Boarding a fishing boat at Pt. Loma, we set sail on a three-hour tour (a THREEEE HOUR TOOOOOR!) and headed due west about ten miles. Our usual suspects were joined by 14 alumnae and a slew of chaperones from Roosevelt Middle School and the Zoo. Many of us had never been on a boat and didn’t quite know what to expect. A few others were seasoned sailors and knew to stay at the stern and avoid the spray.

Needless to say, the ride out to sea was bumpy and wet. The girls at the bow ended up soaked to the skin but had the time of their lives laughing and riding the waves. The girls at the stern were calmer, drier, and warmer, but still had a good time. A few poor souls ended up with Land Lubber’s Tummy, but even they managed to pull it together when we finally encountered what we were looking for—migrating gray whales! We were looking for “footprints” (smooth spots on the water’s surface that are left when a whale submerges) and spouts.

The whales that we saw were likely juveniles, smaller than the 40 feet in length that the adults can reach. And they didn’t seem to be heading north in any particular rush! In fact, they appeared to sort of dawdle where they were for a while. Gray whales have the longest migration of any mammal—more than 5,000 miles from their summering grounds in Alaska to the warm winter birthing lagoons of Mexico. They head south in the fall and migrate northward up the Pacific coast in the spring. Gray whales don’t travel all together. Instead, they move northward in small groups. Generally, the newly pregnant females head north first, followed by yearlings, non-pregnant females and males. Cow and new calf pairs head north last.

We watched for a while and got a few really good photos. Researchers who track whales photograph their flukes, or tails, because the markings on each whale’s flukes are unique. Gray whales also tend to wear lots of barnacles, and the patterns made by these little critters are great for identification, as well. The girls were absolutely thrilled and applauded both the whales and the boat’s crew as we turned around to head back to shore.

An amazing time was had by all. It was so nice to connect with our alums and see how they are all doing. They’re so grown up! And we’re graduating 11 8th graders who will join that elite group next year.

Until next fall…
Miss Cindy

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.

Hatched on December 4. 2006, young Julio is the 13th harpy eagle to hatch here since 1992. At the tender age of 3 months, this baby bird, still covered in gray down and not yet able to perch, weighs in at a hefty 3.5 kilograms–that’s almost 8 pounds worth of baby bird! As an adult, he’ll weigh up to 12 pounds (5 kilograms) if he’s a boy—females can weigh up to 20 pounds (9 kilograms)!

Julio has been puppet-reared thus far, meaning the keepers cover themselves in a sheet, called a ghost, and use a puppet that looks like a harpy eagle to feed him. Just a couple of days ago, he was moved from the brooder room out into an isolated enclosure. Since he is now able to feed himself, the keepers sneak in with his food once a day, hoping to avoid any contact because they want him to know that he is a bird and not to imprint on the people caring for him. While lots of other bird species have been puppet-reared here, the California condors are probably the most well known.

Right now, he’s fed either a rat or a rabbit each day. The keepers go the extra mile by stuffing his main food item with mice or carnivore meat as well, to give him as much nutrition as they can. He will live at the APC for 6 to 9 months, then the Harpy Eagle Species Survival Plan will dictate where he’ll head to next. Right now, the San Diego Zoo is the only facility in North America raising these rare birds, but we’re hopeful that other zoos will have success in the near future. Harpies are native to Central and South American rain forests, and two of the birds hatched here have been released in Panama. Maybe Julio will get to join them!

Thanks, Angie, for providing us with such an amazing opportunity. Let us know how Julio fares—hopefully we’ll be able keep track of him wherever he goes.

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.

What?! It’s not hard? Doesn’t it take special equipment and training and know-how? Nope. Koalas have got the Cute Factor working for them, but they are tough to train because it’s very difficult to reward an animal that only eats eucalyptus. They are handled—in exactly the same manner every single time—from the time they exit the pouch. Keepers pick them up, sit them on the scale, pick them back up, and put them back in their trees. That’s it! Training animals is usually easier if there is some sort of food reward that encourages the animals to learn. But handing over a few extra leaves isn’t going to motivate a koala to behave himself or to do what a keeper might ask.

Ms. Moll spent an hour with the girls teaching them how to weigh koalas (we used stuffed toys!), measure out formula, and the math involved in assessing how much medication might be required for an animal according to its weight (pictured). We also toured the barn and met Koona, a young, very charismatic male koala who is being groomed to become an animal ambassador.

Thanks, Jen (and Koona) for a lovely afternoon and introduction into your world!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.
Read a blog about a koala field project.

The team in pathology (now officially renamed the Wildlife Disease Laboratories/CRES) works together to figure out what causes disease and death in the animals in our collection. The GIS learn about three different aspects of the diagnosis process: necropsy, histology, and microscopic study of tissue samples.

The girls always expect necropsy to be gruesome and are prepared with their “this is gonna be gross…” faces when we walk in. But they always find body parts absolutely fascinating—especially diseased ones! The path techs explain which tissues are healthy and which are not, and why. Mechanisms of disease are fascinating, and interest wins over revulsion every time.

Once tissues are sampled, they’re put into formalin to fix for a few days. Formalin stops the rotting process, essentially, so that tissue can be examined microscopically. “Fixed” tissue has to be cut into tiny pieces, which are then embedded in paraffin and sliced into thin strips and put onto slides. This portion of the process is called histology, which translates into “the study of tissues.” A tissue is really just a group of cells that work together, so when the cells stop working together there’s a problem.

The prepared slides are delivered to the pathologists, who examine the tissues for signs of disease or damage. The diagnosis process is very like something you might watch on CSI; two of our alums decided they wanted to become crime scene investigators after their visit to pathology.

After a couple of visits to the Zoo, the GIS will spend an afternoon in the classroom processing all of the information that they have collected. Little do they know, the activity supporting this particular visit will be a virtual mouse necropsy that they’ll do online.

I LOVE being a teacher!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.

Any time the GIS get to participate in research that’s going on, we contribute to the vast collection of data that is accumulated and used by panda caregivers all over the world. Ethograms are lists of behaviors that our panda researchers expect to see. The researchers use those lists and stopwatches to document what the bears are doing every minute for up to two hours at a time. Obviously we didn’t have that kind of time to commit, but the data captured was a valid contribution to the information that has already been collected.

The girls who observed the training session obviously couldn’t do any hands-on work with our little bear boy, Mei Sheng, but they did get to observe several different behaviors and learned why he was trained to do those particular ones. Mei Sheng is a very charming panda, and the girls were completely absorbed in the session.

When the keepers were finished, Mei Sheng headed off to his bedroom and his snacks, and we continued on through the facility for a tour. We got to peek through bedroom doors to see Mei Sheng and his dad, Gao Gao, off exhibit and eating their afternoon meals. We also got a good look at the video monitoring system and learned just how many cameras are scattered throughout the bear areas. Something that no one expected to see was Bai Yun’s birthing den (pictured)—it’s really a big, dark cylindrical space with doors on two sides and a couple of cameras built in. Because the space isn’t being used at the moment, we all got to poke our heads right inside to have a look–wow! Keeper Jessica explained how the small side door is used to remove babies for weighing and check-ups when Bai Yun steps out to eat. It will also be used to swap babies in and out if Bai Yun ever gives birth to twins, ensuring that both babies will receive maternal care.

We were duly impressed by all that we got to see, from that birthing den right down to the bamboo refrigerators—who knew we fed so many different kinds of bamboo to our bears?! As always, a special thanks goes out to Pam, Jessica, and Angie for sharing with us their time and their expertise.

On our way back, that same eighth grader said to me, “That was soooo cool! How come we never got to see the birthing den before?” I responded, “Well, you know, it’s all about enrichment here at the Zoo. That was a little enrichment for you—we try to keep changing things up, to keep you on your toes, so things never get boring. Did it work?”

You bet!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.

We met at school right after the final bell, then quickly made our way over to the Zoo. From the gate, we made a beeline to the rhino enclosure, then made our way into the back area for some background information and to see some fascinating biofacts.

We learned that there are currently five species of rhinos: black rhinos and white rhinos, both found in Africa, Indian rhinos from northern India, and Javan and Sumatran rhinos, from Java and Sumatra, of course. All five species are endangered due to poaching, with habitat loss severely affecting them, as well. Some rhinos have only one horn (Indian and Javan) while others have two (black, white, and Sumatran) and all are poached because of those horns. Rhino horns are used by some cultures for aphrodisiacs, traditional medicines, daggers, and for ornamental purposes.

Gram, like most Zoo animals, has been trained to respond to commands that help his keepers to care for him. He can open his mouth, back up, lie down, present his feet, and stand still for blood draws. (I keep waiting for “roll over” but probably won’t get to see that one!) The very first skill he needed to learn, though, was to target. This means that he will touch his upper lip to a target that his keepers present—in Gram’s case it’s usually a swimming pool float attached to a broomstick. But one of his trainers has trained him to target to something else, and in so doing has revealed the fact that Gram has a very special talent–he is the only rhino in the world that can PAINT! (Read a profile about Gram and his talent.)
Grams’ keeper, Laura, trained him to touch his upper lip to a canvas, then taught him to let her put tempera paint on that same lip. When she asks him to target that painted lip to a canvas…voila! Rhino painting!

The girls didn’t get to see this occur, but they did get to see some of the artwork Gram has done. When I held up a picture and mentioned that it was a rhino painting, one of the girls said, “It doesn’t look like a rhino to me.” After I explained that, no, it’s not a rhino, it was painted by a rhino,” she was more impressed!

The girls decided the best part of the visit was getting to feed the big boy, who has a personality much like a golden retriever’s. He was happy to take apples and yams from us, and always seems to enjoy the personal attention and pats that come his way. The girls all posed for photos, of course, and we left at the end of the afternoon feeling amazed at the opportunity to have interacted with not only a critically endangered species, but one with such an engaging personality. Thanks, Gram, for being such a wonderful ambassador for your species!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.

Our first meeting was last week. We sped through the rules and requisite paperwork to touch on the Big Trip scheduled for our semester’s end—whale-watching! We’ve never done anything like this as a group, and most of the girls have never been out on a large boat, so we’re all really excited! I’m especially looking forward to it because, just a few weeks later, I will be leading a WorldWild Tours trip to the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California, which is a gray whale calving lagoon. This is a Zoological Soicety of San Diego-sponsored trip, and I’m really looking forward to the opportunity.

But for now, we’re off to meet one of the most popular (and talented) animals in the Zoo, our Indian rhino, Gram!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science activities.

One of the many important things the girls learn about on our trips to the Zoo is the concept of the Species Survival Plan, or SSP. The SSP is, in essence, computer dating for endangered species, and virtually all endangered species that reside in North American zoos or breeding facilities are managed using an SSP.

While the Zoo’s Masai giraffes are classed as ‘Low Risk’ and the wild population is stable, there are several giraffe subspecies that are capable of interbreeding and producing viable offspring. Our goal is to keep the captive population of Masai giraffes as genetically healthy as possible, while also keeping them genetically pure. Hopefully, an asteroid won’t fall out of the sky and wipe out all the Masai giraffes in the wild, but if it does, we will have a perfectly maintained population to reintroduce into their native habitat!

Another concept that is introduced by our giraffes is that of “adaptation.” An adaptation is something about a plant or an animal that helps it to live the way it does. Giraffes have v-e-r-y long necks and legs, which allow them access to a food source that no other animal on the savanna can reach. They also have prehensile tongues, which they can use like hands to pull acacia leaves from the top of the trees where they browse. These adaptations ensure access to resources, therefore helping the giraffes to keep themselves fed and healthy.

The very best part of the visit, though, is simply getting to meet real, live, BIG giraffes face to face, and getting to feed them! Giraffes are one of those animals that look really large until you’re right up next to them, and then you see how truly gigantic they are! The crazy part: Masai giraffes are the shortest of all the giraffe subspecies! Others can top them by five or more feet!

Stop by to visit Abby, Silver, Bahati, Nikuru (also known as Nikki), Hodari, and our newest arrival, Travis, next time you’re at the San Diego Zoo.

Next stop—meerkats!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Along with a batch of new girls who have joined up, we also welcome Rachael Marcon, who will be stepping in as a second facilitator, assisting me with the day-to-day operations of the program. Welcome, Rachael—we’re glad you’re here!

The fall schedule looks exciting and the girls are revved up! First stop—giraffes!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Read about previous Girls In Science sessions here.

The first is called BE WiSE, which stands for “Better Education for Women in Science and Engineering.” The program recruits girls in 7th and 8th grades who have an interest in science and/or engineering. A series of overnights are offered, where girls meet with other participants from all over the county and attend special speaker events (I was a presenter myself at the May 12 overnight, held at the Cuyamaca College Water Conservation Garden, and spoke about monarch butterfly migration). There is an application process but the program is free to participants. More information can be found here.

The other program is the Zoo’s own Zoo Corps, offered to girls and boys between the ages of 13 and 16. This is a volunteer education program where students are trained to use education kits and spend time out in the San Diego Zoo educating the public about topics such as the bushmeat trade, backyard butterfly habitats, and responsible consumerism. Volunteers earn community service credit for the hours spent participating and are often given opportunities to participate in larger Zoo programs as well. Each participant must submit an application and go through a group interview process. If selected, teens are required to participate one weekend day per month, and each program runs for six months. Any student with an interest in conservation, education, or public speaking is encouraged to apply. Call the Zoo Corps Information Hotline at (619) 744-3363 for more information.

I hope you—or any young people that you know with an interest in the natural world—will take advantage of these wonderful opportunities! Thanks for your interest in Girls In Science!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.