcends taxonomy, that I call “the basic exotics.” These are species that are so commonplace in private hands that their care and husbandry seem to be taken for granted;

Can you name some more of these species? Please?

I've been trying to learn more about the private trade.

 

[Great Argus]

Because of some of the behaviors I’ve mentioned, there’s an assumption that emus are pretty stupid birds, which I don’t think is necessarily true. There’s been a lot more focus on ratite training and enrichment in recent years, and emus have been seen to respond well to both. Sometimes, I think that their perceived stupidity is just like their supposed cold tolerance; it’s a convenient lie that some people tell themselves so that they don’t have to do better or try harder.

I saw an article recently about a study that confirmed this, and that ratites are indeed quite a lot smarter than most people take them for.

 

[Aardwolf]

@Great Argus - in my experience, most animals are
@Wisp O' Mist , oh, some examples off the top of my head - ostrich, emu, rhea, red kangaroo, a decent amount of hoofstock (fallow deer is a species that really jumps out at me), Cape porcupine, serval, squirrel monkey, ring-tailed lemur, green iguana, Burmese python - species that are just hardy and fairly forgiving in their care requirements, which lets people convince themselves that they just don't need much care. You may notice that a lot of these are species that I've already covered in this thread; that's because they are readily available in non-AZA facilities or the private pet trade, because they're the animals that some people think of as "easy" - which can be detrimental to the animals themselves. I think a major part of the reason of the downfall of my cassowary is that the zoo's owner had held ostrich, emu, and rhea for so long that he'd convinced himself ratites were easy, and that cassowary should be a piece of cake.

Many of the experiences I’ve recorded with parrots so far have been, by and large, unsatisfactory. That’s because most of the parrots that I came across never had the chance to be parrots, and it was our job to care for broken little birds. One species that stands out in my memory as having been a very different bird, in terms of the kind of life it led, was the sun conure.



The AZA zoo maintained a flock of upwards of 30 sun conures in a decently-sized flight cage, which they shared with a few other bird species (great curassow, Orinoco goose, elegant-crested tinamou, and guira cuckoo – not all at the same time). There was no mistake as to who the stars of the exhibit were, though. The conures were managed as a group (meaning we didn’t really track them as individuals), and they largely acted as a group. When one flew, they all flew. When one chattered, they all chattered. Looking at them from a distance as you approached the exhibit, you could have been excused for thinking of them as one large, golden bird with a single mind. Ironically, it occurred to me years later that if we’d phased out the sun conures in exchange for golden conures (an SSP at the time), we probably wouldn’t have been able to maintain such a loose, free-wheeling group, but would probably have had one or two pairs which we’d have monitored closely.

What I loved about the sun conures was that they acted like parrots. There was no need for lots of enrichment and training to keep them busy; they had dozens of conspecifics to preen with, fight with (we did see some evidence of bullying, but tried to only intervene if we thought it was necessary, as we’d learned based on past experience that birds removed from the group for anything other than the briefest of times had a very difficult time reintegrating into the flock), breed with, and otherwise amuse each other. Their behavior and activity budget probably much more closely resembled wild conures than any other parrots I’ve worked with. They were surprisingly cold-tolerant (they had heat lamps, nest boxes, wind-breaks, and an attached heated cubicle for shelters), so there was no need to catch them up and bring them into a smaller, starker indoor area for much of the year. As much as I love interacting with the animals in many cases, there’s something to be said about a species that lets you take a more hands-off approach and just… be itself.

The conures were fed on hanging metal troughs attached to the sides of the caging, which we filled daily with commercial parrot chow and chopped produce. These elevated feeders were too small and flimsy for the curassow to get up on, while the cuckoos showed little interest in the contents and left the conures alone. These troughs were my least favorite part of caring for the conures, as they got gross quickly and were a pain to clean. They especially became foul in rainy weather, and to my intense frustration, I was never able to convince the conures to eat their diet under cover. On days when I tried moving all of their food into their attached holding area, a Plexiglas-enclosed cubicle warmed with space heaters, they simply did not eat until I put the feeders back out in the open.

The conures bred freely in that exhibit, and it sometimes happened that, as I would crawl about the floor of the exhibit, trying to find the elusive tinamous while keeping an eye peeled for the aggressive male curassow, I’d sometimes look into a fallen log and see a few tiny eggs, or sometimes the naked pink chicks. Likewise, there were days when I was counting the birds and the conure count seemed short, when I’d accidentally scare up a pair that was scouting out a potential nest in the liriope grasses that floored the exhibit. Years before I started, one conure chick had been found looking wet and bedraggled and had been pulled for hand-rearing, and since lived as an education animal. For the most part, we took a hands off approach to the conures. The birth rate roughly equaled the death rate. It kind of reminded me of how I managed prairie dogs at most zoos.


Conure chicks in a hollow log

The conures did face some occasional predation pressure from wild Cooper’s hawks, which would reach through the roof of the aviary and grab unsuspecting conures. As part of our efforts to mitigate predation, we shortened the height of many of the perches, so that a roosting parrot wouldn’t be within grabbing range of a hawk standing on top of the aviary. Even the risk of predation, try though we might to curtail it, did the conures some good, I thought - it kept them active and vigilant for danger, which is a major part of the daily activity for a wild conure.

We did have one frustrating incident in which a conure exploited a gap in the mesh and, for the next two weeks, was a free-flying bird on zoo grounds. He never ventured far from the exhibit, which made it all the more frustrating that we couldn’t catch him, though we came close on several occasions (this was especially exasperating because we’d just had a new director start the day the bird escaped, and we were all trying to be the hero who caught the bird to make a good first impression). I remember watching one of my friends literally running along the beams at the top of the aviary with a net, jumping in the air as he ran trying to net the bird, and thinking he was going to misstep, come crashing through the mesh, break his fool neck, and let ALL the birds out. Another keeper, a particularly sour individual that I didn’t much like, simply said it couldn’t be done, and she refused to help, and vaguely implied we were idiots for trying.


Part of our conure flock in holding while we worked to repair the exhibit mesh

I was determined that we were going to make her eat crow, if not conure.

So, how did we get the elusive bird? When you try to catch birds in an aviary, you’ll notice that, even though they have all of the sky to choose from, they tend to stock to specific flight patterns. That’s what usually lets you predict where they’ll go and be ready with a net – and that’s how we frequently came so close to netting the bird outside the exhibit. We noticed that there was one narrow section of path, sandwiched between the front of the aviary and the exhibit across the path, that the bird kept flying through, but it was just too wide for one person to cover. So, we reached out to a nearby university and borrowed a mist net. Within five minutes of having strung it up, we had that bird in hand. My only regret is that we hadn’t thought of it earlier.

 

[Strathmorezoo]

@Great Argus - in my experience, most animals are
@Wisp O' Mist , oh, some examples off the top of my head - ostrich, emu, rhea, red kangaroo, a decent amount of hoofstock (fallow deer is a species that really jumps out at me), Cape porcupine, serval, squirrel monkey, ring-tailed lemur, green iguana, Burmese python - species that are just hardy and fairly forgiving in their care requirements, which lets people convince themselves that they just don't need much care. You may notice that a lot of these are species that I've already covered in this thread; that's because they are readily available in non-AZA facilities or the private pet trade, because they're the animals that some people think of as "easy" - which can be detrimental to the animals themselves. I think a major part of the reason of the downfall of my cassowary is that the zoo's owner had held ostrich, emu, and rhea for so long that he'd convinced himself ratites were easy, and that cassowary should be a piece of cake.

Many of the experiences I’ve recorded with parrots so far have been, by and large, unsatisfactory. That’s because most of the parrots that I came across never had the chance to be parrots, and it was our job to care for broken little birds. One species that stands out in my memory as having been a very different bird, in terms of the kind of life it led, was the sun conure.

View attachment 775660

The AZA zoo maintained a flock of upwards of 30 sun conures in a decently-sized flight cage, which they shared with a few other bird species (great curassow, Orinoco goose, elegant-crested tinamou, and guira cuckoo – not all at the same time). There was no mistake as to who the stars of the exhibit were, though. The conures were managed as a group (meaning we didn’t really track them as individuals), and they largely acted as a group. When one flew, they all flew. When one chattered, they all chattered. Looking at them from a distance as you approached the exhibit, you could have been excused for thinking of them as one large, golden bird with a single mind. Ironically, it occurred to me years later that if we’d phased out the sun conures in exchange for golden conures (an SSP at the time), we probably wouldn’t have been able to maintain such a loose, free-wheeling group, but would probably have had one or two pairs which we’d have monitored closely.

What I loved about the sun conures was that they acted like parrots. There was no need for lots of enrichment and training to keep them busy; they had dozens of conspecifics to preen with, fight with (we did see some evidence of bullying, but tried to only intervene if we thought it was necessary, as we’d learned based on past experience that birds removed from the group for anything other than the briefest of times had a very difficult time reintegrating into the flock), breed with, and otherwise amuse each other. Their behavior and activity budget probably much more closely resembled wild conures than any other parrots I’ve worked with. They were surprisingly cold-tolerant (they had heat lamps, nest boxes, wind-breaks, and an attached heated cubicle for shelters), so there was no need to catch them up and bring them into a smaller, starker indoor area for much of the year. As much as I love interacting with the animals in many cases, there’s something to be said about a species that lets you take a more hands-off approach and just… be itself.

The conures were fed on hanging metal troughs attached to the sides of the caging, which we filled daily with commercial parrot chow and chopped produce. These elevated feeders were too small and flimsy for the curassow to get up on, while the cuckoos showed little interest in the contents and left the conures alone. These troughs were my least favorite part of caring for the conures, as they got gross quickly and were a pain to clean. They especially became foul in rainy weather, and to my intense frustration, I was never able to convince the conures to eat their diet under cover. On days when I tried moving all of their food into their attached holding area, a Plexiglas-enclosed cubicle warmed with space heaters, they simply did not eat until I put the feeders back out in the open.

The conures bred freely in that exhibit, and it sometimes happened that, as I would crawl about the floor of the exhibit, trying to find the elusive tinamous while keeping an eye peeled for the aggressive male curassow, I’d sometimes look into a fallen log and see a few tiny eggs, or sometimes the naked pink chicks. Likewise, there were days when I was counting the birds and the conure count seemed short, when I’d accidentally scare up a pair that was scouting out a potential nest in the liriope grasses that floored the exhibit. Years before I started, one conure chick had been found looking wet and bedraggled and had been pulled for hand-rearing, and since lived as an education animal. For the most part, we took a hands off approach to the conures. The birth rate roughly equaled the death rate. It kind of reminded me of how I managed prairie dogs at most zoos.

View attachment 775659
Conure chicks in a hollow log

The conures did face some occasional predation pressure from wild Cooper’s hawks, which would reach through the roof of the aviary and grab unsuspecting conures. As part of our efforts to mitigate predation, we shortened the height of many of the perches, so that a roosting parrot wouldn’t be within grabbing range of a hawk standing on top of the aviary. Even the risk of predation, try though we might to curtail it, did the conures some good, I thought - it kept them active and vigilant for danger, which is a major part of the daily activity for a wild conure.

We did have one frustrating incident in which a conure exploited a gap in the mesh and, for the next two weeks, was a free-flying bird on zoo grounds. He never ventured far from the exhibit, which made it all the more frustrating that we couldn’t catch him, though we came close on several occasions (this was especially exasperating because we’d just had a new director start the day the bird escaped, and we were all trying to be the hero who caught the bird to make a good first impression). I remember watching one of my friends literally running along the beams at the top of the aviary with a net, jumping in the air as he ran trying to net the bird, and thinking he was going to misstep, come crashing through the mesh, break his fool neck, and let ALL the birds out. Another keeper, a particularly sour individual that I didn’t much like, simply said it couldn’t be done, and she refused to help, and vaguely implied we were idiots for trying.

View attachment 775658
Part of our conure flock in holding while we worked to repair the exhibit mesh

I was determined that we were going to make her eat crow, if not conure.

So, how did we get the elusive bird? When you try to catch birds in an aviary, you’ll notice that, even though they have all of the sky to choose from, they tend to stock to specific flight patterns. That’s what usually lets you predict where they’ll go and be ready with a net – and that’s how we frequently came so close to netting the bird outside the exhibit. We noticed that there was one narrow section of path, sandwiched between the front of the aviary and the exhibit across the path, that the bird kept flying through, but it was just too wide for one person to cover. So, we reached out to a nearby university and borrowed a mist net. Within five minutes of having strung it up, we had that bird in hand. My only regret is that we hadn’t thought of it earlier.

Hi Aardwolf, as per usual, alot of your experiences mirror my own, for example. In the UK, there is a problem with Sparrow Hawks attacks on aviaries. I have personally lost a few birds including canaries, finches and even a Kakariki in such attacks. I have
also been told by birdkeepers in zoos of attacks on birds such as cockatoos .Also, with bird escapes ,I use.a mesh cage, 40 cm×40cm×15cm with no base.i prop the cage up with a stick at about 45 degrees with a long piece of string attached to the stick and put a bowl of food under it within 24 hours after the escape. By this time the escapee is usually very hungry, bird hops under for the food, i pull the string, usually I'm about 20 foot away. Cage falls over the escaped bird ,works every time. When you have had such a large flock of sun conures, how do you prevent incestuous breeding ?

 

[Aardwolf]

@Strathmorezoo , essentially... you don't. Same with prairie dog colonies. You can try introducing some new blood and then, but intros can get dicey with newcomers. If you've got a large enough group to start with, you hope that you've got the gene diversity there and that it works... and still, sometimes these groups just peter out. That's why I realized that, if we were to switch to golden conures, we'd have to completely rethink our breeding and housing strategy.

Prior to 2000, I doubt many folks in or out of the zoo field would have heard of the Panamanian golden frog. Before then, the species had never been kept outside of Panama. Twenty-five years later, following the collection of frogs from the wild in a last-ditch effort to save this species from the devastating chytrid fungus, this species is now one of the most commonly kept exotic amphibians in AZA zoos. Its distribution is strictly limited to AZA facilities (primarily in the US, with a small number of Canadian partners). As per the requirements of the initial imports from USFWS, with ownership of all frogs and their offspring being maintained by The Baltimore Zoo (since renamed The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore).

I’ve worked with Panamanian golden frogs at two facilities, both obviously AZA. What we call the Panamanian golden frog is actually two species – the true PGF, Atelopus zeteki, and the golden morph of Atelopus varius, the harlequin frog. The distinction was not clear when the first frogs were collected from the wild (and for a decent chunk of its history, A. zeteki was considered a subspecies of A. varius), so PGFs in zoos are organized into three populations – two zeteki, and one varius. To reduce confusion and prevent the possibility of hybridization, the majority of frogs holders are only given animals from one of the three populations.

Despite their precarious status in the wild (where they are thought to be extinct), PGFs are remarkably hardy frogs and breed very well in zoo settings (I remember the first time I saw hundreds of golden frogs together at a breeding facility and thinking, “This is an endangered species?”). For a multitude of reasons – their striking coloration, their compelling conservation story, and their relative ease in management – they are very popular exhibit animals. As often is the case with zoo amphibian programs, there are a few facilities which really drive the population and are responsible for maintaining it, and then there are a bunch of facilities that have five frogs in a tank in their reptile house, put up a plaque about Amphibian Ark, and then pat themselves on the back and say that they’re helping.

One thing about golden frogs which has always struck me as memorable is their walk. When they move about their tanks, they generally walk, not hop, with a long-legged, almost pantherine stalk. It’s fun to watch them prowl around in the pursuit of crickets (smaller frogs are often fed fruit flies). They also are a fairly quiet frog. In their native Panama, they were found in stream beds, where their weak voices would be difficult to hear over the roar of water. Instead, the frogs rely on waving to communicate, acting like little amphibian semaphores.


Golden frog on the prowl

The skin of golden frogs secretes a poison, zetekitoxin, as one might expect from a frog so brightly colored. I've never had any problems with it in captive frogs, though I always do make a point of handling amphibians as little as possible and not touching my face afterwards (this being as much for their benefit and safety as my own), and I believe that, like dart frogs, the poison isn't really an issue in captive animals. At one zoo, we housed our PGFs on exhibit with a pair of annulated tree boas and had no issues with either species.

Being an SSP, reproduction in PGFs is carefully monitored. Things were a bit messy in the early days of the population, sort of a free-for-all, with lots of frogs having long lists of MULTS as parents. Most zoos now carefully place one male and one female in breeding tanks so that parentage is clearly recorded. If you see a group of PGFs on exhibit, there’s a good chance that you’re looking at a single-sex group, so that breeding won’t take place in an environment where it's a lot harder to manage and monitor. A bunch of males together will almost inevitably start doing amplexus on each other; keepers have to monitor to make sure it doesn’t get excessive to the detriment of some of the males – I’ve seen a “conga line” six frogs long before…

An egg mass may consist of over 1000 eggs, which then hatch into tadpoles, then morphlets, then adults. Frogs can usually be sexed at about two years old. Some culling takes place to limit the number of eggs and tadpoles produced, since you only need so much representation of each bloodline; in the wild, the vast majority would be eaten up or fail to develop anyway.

When I see golden frogs, I’m reminded of the potential of zoos to save a species from extinction, as well as to greatly expand our knowledge base about the natural world (since extinction in the wild came fairly quickly on the heels of its first description, much of what we know about this animal comes from observations in zoos and other facilities). Despite its prevalence within AZA, it’s only taken a small number of zoos to really carry this population; if similar groups of zoos were to form consortiums to protect other amphibian species, we could greatly expand the number and variety of endangered amphibians (or reptiles!) that zoos are able to save.

Compared to many animals, frogs are remarkably low maintenance, both in expense, staff time, and space. I’d say it’s likely that all of the PGF space in all of America’s (and Canada’s) zoos and aquariums could fit comfortably in the space taken up by one of the more mediocre elephant exhibits.

Oof, and this brings us up to 50 species/groups of species featured...

 

[lintworm]

Oof, and this brings us up to 50 species/groups of species featured...

And well done at that! I have deep respect that you are able to consistently produce such entertaining stories on such a regular basis. They always manage to cheer up my evening with interesting insights and a fun writing style!

Despite its prevalence within AZA, it’s only taken a small number of zoos to really carry this population; if similar groups of zoos were to form consortiums to protect other amphibian species, we could greatly expand the number and variety of endangered amphibians (or reptiles!) that zoos are able to save.

That is a sobering statement, which is true on this side of the Atlantic too... So much more would be possible in terms of ex situ conservation of these small ectotherms if zoos were willing. But apparently the economics still favour elephants over saving 20 amphibian species...

 

[Great Argus]

Despite its prevalence within AZA, it’s only taken a small number of zoos to really carry this population; if similar groups of zoos were to form consortiums to protect other amphibian species, we could greatly expand the number and variety of endangered amphibians (or reptiles!) that zoos are able to save.

This is so true - they take up so little space and yet threatened species get left by the wayside until they're bordering extinct. Like can't we be a little more proactive instead of reactive? Sure we've got colonies of Wyoming Toad and Houston Toad, but we kinda waited a little long to get those going...

 

[Aardwolf]

For today’s post, we look at some of the most glamorous of antelopes, the gazelles. I’ve worked with three species of gazelle over my career.

Across the board, gazelles received fairly standard care at the zoos where I’ve worked. Diet has been hay and grain, with fresh water provided daily, but seldom actually drunk (gazelles being largely arid-land antelopes). A social group has consisted of a male and a few females. Paddocks have largely been open field exhibits with grass, a shelter, and little else. Gazelles can be flighty by nature, and exhibit clutter has the potential for being something they’d run into or trip on in a panic. Though they can easily be startled by novel stimuli, in my experience gazelles adapt quickly and, provided they don’t have a freak out in the first few minutes of exposure to something new, adjust quickly. My evidence? At each of the three zoos where I’ve worked with gazelles, the gazelles have been either adjacent to or across from cheetahs, with seemingly no concern on their parts.

The addra gazelles (at the time we still called all of them Damas) were some of the first antelope that I ever got zookeeping experience with at one AZA zoo, and I have happy memories of booping their noses through the grating of the Antelope Barn and watching their tails wagging away as they grazed. The addras for the exhibit came from a Texas game rancher, an indication of just how established this species was in private hands in the decades since it was first introduced to the US. Our zoo proved to be very successful in breeding the species over the years, and it wasn’t uncommon for calves to be present.

I gained further experience with addras when I worked at non-AZA facility. Most of the hoofstock was in the other section, but my team was responsible for caring for any ungulates that needed to be hand-reared. One such animal was Baxter, a male addra calf that needed to be hand-raised. The idea of hand-raising male antelopes has always made me nervous – not for my own safety, but for those of the keepers that will care for the little hellion when it’s full grown and has no fear or wariness around people. I just imagine one of my “babes” as an adult, wearing an impaled keeper as a hat. Fortunately, at the same time I was raising Baxter I was also raising a male Arabian oryx calf, so most of my dread and anxiety was fixed on him instead.

At that same non-AZA facility, we also had a small herd of Thomson’s gazelles, perhaps the archetypal gazelle. They were new acquisitions that we got shortly after I started, so we built a new enclosure for them, directly across the path from the cheetahs. It was a very simple, fenced-in paddock, with just a shed in the center for shelter. If I’d done it again, or been in a position to make decisions, I think I would have tried doing it differently – a viewing (by people OR predators) limited to two sides, maybe a few more visual barriers, and a deeper shape to allow the animals a little more distance from people. As it happened, one day our buck Tommy was found dead in the exhibit, apparently having been startled and hit the fence overnight. As was the custom of that facility, his body was repurposed for carnivore diets, and he was fed out (appropriately) to the cheetahs that night… well, most of him was. I took the head (with its splendid set of horns) and buried it. When the time came for me to leave the zoo, I dug it up and finished cleaning the skull, which now sits on the shelf of my library.


One of the female Tommy's in her field

Lastly, I’ll tell you about my favorite gazelle… actually, one of the favorite individual animals I’ve ever worked with.

It’s common for zookeepers to discover that the animals that they come to love and care about the most aren’t always the animals that are the most impressive or popular with the public. From the public side of the railing, visitors can't realize just how enormous the personalities are with some of the most humble-looking animals. Animals like Bad-Ass Benny



Benny (not his real name) was a Speke’s gazelle, a tiny little antelope from northeast Africa. Barely two feet at the shoulder, he had a plump little sandy body propped up with toothpick-thin legs. His graceful neck held up an impish face, with a small flap of skin on the tip of his nose. When excited, this flap puffed up like a balloon until it was the size of a tennis ball. At the top of his hand was a tiny pair of neat, small sharp horns. At a first glance, Benny looked like the most ordinary, uninteresting beast in the zoo - not that he usually even got that first glance. Guests rarely saw him; he was only on exhibit for half a day, since he shared the yard with a pair of oryxes who he rotated on-and-off with. When he was in the yard, he preferred to lie on a dirt heap, where he blended in perfectly against the sand. He never called attention to himself, and he never made a show for the guests. Those first glances were deceiving. Benny was a bad ass.

He may have been tiny, but every ounce of Benny's petite frame was crammed with attitude, until he was one fearless, dangerously confident little antelope. He delighted in racing along the fence line, tormenting the cheetahs in the adjacent enclosure. You could tell that he was practically chanting, “You can’t catch me!”

Benny was under the impression that all things in this world fell under two categories – food and sparing partners. When first introduced to the massive scimitar horned oryxes, each the size of a small horse, he instantly tried to herd and dominate them. Imagine an animal the size of a beagle trying to mount an animal the size of a horse. That gives you an idea of what it looked like. They promptly kicked his ass, hence the rotation in use of the yard. Refusing to learn his lesson, the pint-sized gazelle would continue to challenge the oryx (and the cheetahs, and the zebras who were his neighbors on the opposite side of the enclosure as the cheetahs) through the fencing. I had a hard time imaging Benny backing down to a lion, or an elephant, for that matter.

He liked to stay in practice by challenging inanimate objects to duels. On more than one occasion, we found him with an entire flake or two of hay impaled on his horns, shaking to get the wisps of hay from his eyes, and we knew that he had successfully vanquished his enemy. During the winter, for enrichment purposes (ours and his), we would make him snowman (well, snow gazelles, really) to challenge.

At the time that I worked with him, he was sharing his yard with a crowned crane. The mate of the crane had recently died, and the surviving bird was lonely and bored. Until another crane could be found, the keepers had installed a mirror in the yard, so the bird would have someone else to “talk” to. It worked marvelously, and the bird spent hours preening and honking and resting with her new friend. One day, when cleaning the yard, I glanced up at the mirror for no particular reason. There, in the reflection, was Benny, just fifteen feet behind me, pawing the ground and shaking his little head for the charge. I spun around, only to find him staring with the look of martyred innocence. I turned back to the mirror. He was again preparing for a charge.

From that day on, whenever I entered Benny's domain, he would slip up behind me, stalking me like a big cat. If I’d turn around, he’d freeze, and then pretend to graze or to take a nap. He was not only fearless, but crafty. The Bambi eyes didn’t fool anyone. From that point on, I made a habit of not turning my back on Benny while I was in the yard.

Benny was a pretty old boy when I met him, and he lived for many years after I left him. He has since passed on. I had a hard time believing it when his keepers told me - I just assumed he was too cocky and full of himself to ever day. Sometimes when I visit other zoos and see some quiet, unassuming animal of the non-celebrity type (not a big cat or bear, pachyderm or primate), I find myself watching them a little extra closely, wondering what kind of stories their keepers might tell.


Benny reclining on a hay bed in holding

 

[Kudu21]

For today’s post, we look at some of the most glamorous of antelopes, the gazelles. I’ve worked with three species of gazelle over my career.

Across the board, gazelles received fairly standard care at the zoos where I’ve worked. Diet has been hay and grain, with fresh water provided daily, but seldom actually drunk (gazelles being largely arid-land antelopes). A social group has consisted of a male and a few females. Paddocks have largely been open field exhibits with grass, a shelter, and little else. Gazelles can be flighty by nature, and exhibit clutter has the potential for being something they’d run into or trip on in a panic. Though they can easily be startled by novel stimuli, in my experience gazelles adapt quickly and, provided they don’t have a freak out in the first few minutes of exposure to something new, adjust quickly. My evidence? At each of the three zoos where I’ve worked with gazelles, the gazelles have been either adjacent to or across from cheetahs, with seemingly no concern on their parts.

The addra gazelles (at the time we still called all of them Damas) were some of the first antelope that I ever got zookeeping experience with at one AZA zoo, and I have happy memories of booping their noses through the grating of the Antelope Barn and watching their tails wagging away as they grazed. The addras for the exhibit came from a Texas game rancher, an indication of just how established this species was in private hands in the decades since it was first introduced to the US. Our zoo proved to be very successful in breeding the species over the years, and it wasn’t uncommon for calves to be present.

I gained further experience with addras when I worked at non-AZA facility. Most of the hoofstock was in the other section, but my team was responsible for caring for any ungulates that needed to be hand-reared. One such animal was Baxter, a male addra calf that needed to be hand-raised. The idea of hand-raising male antelopes has always made me nervous – not for my own safety, but for those of the keepers that will care for the little hellion when it’s full grown and has no fear or wariness around people. I just imagine one of my “babes” as an adult, wearing an impaled keeper as a hat. Fortunately, at the same time I was raising Baxter I was also raising a male Arabian oryx calf, so most of my dread and anxiety was fixed on him instead.

At that same non-AZA facility, we also had a small herd of Thomson’s gazelles, perhaps the archetypal gazelle. They were new acquisitions that we got shortly after I started, so we built a new enclosure for them, directly across the path from the cheetahs. It was a very simple, fenced-in paddock, with just a shed in the center for shelter. If I’d done it again, or been in a position to make decisions, I think I would have tried doing it differently – a viewing (by people OR predators) limited to two sides, maybe a few more visual barriers, and a deeper shape to allow the animals a little more distance from people. As it happened, one day our buck Tommy was found dead in the exhibit, apparently having been startled and hit the fence overnight. As was the custom of that facility, his body was repurposed for carnivore diets, and he was fed out (appropriately) to the cheetahs that night… well, most of him was. I took the head (with its splendid set of horns) and buried it. When the time came for me to leave the zoo, I dug it up and finished cleaning the skull, which now sits on the shelf of my library.

View attachment 775964
One of the female Tommy's in her field

Lastly, I’ll tell you about my favorite gazelle… actually, one of the favorite individual animals I’ve ever worked with.

It’s common for zookeepers to discover that the animals that they come to love and care about the most aren’t always the animals that are the most impressive or popular with the public. From the public side of the railing, visitors can't realize just how enormous the personalities are with some of the most humble-looking animals. Animals like Bad-Ass Benny

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Benny (not his real name) was a Speke’s gazelle, a tiny little antelope from northeast Africa. Barely two feet at the shoulder, he had a plump little sandy body propped up with toothpick-thin legs. His graceful neck held up an impish face, with a small flap of skin on the tip of his nose. When excited, this flap puffed up like a balloon until it was the size of a tennis ball. At the top of his hand was a tiny pair of neat, small sharp horns. At a first glance, Benny looked like the most ordinary, uninteresting beast in the zoo - not that he usually even got that first glance. Guests rarely saw him; he was only on exhibit for half a day, since he shared the yard with a pair of oryxes who he rotated on-and-off with. When he was in the yard, he preferred to lie on a dirt heap, where he blended in perfectly against the sand. He never called attention to himself, and he never made a show for the guests. Those first glances were deceiving. Benny was a bad ass.

He may have been tiny, but every ounce of Benny's petite frame was crammed with attitude, until he was one fearless, dangerously confident little antelope. He delighted in racing along the fence line, tormenting the cheetahs in the adjacent enclosure. You could tell that he was practically chanting, “You can’t catch me!”

Benny was under the impression that all things in this world fell under two categories – food and sparing partners. When first introduced to the massive scimitar horned oryxes, each the size of a small horse, he instantly tried to herd and dominate them. Imagine an animal the size of a beagle trying to mount an animal the size of a horse. That gives you an idea of what it looked like. They promptly kicked his ass, hence the rotation in use of the yard. Refusing to learn his lesson, the pint-sized gazelle would continue to challenge the oryx (and the cheetahs, and the zebras who were his neighbors on the opposite side of the enclosure as the cheetahs) through the fencing. I had a hard time imaging Benny backing down to a lion, or an elephant, for that matter.

He liked to stay in practice by challenging inanimate objects to duels. On more than one occasion, we found him with an entire flake or two of hay impaled on his horns, shaking to get the wisps of hay from his eyes, and we knew that he had successfully vanquished his enemy. During the winter, for enrichment purposes (ours and his), we would make him snowman (well, snow gazelles, really) to challenge.

At the time that I worked with him, he was sharing his yard with a crowned crane. The mate of the crane had recently died, and the surviving bird was lonely and bored. Until another crane could be found, the keepers had installed a mirror in the yard, so the bird would have someone else to “talk” to. It worked marvelously, and the bird spent hours preening and honking and resting with her new friend. One day, when cleaning the yard, I glanced up at the mirror for no particular reason. There, in the reflection, was Benny, just fifteen feet behind me, pawing the ground and shaking his little head for the charge. I spun around, only to find him staring with the look of martyred innocence. I turned back to the mirror. He was again preparing for a charge.

From that day on, whenever I entered Benny's domain, he would slip up behind me, stalking me like a big cat. If I’d turn around, he’d freeze, and then pretend to graze or to take a nap. He was not only fearless, but crafty. The Bambi eyes didn’t fool anyone. From that point on, I made a habit of not turning my back on Benny while I was in the yard.

Benny was a pretty old boy when I met him, and he lived for many years after I left him. He has since passed on. I had a hard time believing it when his keepers told me - I just assumed he was too cocky and full of himself to ever day. Sometimes when I visit other zoos and see some quiet, unassuming animal of the non-celebrity type (not a big cat or bear, pachyderm or primate), I find myself watching them a little extra closely, wondering what kind of stories their keepers might tell.

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Benny reclining on a hay bed in holding

Gazelles are another group of animals I have a little more experience with to contribute to the conversation I have worked with all three of these species, plus two more traditional gazelles, as well as springbok and gerenuk (which are their own (delightful!) can of worms ).

Flightiness with delicate antelope is a persistent problem. Some species, like Speke's and slender-horned, seem to do better with less space, while others, like Thomson's and springbok seem to better with more, and the larger species (like addra) seem to be calmer overall. Hand-raising individuals for traditional zoo settings has helped some (specifically with gerenuk), but it is tricky, especially with the smaller gazelles, where the males can already tend to be jerks (I do not even want to imagine a hand-raised Arabian oryx male ) I think visual barriers, defined exhibit boundaries, and the ability to move away from a perceived threat are all key to minimizing loss to blind running as a result of an animal being spooked. There is just always a certain level of risk. I have still seen animals lost to a broken neck in multi-acre fields...

I am not surprised to hear your experience working with a male Speke's gazelle is as it was There is a reason their program managers have requested that male Speke's not be used in mixed-species exhibits -- too many had been killed in contraspecific conflicts! They are quite prone to picking fights they cannot win, lol... I have also worked with a couple of feisty Speke's gazelle males in my time. I remember one, in particular, that had to be caught up twice a week for a skin treatment for a period when he first arrived. To hand-grab him, we would push him into a narrow back alleyway in the barn, and he would always go to the back end of the hallway before turning and charging back at us, horns down. This is what actually made him quite easy to catch because he came to us with his built-in handles, haha. One person would grab his horns, while the other person scooped his body The little angry inflatable nose honks he'd give us after we put him back were always quite cute There is always something about the animals that are a little sassier, that have a little more attitude, that always end up endearing themselves to you

 

[Aardwolf]

Thanks @Kudu21 , I've very much enjoyed the insights that you and the other animal care professionals have been able to add to this thread, and seeing how your experiences compare with my own. Being something of a generalist, it's always fun getting the perspective of more specialized folks!

Continuing with other rodents of unusual size (capybara, beaver, Cape porcupine), we work our way down to a species that I’ve always had a particular fondness for, the Patagonian mara.

My first experience working with these charming South American rodents came when I was working at a small, non-accredited zoo. Towards the end of my time there, the zoo acquired three cavies (they called them cavies, a name that I hear used most often in zoos, but I consider much less attract or evocative than ‘mara’ – here I use them interchangeably), a male and two females. The trio (which I named “Patty,” “Goony,” and “Mara” - say it together) were housed in what I now acknowledge to be the worst ever exhibit for a species, a tiny run attached to a small shed, into which they were herded nightly. I still have no idea how they never cleared the low fence and run off into the distance, or gnawed their way out of the barn, which did not strike me as the sturdiest piece of construction. Shortly after I left, I learned that one of these unfortunate animals was killed when it became startled during the nightly round-up and accidentally impaled itself on a sharp fence post. As was often the practice when anything went wrong with a new species to the zoo, management’s decision was to disposition.



I had much happier memories of working with maras years later at an AZA facility, where they inhabited a spacious, sprawling yard along the creek, shared with some Andean and snow geese. The maras were practically wild and very low maintenance – we really just added food and then left them at that. You didn’t even need to clean the poop, as their exhibit was so large. Nor did we ever have to catch them up – they were very cold hardy, but we also had a large artificial burrow that we’d built into a hillside for them, which was warmed by two heat lamps (I crawled in once to clean it out, and it was very toasty). Our main concern about the habitat was flooding, as it was right alongside a creek, but there was plenty of high ground in there, and on the day we had our worst flooding, I saw them sitting stoically on one of the hills, which was now a small island in a shallow sea. The daily diet consisted of rodent block, apple, pear, carrot, sweet potato, and lettuce, served in the same large metal pans that we gave to all of our rodents so that they wouldn’t chew on them.

This was probably the biggest and best mara exhibit I’ve seen, and I would have liked to have taken advantage of it by adding a few additional species – screamers and pudus are two that came to my mind, as well as rheas, which we had elsewhere in the zoo – but we never got around to it. The one change that I made later on in my tenure at the zoo was to fence off a 10’ x 10’ section in one corner as a catch pen – I later started feeding the animals in there in order to make them more accustomed to entering that space.

I made some half-hearted efforts to train them, trying to secure their affection with gifts of food, but they wouldn’t come near me (which meant that, when I did feed them, I basically had to drop their food bowls and then flee the yard. If I loitered too long, the waterfowl – wild and captive, none of *them* the least bit afraid of me – would swoop in and gobble everything up). I’ve never been a particularly great trainer, but I’ve found it much easier, in practice, to train animals which are hostile or aggressive than ones that are very timid. The aggressive animals at least *want* to interact with you, even if it’s only to bite your face off; you just have to re-direct that ambition towards something more… productive. My main incentive for wanting to train the cavies was to get them to come close enough that I could spritz their ears with fly spray – they were remarkably hardy animals, but the flies could bother them something fierce in the summers.

By the time they passed away, I had moved into a leadership position at the zoo, and soon discovered I was having a lot of trouble finding new ones. This species breeds very readily in captivity, and years ago I guess many zoos, finding themselves overburdened with offspring that they couldn’t place, stopped breeding – which meant that at the time I was looking for them, there were none to be found (what my director liked to call the “Boom/Bust Cycle” that impacts the management of so many species – we were in a “Bust” phase). Also, many of the maras that I did find were singletons being used as ambassadors. It was for species like this that I suspect AZA briefly moved to the period of making literally everything an SSP, regardless of conservation status.

Anyway, I eventually secured some maras, a male from one zoo, a female from another. The female was a very young animal, days old at the time of her acquisition – another zoo had told us that they were able to breed a mara for us, but had no room for offspring. Patagonian maras are remarkably precocial little creatures and practically pop out of their mothers as little adults). Delilah, as we named her, was my absolute delight (even if she did pee in my then-girlfriend’s lap on the one occasion I was able to convince her to let the little critter snuggle with her). Because she was so tame, we occasionally used Delilah as an ambassador, walking her on a leash and harness. On one such walk, a visitor once called her the ugliest animal she’d seen, and it took all of the chivalry I had in me not to deck her right then and there. Instead, I just said, “She probably thinks the same about you,” and then walked off as quickly as I could while she stood there with her jaw on the ground. I sometimes wonder if my boss ever got an angry phone call about that…



It seemed like it took very little time at all for Delilah to be large enough to go out in the yard to join the male; I tried introducing them using the catch pen I’d built as a howdy. I watched them sniff each other through the fence for several minutes, went to take care of a project somewhere else, and when I came back half an hour later, the male had dug his way into the pen to join the female and they were nestled side-by-side.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

Its distribution is strictly limited to AZA facilities (primarily in the US, with a small number of Canadian partners).

What we call the Panamanian golden frog is actually two species – the true PGF, Atelopus zeteki, and the golden morph of Atelopus varius, the harlequin frog. The distinction was not clear when the first frogs were collected from the wild (and for a decent chunk of its history, A. zeteki was considered a subspecies of A. varius), so PGFs in zoos are organized into three populations – two zeteki, and one varius.

As a minor correction to your statement in the first quote, this only applies to true zeteki - there is a collection here in the UK keeping (and breeding) the varius noted in your second quoted statement.