Murrie, for guests that know our swamp monkeys, is the female with just one arm. Her left arm was amputated after complications resulting from a injury and it is the policy of our Zoo to continue to exhibit animals with disabilities, providing them with as natural an environment as possible. Not that having only one arm slows Murrie down one bit! She is just as agile traversing the exhibit as our other monkeys and has established herself as the dominant female in her troop of one male and two other females. Her attitude towards us during the late stages of her pregnancy clearly showed some of this behavior. In the bedrooms when I greeted Murrie, with her impossibly swollen belly, I frequently got an open-mouthed threat thrown back at me! Considering her state and the extreme heat we have been experiencing, I can’t say that I blamed her.

Although Murrie kept some distance from the rest of the troop the day she gave birth, by the next day we witnessed several encounters between the infant and the other members, specifically a female named Karen. Karen would sit very close to Murrie and tentatively reach out to touch the baby. After a few attempts, Murrie allowed Karen to groom the infant for a few minutes. We are hoping that Karen will also become pregnant soon, so observing the postnatal care of the infant is an important lesson for Karen. As anxious as Karen may currently be to play with the infant, I expect she will have her hands full all too soon when this kid starts jumping around the exhibit, using everything and everyone as a means to amusement. There is nothing as joyful as watching a baby monkey bounce about!

Allen’s swamp monkeys live in multimale/multifemale troops in the swampy forests of central Africa. They have partial webbing between their fingers and toes to assist with swimming, and although they are primarily frugivorous (meaning they eat mostly fruit) they also love to catch fish hatchlings and worms from river beds. If you watch our swamp monkeys in their exhibit, they are often playing or lounging down by the water. If you catch them in especially frisky moods, you may see them diving in for a quick dip! Although too young to go swimming just yet, our newest monkey’s sheer cuteness is reason enough to stop by Ituri Forest soon!

Nerissa Foland is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Each driver/guide gives tours, drives the Express Bus (which lets guests hop on and off at various stops along the tour route), and works at the bus depot to help guests board the tour buses. With 100 acres (40 hectares) of Zoo to visit, the double-decked bus rides are quite popular. Our tours are a great way to get an overview of the Zoo, see the plants and animals in the collection, and learn about our many conservation efforts. Each guide brings his or her own personality and unique sense of humor, so every tour is different!

On average, each driver/guide gives 3 to 4 tours a day, but as the keepers fix up exhibits and the animals move from one area to another, we never know exactly what we’ll find around the next corner from one tour to the next. Sometimes it’s a new baby or one of our animal ambassadors out for exercise. There’s always something to discover along the bus tour route. We hope you’ll join us next time you stop by for a visit.

Patti Turkle is a driver/guide at the San Diego Zoo.

Koalas are marsupials and they have a unique reproduction system. Koala joeys are born after about a 35-day gestation and are not fully developed. They are born hairless and are about the size of a jelly bean! The most pronounced physical features they have are a mouth and front limbs, which allow them to crawl to their mother’s pouch and latch onto one of her nipples. The pouch is where the joey will stay and finish developing.

Part of our ongoing research with the koala colony at the San Diego Zoo has included examining all the data the keepers have collected on koala joey development. At what age do they first emerge from the pouch? When do they eat leaves? Do the female and male joeys differ? What we have found, from 18 years of data, is that both males and females emerge from the pouch, eat leaves, and wean from their mothers at approximately the same times. Koala joeys stay with their moms until they are about one year old and don’t fully emerge from their mother’s pouches until they are about six months old, at which time they also start eating leaves.

Koalas are not the only marsupials living at the San Diego Zoo. Another marsupial that you will see by the koalas is a Buerger’s tree kangaroo (pictured). And you should catch a glimpse of their newest addition, a joey that is about 9 months old at this time. Since little is known about the development and behavior of tree kangaroo joeys, Chris Hamlin-Andrus (lead koala keeper) and I are working with a volunteer who is currently collecting behavior data on this joey. She is keeping track of the joey’s behaviors throughout the day and has witnessed the emergence of the joey from the pouch. Some of the behaviors that we want to look at are how long the joey stays out of the pouch, how often it nurses, and what activities it engages in while out of the pouch. Our volunteer will continue to closely watch this joey over the next few weeks, so if you happen to see her, say hello and she can tell you all her latest news about the tree kangaroo joey.

Jennifer Tobey is a Research Fellow in the Behavioral Biology Division of CRES. She is giving a talk titled “Koala Chatter” at the Zoo on September 13.

One great thing about the San Diego Zoo is that we realize that we have the ability to help save and preserve many species that are threatened in their native habitat. A small slice of this can be found at our Hawaiian Native Plant Garden, next to the Lory Loop near koalas, and another patch near the top of Bear Canyon. Some of the more notable species you will find there are the koa tree Acacia koa Loulu palms Prichardia ssp. and the cabbage-on-a-stick plant Brighamia insignis.

The koa tree has been logged extensively for the fine grain wood it produces. Bowls, tables, ukuleles, and many other expensive products are made from it. Hawaii’s only native palm genus, the Pritchardia, is represented here with several species, and the cabbage-on-a-stick plant, extremely rare in the wild, is flourishing at the San Diego Zoo.

These are just a few plants we grow in the Zoo’s Hawaiian Native Plant Garden. There are some that we are unable to grow here in San Diego due to climate differences, but we are always adding new ones and growing species in our greenhouse. For us, it is a thrill to try to create an area in the Zoo that mimics the Hawaiian Islands, right down to the lava rocks!

Seth Menser is a gardener at the San Diego Zoo.

Visit our Plants & Gardens section.

The wild female panda will select a den for the birth of her offspring. Some dens are hollows in old trees. Since the den needs to be large enough for the female to sit upright, a critical posture for nursing a newborn, the tree hollows must be very large in size. Older trees, particularly of the fir species, tend to have larger bases that can be exploited by the panda dam. According to some sources, the trees selected could be as much as 200 years old! The panda can also select a den that is a rocky cleft or cave.

The dam will line her den with a variety of plant species for comfort. In captivity, the bears often use a variety of bamboo species, which they bring into the den and feed upon. They drop the debris on the den floor, and over time they work and rework the debris into a deep carpet of leafy and fibrous material. Keepers here once noted that one of Bai Yun’s nests resembled an interwoven mat. In the wild, the panda will include many other plant species in their nest, including fir and pine boughs, rhododendron, and other conifers. Additionally, wild pandas will scrape and scratch at the walls of their den, and in tree hollows this results in a coat of sawdust among the den litter.

The panda dam will attempt to keep her den fastidiously clean during the first month or so of the cub’s life. This protects the health of both dam and cub and reduces the likelihood of predators discovering the den. The female will refrain from defecating and urinating inside the den, and will ingest the waste products of the cub as well. The age at which a female stops ingesting the waste of her young is variable: Bai Yun is still consuming most of Su Lin’s feces even now!

I am crossing my fingers that the wild pandas out there are having a successful birthing season.

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

Pictured above is Bai Yun with her second cub, Mei Sheng, at one day old.

We are very proud of Mina. It’s hard work caring for three cubs. The first night, she spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to lie down in the den without sitting on one of the babies. Finally, she discovered that the cubs could be gently repositioned in a corner by using her mouth and her paw. Figuring out how to feed three at a time was also a learning experience, but she soon discovered that she needed to stretch out a bit to allow all three access to her teats.

Mina carries her cubs out of the den every day, and they spend some time in the adjoining room. The little ones are able to walk a bit on wobbly legs, and they all go different directions. When Mina gets tired of keeping track of everybody, back into the den they go.

As of now, we do not know the sex of the cubs. We refer to them as “A,” “B,” and “C,” according to their birth order. A and B are nearly the same size and very husky. C, the last to be born, is smaller than the others and took a bit longer to learn how to nurse. As of now, all three are doing very well.

I will post frequent progress reports as the cubs grow. Welcome to Lion Camp, little ones!

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

Although they are bigger than their mom (Mek’s latest weight was 193 pounds or 88 kilograms), they still act like youngsters! They can be seen frolicking around their newly renovated exhibit in Tiger River from 9 a.m. until noon every day. Just after the cubs’ 1st birthday on June 4, we made some changes to their exhibit. We added a new rock cave and sleeping area, and lots of new plants. Rimba and Mata have been very busy ever since, tearing up the ferns and honeysuckle we planted!

Because the past few weeks have been extremely warm in San Diego, the boys have also been spending a lot of their time in the three pools in their exhibit. They’ve been swimming and splashing in the water while playing with heavy-duty plastic balls and spools. Mek hasn’t been playing as much with the boys as she used to (they play really rough!), but she has been spending some alone time cooling off, fully submerged in the smallest pool near the lower viewing window.

Now that the cubs are more than a year old, their adult teeth are starting to come in. We have been monitoring the eruption of both their deciduous and adult teeth very closely because of the possibility of inheriting a very serious dental problem from their father, Awang Relak. So far the boys’ teeth are looking pretty good; however, both Mata and Rimba have not yet lost their baby canine teeth, even though the adult canines have erupted and are starting to get big. The vet staff isn’t worried yet, though, because this isn’t terribly uncommon. We just have to keep a close eye on the cubs’ mouths, and we may have to pull a few teeth if they don’t come out on their own. But, along with looking at their mouths, I’ll definitely be searching for lost baby teeth when I clean their bedrooms!

Bridget Mulholland is a senior mammal keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

The Fall 2006 session runs from October 10 through November 29. Interns will be blogging about their experiences and we invite students from around the world to post questions and comments.

Here’s more information about the Zoo InternQuest program.

The Zoo InternQuest program is made possible through the generosity of the McCarthy Family Foundation.

We first visited the Genetics Division. These scientists use the same kind of equipment used by researchers of human genetics such as the PCR process (polymerase chain reaction) to separate DNA. They also work with the Reproductive Physiology Division to be sure which samples to use for artificial insemination. When we reached the Reproductive Physiology lab, we caught up Dr. Barbara Durrant and a college student Research Fellow. We had a look in the microscope at samples of hoofed stock sperm that the researchers were evaluating. A surprising fact is that, if stored properly, a sperm sample can last practically forever. The oldest sample they were working with was kept in the Frozen Zoo since the mid-1980s. Not quite forever yet, but it is older than some of the interns!

The Pathology Division’s Molecular Diagnostics lab is dedicated to finding and preventing disease. One current major disease is one that kills amphibians, the chytrid fungus. Good to know that someone is working to prevent the total loss of amphibians from the planet. This is real and urgent conservation science in action!

The next division was my personal favorite: Applied Animal Ecology. We did not have the opportunity to speak with any of these scientists; however, our ZIQ leader, Maggie Reinbold, gave us some details about the field projects and encouraged us to learn more at the CRES Web site.

The Behavioral Biology Division is dedicated to learning how and why animals do what they do, both in the wild and in captivity. There were a few scientists doing lab work here, but others were also in the field, which in some cases means observing animals at the Wild Animal Park and the Zoo.

I was glad to find out that all of the equipment in the Beckman Center was either donated or purchased through grants, which is possible because the Zoological Society of San Diego, which includes CRES, is a non-profit organization. Some of the machines cost tens of thousands of dollars so it is good to know that major companies are concerned enough about conservation to help CRES save animals by saving them money!

The CRES researchers work with many other people in their fields and sometimes they have guest lecturers visiting. After our tour, we heard about the flora of Hawaii from Ann Sakai of University of California, Irvine. She talked about the different types of plants in Hawaii and why they are becoming extinct. We also learned about the origins of some of these plants and also how they reproduce. It turns out that the Zoological Society has a huge investment in saving endangered birds in Hawaii. Good thing the researchers communicate with each other about conserving endangered species. It takes a lot of people working together to bring about success.

Justin is a Zoo InternQuest intern, winter 2007.

Here’s more information about the Zoo InternQuest program.

Read blogs from CRES researchers.
Read blogs about the Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program.

The Zoo InternQuest program is made possible through the generosity of the McCarthy Family Foundation.

I was really impressed by the five separate CRES divisions at the Beckman Center, which reflected five distinct but somehow overlapping approaches to conservation research. All five laboratories were large and contained various impressive and useful machines.

The Reproductive Physiology Division studies artificial insemination and storage of reproductive cells (sperm and ova) for many endangered species. They also study contraception, which sounded a bit odd to me. But in reality, one of the major concerns of conservation is allowing the greatest possible genetic variation in an animal population. At times, one distinct gene is dominant and must be controlled. If the carriers of that gene are not able to reproduce, then that trait will not become over-represented in the population. Their understanding of the entire reproductive cycle of a species has led to the birth of three giant pandas at the Zoo and lots of cheetahs at the Wild Animal Park.

The Frozen Zoo, which is the most remarkable feature of the CRES facility, does not have any arctic animals in it! Instead, tissue samples of almost 700 separate species of endangered animals are stored in liquid nitrogen. The temperature of this liquid is -200 degrees Fahrenheit (-640 degrees Celsius), and this allows the tissue, eggs or sperm to last intact for forever, theoretically. Using these stored genetics, scientists can study paternity, detect inbreeding, and even determine the genetic health of a species.

This leads directly to the Genetics Division. Here, they have a sequencer, a very developed and expensive piece of equipment that allows scientists to take one single piece of DNA and make an entire sequence in as little time as 24 hours. The Pathology Division’s Molecular Diagnostics lab is where they research viruses, diseases, and other afflictions that trouble endangered species.

A revolutionary idea at CRES that the ZIQ interns really appreciate is that there is an entire laboratory set aside for students, so that students can experience scientific research in a way that is both realistic and enjoyable. This will surely inspire the next generation to become involved in biology, allowing the pursuits of CRES to continue on into the future.

Beyond the impressive things we saw inside the Beckman Center, the building itself is worth learning about. It was built to be a green building and its energy conservation and recycling program is a reflection of the dedication of CRES to conservation in lots of ways. Overall, I learned A LOT about the scientific process, and I see how important it is to have all five aspects of conservation that CRES focuses on -Reproduction, Behavior, Genetics, Ecology, Pathology - in order to really make an impact.

Megan is a Zoo InternQuest intern, Fall 2006.

Here’s more information about the Zoo InternQuest program.

Read blogs from CRES researchers.
Read blogs about the Girls In Science program.

The Zoo InternQuest program is made possible through the generosity of the McCarthy Family Foundation.