This time of the year is my favorite with the meerkats. Our group is getting along well and all of the kids are growing nicely (see Laura’s previous blog, Meerkats: Scent-Marking). The weather is cold and sometimes wet, which means the meerkats don’t do as much digging. Most of their day is spent basking in the sun and standing on their tippy toes trying to get their bellies warm.
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Since hatching three weeks ago, the Zoo’s harpy eagle chick has grown from a helpless little ball of fluff to, well, a significantly larger ball of fluff. (Read Beau’s previous blog, Harpy Eagle Chick.) The chick doubled in size in just about a week and now (at almost three weeks) weighs nearly a pound.

Its little legs, barely wider than a toothpick at hatching, have grown wider than a Bic pen. They’re not even strong enough yet to support the rapidly growing chick, but as the talons grow in and begin to curve downward, the feet are becoming weak, miniature versions of the adult harpy eagle’s lethal killing tools. The adult harpy eagle’s foot can have a span as large as a man’s hand and is capable of exerting over 500 pounds (225 kilograms) per square inch of pressure. That’s more pressure than a gray wolf’s bite and about five times the grip of an average man’s hand!
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I am privileged to work the exhibits in Cat Canyon. Each species has its own mind set; its own management challenges, its own beauty. Each individual, its own personality.

We have two jaguars. Orson, a magnificent black jaguar, and Nindiri, a small female with the more normal coat pattern of black spots on a golden coat. They are placed on exhibit, one at a time, during the day. Each seems to enjoy their time on exhibit and the admiration of guests and staff alike. When I think of them, several moments come to mind:
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G’day everyone!

Now, most of our visitors to San Diego Zoo will be familiar with our polar bears. They are incredible, powerful, and very beautiful animals that are always popular with our guests. (Read blogs about the polar bear trio.) But what you may not have noticed is behind the polar bears, in the San Diego Zoo’s Polar Bear Plunge habitat, in a very cleverly designed exhibit that blends into the background are two Siberian reindeer.
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The tiger keepers at the Wild Animal Park are so excited to share the news of our newest little additions. On November 13, our female Sumatran tiger, Delta, gave birth to three cubs! Damai is the little girl and her name means “peace” in Indonesian; her two brothers are Kucing, meaning “cat,” and Harimau Kayu, meaning “tiger woods.”
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G’day! My name is Brent, and I am one of the Sumatran tiger keepers from the Melbourne Zoo in Australia. For the next three months I am lucky enough to be working at the San Diego Zoo, participating in a keeper exchange with a great guy named Adam. I’m working in the San Diego Zoo’s hoofed animals team, while he looks after our native animals at the Melbourne Zoo. It has been an outstanding experience so far! (Read Adam’s previous blog, Hopping along the Exchange.)
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On Monday, December 1, the San Diego Zoo welcomed its newest addition, a baby harpy eagle Harpia harpyja, the 14th hatched at the Zoo since 1994.

The Zoo’s pair of adult harpy eagles laid a single egg in their exhibit on October 10. Ten days later, the egg was pulled and set in an incubator, where its development could be carefully watched by the keepers at the Avian Propagation Center (APC). We weighed the egg daily to make sure that it was losing the right amount of water as the chick developed inside. We also monitored the progression of the embryo using a technique called “candling.”
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This past April in the San Diego Zoo’s Ituri Forest habitat, African spotted-necked otter Pori gave birth to a new baby girl we’ve named Lila. Along with the excitement of this birth, we were also a little apprehensive about how mom would treat her older daughter, Mugo. Our experience with spotted-necked otters in the past prepared us for the possibility of Mugo being expelled from the group when the new baby and mom joined them.
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Nindiri, the San Diego Zoo’s young female jaguar, spends most of her time in an enclosure behind the main jaguar exhibit in Cat Canyon (see Karen’s previous blog, Jaguars: Meet Nindiri). However, she is often visible beyond the back right corner of the main exhibit.
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Soman and Surat, our two Indian rhinoceros brothers, are doing great on Elephant Mesa at the San Diego Zoo (see Laura’s previous blog, Adventures in Rhino Keeping). Actually they are doing so well that I have been working with them and some other trainers to separate them a couple of times each day. You never know when you will need to medicate an animal or perform a veterinary procedure. It is always nice to be able to separate animals in a non-stressful way.
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