She has been much more tolerant of our interaction with the cubs than Oshana was with her litter. We have advanced from stroking and scratching the lion cubs to holding them on our laps and finally to picking them up, with plenty of support so they feel secure. Although these sessions are undeniably the high point of our day, they also have a serious purpose. We are hoping that becoming accustomed to gentle restraint will make veterinary exams less stressful for the cubs, as well as facilitating the training we would like to do with them when they are older.

The three cubs all have distinct personalities; it has been fascinating to watch them develop. Cub “A,” a male, is the largest of the three, and the sleepiest. He is lighter in color than his siblings, and his belly sways as he waddles across the floor. Several times he has dozed off while being held by one of his keepers.

Cub “B,” also male, is slightly smaller than his brother and has more spots. He has a more assertive personality and took a bit longer to settle in to the handling sessions. In the beginning, there was some hissing and snarling, until he realized we meant no harm. Now he is very accepting of our attentions.

Cub “C,” the female, is a feisty little bundle. She is much smaller than her brothers and is also more independent. She was the first to explore the far corners of the maternity suite and the first to approach us before we began handling the little ones. Very early on, she would march right up to us, showing no fear at all. She has been very accepting of our handling from the start, and promises to be a real live wire as she matures. We will probably be able to work directly with the cubs for 4 or 5 months, but will eventually move to protected contact to interact with them, as we do with the adults. We will have names for the babies soon, and I will be sure to post them.

Oshana’s cubs, Bakari and Abena (pictured above), continue to grow and thrive. They are each consuming nearly a pound of carnivore diet per day, having worked up appetites with non-stop play out in the exhibit with their mother. They especially enjoy the meaty bones we give them to strengthen their teeth and jaws. They are on exhibit every morning from 9:15 to 11 a.m., so come in early and bring your camera! Lion Camp is an exciting place these days!

Marcia Redding is a senior mammal keeper at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. She will be answering reader questions about the cubs in her next blog, coming soon!

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My trip last spring was quite special, for I was collaborating with another non-profit organization intent on improving the lives of the poor. Their mission: to provide assistance to the artisans of a community in need to produce goods that are marketable elsewhere in the world, then connect them with buyers such as the ZSSD to purchase and reinforce our conservation message.

My quest brought me to many villages and I was introduced to individuals who were excited about selling to a zoo. But one moment stands out brightly in my memory: when I was asked why I would not buy the black wooden boxes and vases. I explained that ebony wood is classified as an endangered wood. It takes years to grow and is not sustainable; in a matter of years, at the rate these trees are being cut down, they could be gone forever. I suggested they find alternate woods like the jacaranda or the balsa, specifically lighter woods were best. They said they understood, and the buyer who had accompanied me mentioned that perhaps it would be best if he no longer bought ebony. At that moment I realized that I just made a difference!

Something so simple and direct makes a difference…

The first shipment of goods has arrived and will be showcased at the Zoo and Wild Animal Park retail shops in September. Happy shopping!

Yvonne Miles is the director of merchandising for the Zoological Society of San Diego.

View some of Yvonne’s purchases at ShopZoo.com.

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For millennia, the Arctic habitat of the polar bear has provided them with a protection that other temperate and tropical species of bear have not enjoyed. Limited human settlement guaranteed that the polar bear’s habitat was relatively pristine. Unfortunately, worldwide industrial practices now threaten the polar bear in a variety of ways. From a scientific standpoint, the best-documented impacts have been with bioaccumulation of various toxins in the fat and milk of female polar bears. Now, the general public has also become aware of the imminent threats of both global warming and the increased pressure to exploit the vast petroleum reserves of the Arctic region. Unfortunately for the polar bear, some of the highest concentrations of documented polar bear maternity dens are found in the same continental shelf regions that hold some of the most promising petroleum reserves.

Petroleum extraction involves a great deal of heavy industrial machinery and activity, and that means noise. But how disturbing is this noise to polar bears? We don’t know! As marine mammals, polar bears are protected from harassment by human activities. When it comes to noise, one of the best tools to enable managers to assess the potential disturbance of a particular combination of loudness and pitch (a.k.a amplitude and frequency), is an understanding of the hearing sensitivity of the subject animal. These guidelines are used when protecting humans from industrial noise (We don’t figure out what bothers humans by blasting their ears with very loud noise!). In a nutshell, an understanding of how sensitive an animal’s hearing is allows us to estimate what types of loud noises would be either disturbing or damaging to either their social communication or ability to hear.

The polar bears, research team, and training staff at the San Diego Zoo (and essential collaborative research effort with Polar Bears International and Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute) offer a fantastic opportunity to gather this information. In order to determine hearing non-invasively, the bear must be trained to respond when it hears a noise, whatever the frequency or amplitude. This type of data simply cannot be collected from wild bears. Thus far, we have been very impressed by what our Zoo bears and trainers have accomplished! Soon we will move from the training phase onto data collection. If all goes well, the data we collect will be incorporated into management guidelines used on the North Slope of Alaska, and hopefully around the whole Arctic.

Next time you are at Polar Bear Plunge, be sure to spend some time observing Chinook and Shikari. Through their intelligence and trusting relationship with their keepers and trainers, they are making an invaluable contribution to their cousins in the wild.

Megan Owen is a research laboratory coordinator for the Giant Panda Conservation Unit/CRES.
Here’s more information about Megan’s project.

Watch the polar bears daily on Polar Cam.

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Each morning, I go into the Park to record any social behaviors that the shoebills exhibit, such as bill clattering, manipulating nesting material, or approaching another shoebill. The most common behavior I have found has been bill clattering, when the bill is raised vertically and rapidly opens and closes to produce sound. If you have seen the shoebill storks, then you have probably heard this distinctive noise! Bill clattering is thought to be used as a social greeting. From the data I have been collecting, I have been able to approximate the average number of bill clatters each bird performs during my observation periods. The male bill clatters about seven times, whereas both females bill clatter only about once. I am also examining who is “talking” to whom, by observing which birds are likely to bill clatter together most often. This could help us understand a little bit about mate choice in these birds.

I am still doing work with the off-exhibit shoebills as well. I have been watching tapes of the birds that record during the early mornings and late evenings to monitor their behavior while no one is around. Hopefully, observations of both on-exhibit and off-exhibit birds will provide enough information to better understand this unique species. I’m still collecting more data, so be sure to check back in a few weeks for an update!

Sara Skillman is a Summer Fellow with the Behavioral Biology Division of CRES.

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I’ve written previously about recording cheetah vocalizations and categorizing them to develop a “Cheetah Dictionary” (see Sagan’s previous blog, Cheetah Dictionary). I am working on this project so that we can better understand their communication and interpret when they are ready to breed. By visiting the cheetahs in the morning and watching archived videos from previous researchers I have been able to record many different vocalizations: chirps, whines, growls, and stutters. We are especially interested in the unique stutter vocalization because it is believed to relate to sexual behavior. Since the male and female cheetahs live solitary lives, the stutter may be a useful indicator of captive breeding prospects.

You don’t need to be an acoustic enthusiast to appreciate the vocalizations that gibbons make: they can be heard from all over the Park! Gabriella’s crested gibbons are small apes from Asia that sing duets in the early morning. I have been recording their singing bouts, which last up to 30 minutes. The male and female have distinct phrases that they sing to each other. It is believed that this unique singing behavior functions to protect their territory and strengthen their bond. Gibbons are monogamous, which is rare in primates. The length and complexity of their duet is reflective of how long a male and female have been together. By understanding gibbon duets we can begin to comprehend the quality of their pair bond and the factors that contribute to their happiness. Ultimately, we hope this will help to increase captive breeding success. More about gibbon singing will appear in a future ZOONOOZ article.

Communication is a very important part of animal behavior and understanding it can be extremely useful for conservation efforts. On your next visit to the Zoo or Wild Animal Park open your ears and enjoy a whole new experience!

Sagan Friant is a Summer Fellow with the Behavioral Biology Division of CRES.

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The oldest giant panda at Wolong to ever give birth was Jia Jia. That old girl was born in 1978, but gave birth to twins in 1996 at the age of 18. Several other female pandas in Wolong have given birth in their late teens, females like “Number One,” who gave birth to triplets in 1999 at the age of 16. As such, there is no reason to expect that Bai Yun won’t continue to be fertile for another year or two.

It seems common that the female panda senesces at about age 17 or 18. At this point they cease to give birth successfully, although they may continue to have an estrus in the spring and may even breed. Within a year or two, however, their estrus cycle will cease to be evident and the bears will no longer show interest in breeding.

The bears can still live long lives beyond their senescence. For those of you with an itch to travel, you can still visit Jia Jia at her residence in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park; she’s now 28 years of age! As far as males go, our own Shi Shi was estimated to have been born in the wild in the late 1970s, and so may be as old or older than Jia Jia. The National Zoo’s first male panda, Hsing Hsing, died at age 28. Bai Yun certainly has many happy years ahead of her.

How much longer will she be able to produce cubs? This is a bit of an unknown. Unlike most pandas in Chinese facilities, Bai Yun has never given birth in consecutive years. We will have to see if this management regime has an impact on her fertility as she ages. It is possible that a less demanding birthing schedule may result in a longer period of fertility. It’s also possible that the timing of senescence in the female panda may be hardwired and is not affected by how many pregnancies she sustains or cubs she gives birth to. Here is yet another opportunity for Bai Yun to inform us about another aspect of panda life… we’ll just have to wait a few years before she reveals the answer!

Suzanne Hall is the senior research laboratory technician for the Giant Panda Conservation Unit of the Applied Animal Ecology Division/CRES.

Watch Bai Yun and our other pandas on Panda Cam.

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They are coordinated enough now to climb onto the platform scale we use, so hopefully we will be able to weigh them every couple of weeks to track their growth. We will attempt this for the first time later this week. Bakari, Abena, and mom Oshana continue to be on exhibit every morning from 9:15 to 11 a.m. The cubs are now able to get up on the rocks in front of the big viewing window and have a great time watching all the guests.

Mina’s three cubs, now nearly a month old, continue to do well (see Marcia’s previous blog, More Happy News from Lion Camp). We appear to have two males and a female. The female was the last cub to be born and is also the smallest, but is very active and curious. Today, we shifted Mina to the room next to the maternity suite so we could do a quick cleanup. The cubs were in the room with us (Mina is much more laid back than Oshana was at this stage about being briefly separated from her litter). While my partner fed Mina some choice tidbits, I tidied up the den area. The last task was to clean out the drinker. As I bent over to remove the lid, a little furry body caught my eye. It was the female cub, come to see what I was doing. Her brothers remained sleeping in a corner. As she came close, I stroked her back and under her chin a little, which she seemed to enjoy. Eventually she made her way back to her brothers in the corner.

Amazingly, the little cub showed no fear whatsoever. We plan on handling Mina’s cubs more than we were able to do with Oshana’s litter, as Mina is so much more relaxed about us interacting with the cubs. Our little female cub made the first move! Hopefully, her brothers will be just as nonchalant as their sister when we begin to work with them.

These are exciting times at Lion Camp. I will be sure to post frequent updates!

Marcia Redding is a senior mammal keeper at the Wild Animal Park.

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Wild condors get to pick their own mates, but in conservation breeding facilities pairs are arranged through the California Condor Recovery Program. Geneticists have determined that Ojja and Simerrye are a good match, and we hope that by putting them together now they will form a strong pair bond, ensuring reproductive success in the coming years. Condors are a social species, making the arrangement of breeding pairs a bit easier, but we always need to be careful when introducing individuals. We moved Ojja into the breeding pen first to allow her to explore it uninhibited and hopefully feel more comfortable in her new surroundings. The next morning we released Simerrye and fed them their normal diet: rat, melt (beef spleen), trout, and carnivore diet. They both ate a little bit and then Simerrye started to explore. He had lived in the pen briefly at the beginning of the year, so he settled in quickly and then began to interact with Ojja.

In condor social groups, a dominant bird is usually larger, older, or more experienced than other birds, and this case was no exception. Simerrye, being an older, larger bird, asserted his dominance. Condors do not have vocal cords and their vocalizations are limited to grunts and hisses. They do have excellent vision, enabling them to see birds feeding at a carcass from over 1,000 feet (300 meters) in the air, so a lot of their communication is visual. They communicate through body language, posture, and feather position. After chasing Ojja for a few minutes, Simerrye only had to move slightly in a certain direction for her to pick up on what he was doing and make room for him by getting out of the way. We observed the two birds throughout the day and they continued to respect each other’s space.

It has been over a month since their introduction and Ojja and Simerrye seem to be getting along well. So far, we have observed them sitting together on the roost occasionally, but good relationships take time to establish, and we anticipate that their proximity and increasing familiarity will progress to friendly nipping, mutual preening, and courtship displays, and in the next couple of years, copulations and rearing chicks!

Sheila Murphy is a senior condor keeper at the Wild Animal Park.

Pictured above is Sespe, who moved out of the breeding pen and is now living in Condor Ridge.

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This season began with one especially heart-wrenching case: Akamai’s first egg of the year. This egg was artificially incubated at the program’s facilities on the Big Island. It was a great-looking egg, good shell and membranes. We tracked the embryo’s development over 22 days of incubation. On the 23rd day, during candling, we saw that the chick had moved into the aircell of the egg and was breathing air and tapping on the inside of the shell. For some reason, the chick was unable to break through the shell. We “pipped” the shell for the chick, making a small hole in the shell where the tip of its beak was tapping. The chick was then able to use the hole as a starting point to begin its rotation around the top of the egg. Over the next seven hours we watched as the chick broke through the shell, making the path around the egg that usually takes a normal chick no more than an hour to accomplish. The chick finally hatched with a little help from staff. It quickly became obvious why this chick was having such a hard time hatching on its own: it was missing its right eye and its beak was severely deformed (see image above). Its feeding response was poor and general attitude was weak. This chick only lived for a couple of days after hatching.

Due to these types of congenital abnormalities, we continue to attempt to “outbreed” the captive flock (i.e., make the best genetic matches) to improve the genetic health of the flock. In 2006, we are pleased to report that we did hatch and rear three healthy `alala chicks: two males and one female. We cherish the healthy chicks, however few they may be!

A. Tracey Goltz is a research animal coordinator for the Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program/CRES.

Read more blogs from Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program staff.

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Last week, I went with two of our research assistants, Ekwoge Abwe and Victor Nkome (pictured above, right to left) to the western part of the Ebo forest, across the Ebo river valley from where we have our research station. Our aim was to visit a “famous” hunting camp known as MisMis, a two- to three-day trek into the forest along an overgrown and abandoned logging road. I wanted to see how the forest and hunting patterns on the west of the river differs from that on the east side where we have our research station. We passed several smaller hunting camps on the way: one was even inside a felled tree (see bushmeat drying rack below)!

It was immediately obvious to us that this area was very different; the tree species offered a diverse array of fruits which are not present around our research station. We saw a lone chimpanzee fleetingly, feeding on some as-yet-unidentified red fruit species covering the ground. We also saw Goliath frogs in the fast-flowing rocky rivers, which are very high at this time of year with the daily rains. In fact, it rained relentlessly the entire trip. Each morning, we had to put on our wet clothes to start our work. Not long after setting off shivering, each of us began to steam as the damp clothing dried out from our body heat. We observed monkeys, including the mona monkey, but their behavior was markedly different from what we are used to: here, they became quiet when they realized humans were nearby and tried to hide in the deepest foliage of the trees. We were not fortunate to see drills, although some hunters later told us that they had been sighted a few days earlier (and not killed, thankfully, since the hunter did not have a dog to track them).

We reached MisMis after two days and spent as much time as we could talking to six hunters. This group was from the east of Cameroon and had come to this region because the prices they get for their bushmeat are higher since the forest is so close to Douala, one of the largest cities in Central Africa. They pay the local chief a monthly “fee” for using the forest in this way, which varies with the method of hunting: trapping or shooting. A second group of hunters was local and tolerated the easterners only because some of the hunting fee the chief receives comes to them.

Back in the village days later, we saw a bushmeat taxi bringing crates of beer, rice, and luxuries from the city to be exchanged for the bushmeat. This is an all-too-familiar sight in villages surrounding the Ebo forest, and we are trying to document the intricacies of the trade here to suggest practical, implementable ways of curtailing it when the Ebo forest becomes protected. We must never forget, however, that hunters are often suffering from extreme poverty and have very little chance of finding alternative employment in Cameroon and supporting their families.

I was happy to get back to the relative comfort of our base and a clean, dry change of clothing. I’m still amazed that the forest is so different from the forest around our base camp: they are only 19 miles (30 kilometers) apart, on opposite sides of the Ebo river valley. It was also interesting to see and speak to “foreign” hunters, who do not hunt in the forest surrounding our research station.

Finally, I found myself wondering why, after over 10 years of working in tropical Africa, I had my tumbu fly initiation just last week. This intriguing insect has larvae that live in the deep skin layer after the eggs hatch on wet clothing (in humans). I did not realize that the infected swelling on my leg was anything suspicious, so I had quite a shock when a white maggot emerged! Under the microscope, I later marveled at the diversity of life here, but this life form is one I could have done without.

Dr. Bethan Morgan is a Conservation Research Fellow for the San Diego Zoo’s CRES.

Here’s more information about Bethan’s project in Cameroon.

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