Photo by Zoo Docent Mike Phillips

Weird and ugly, just a couple of the comments I heard while I was on anteater watch recently. What is an “anteater watch” you ask? Basically for a few hours I had to watch our male (Johie) & female (Talara) anteater (with the help of my fellow docent Jen Marsella) out in their area and make sure this new animal pair is getting along well together.

The female anteater is one of the newest additions to the zoo, and hopefully come spring we’ll have baby giant anteaters! Their mating season is in the fall, but since they are solitary animals (which means they normally spend their days out alone) we have to make sure they play well together when they are sharing their yard.  For those couple of hours we made note of any odd behavior or aggression towards one another. At the same time it gives us a chance to educate the visitors that may not know enough about them. For example, the conservation work surrounding giant anteaters (as a species they are threatened due to a loss of habitat), or how giant anteaters can eat up to 35,000 ants in a day, and my personal favorite when giant anteaters sleep and use their tail as a blanket completely covering them, the less strange they appeared to be.

Some may say they look ugly at first glance, but watch them for awhile you’ll see they are truly beautiful and interesting animals. While they look alike, I found the easiest way to tell them about was Johie’s tail hangs lower to the ground and Talara holds hers up higher and has blond highlights in her hair. Johie also seems to enjoy playing in the mud.

The next time you visit the zoo be sure to spend some time with just a couple of the amazing animals that we have!

-John Barbagallo
Zoo Docent

It’s really starting to look and feel like autumn around the Zoo this week. Colorful leaves twirling down from the branches like little helicopters and crisp breezes rippling across the Wetlands.

In the wild, Season change has dramatic effects on animals— predators and herbivores alike become more serious about building up their reserves of fat and fur before the winter starts. But here at the Zoo, each animal’s climate is controlled to keep them in their optimum comfort zones year round. Of course, that doesn’t seem to stop the Bison’s winter fur from getting thicker and longer, or the Snow Leopard from gazing off wistfully at some soon-to-come snowbound landscape.

School is in session again and so the kids I have been seeing here on weekdays tend to be mostly pre-schoolers. These are kids who, perhaps for the first time, are seeing Penguins and Seals and miniature Guinea Hogs up close and personal.  It’s great to watch them point and laugh.  Over at the Gibbons’ exhibit, a group of youngsters are thoroughly entertained by one of the playful apes who grabs a page from a magazine that’s been put into their cage for enrichment, and swings briskly up to his perch where he appears to actually be “reading,” or at least enjoying the pictures.

The Giant Anteaters are outside together now most of the time and they seem to be gradually getting less formal with each other. I actually witnessed a few friendly nose-bumps as they passed each other. Pretty soon it will be too cold for them outside so they’ll be coming inside where the climate stays at the warm and comfy levels they refer.

Life for animals here at RWPZoo certainly has some definite advantages.

By Rob Mariani
RWPZoo Docent

During the first day at El Nispero I was able to take a walk around the zoo and determine what I could do to help. The grounds of the garden were beautiful and the animal exhibits were scattered throughout. I quickly began to take notes and select projects.

Every day on our way to EVACC (El Via Amphibian Conservation Center) we passed a group of three cages containing a three-toed sloth and two heron, a spider monkey, and three raccoons. The physical structures were kind of small but otherwise in decent shape, however they were

Jaguarondi Explores a New Enrichment Tool

lacking sufficient objects for the animals to climb on, hide in, and play with. The sloth cage was built around a fallen tree, which provided the only thing to climb on besides the actual cage itself. It was actually one of the nicest looking cages, but did not suit a sloth’s natural behavior.

Three-toed Sloths are the world’s slowest mammals; they move so slowly that algae can actually grow on their fur. They are well suited to live in trees and have a strong grip that is aided by their unusual claws. They are nocturnal and herbivores and eat leaves, shoots, and fruits. They maintain a low body temperature to conserve energy and regulate their temperature by moving in and out of the sunlight.

I decided to improve their cage by hanging ropes and vines up high for climbing on and providing elevated resting spots with buckets that had the bottoms cut off. These changes would allow the sloths to move around at the top of the cage and rest in the branches or buckets. It would also provide more perching areas for the two heron that live with the sloth. We observed both the sloths and the herons using the new perching shortly after we placed them in the cage.

My next project was restructuring a group of four enclosures containing three ocelots and a jaguarondi. These cages were fairly new and spacious, but again had very little inside. Ocelots and jaguarondis are both carnivorous felines. Ocelots are about twice the size of the average house cat and are usually nocturnal (active during the night) but can sometimes be diurnal (active during the day). They swim well and are usually found in pairs or solitary. They are targeted by hunters for their fur and the illegal pet trade. Jaguarondis are mostly diurnal and can live in a wide range of habitats as long as there is dense ground vegetation.

I decided to give the cats places to hide since they had none. I created hide boxes by painting shipping crates and adding some slats of bark to the front for privacy. One of the zookeepers added leaves and pine needles as bedding in the boxes. As soon as they were placed in the cages all the cats investigated and entered them. I also provided giant spools, branches, “scratching posts” (big pieces of bark that had been stripped off a fallen tree), and brushes for the cats to rub on. One day I gave each cat a coconut and watched them play with this new “ball”.

Every day I would find more enclosures that I wanted to improve. There were some animals that would have benefitted from having more individuals of their species living with them. All of the primates they had live in social groups in the wild, but they had one each of the capuchin, spider monkey and Geoffrey’s tamarin.  They also had single coati and kinkajou which sometimes live in groups in the wild. For each of these animals I implemented enrichment similar to the sloths, adding branches, vines, and rope to climb on; buckets to hide in; spools, shelves, and swings to climb on.

I had mixed feelings by the end of my time at El Nispero; I had improved the lives of some of the animals, but it felt like there were so many more that could use it too. It felt good knowing that I had shown the owners of the zoo that enriching their animals can be done easily with items they already had at the zoo. Hopefully they were inspired and will continue to enrich their collection. And maybe one day I will return to see!

Sarah Poses with a New Friend

Hello readers! I am Sarah, a keeper here at RWPZoo. I just returned from a two week trip to Panama where two other zoo employees and I shared our knowledge with other zoos and began an Animal Care Staff Conservation and Outreach Program. This annual program aims to provide an opportunity for zookeepers to significantly contribute to in-situ conservation (protecting endangered animals within their natural habitat) and/or professional outreach initiatives of their own choosing. Lou Perrotti, the zoo’s Conservation Programs Coordinator, brought two projects to Panama.
The first project was at El Nispero Zoo in El Valle. El Nispero is a third world zoo with little to no expertise in modern animal husbandry, exhibit design, or enrichment. Lou recognized the need to try and better the welfare of the animals in the zoo’s collection. The second project was at The Summit Zoo in Panama City. The Summit Zoo is set in the Summit Municipal Park and is a bit more up-to-date than El Nispero Zoo. The keeper staff is made up of workers with little or no animal background but who are dedicated and eager to learn. Both zoos contain animals that are native to Central and South America.
My work in Panama mainly focused on animal enrichment and training. Animals in captivity need more than just food and water each day. Enrichment provides physical and mental stimulation, hopefully to provide situations and activities they would normally experience in the wild. There are many types of enrichment that zookeepers can provide. Some examples are: providing different objects for the animals to manipulate, hiding food or prolonging the amount of time it takes an animal to get their food, providing branches, leaves, or grass for the animal to eat, smell, or hide in. We take this as common knowledge in the United States, but that is not necessarily how it is in other countries. Training can also improve the lives of animals in captivity in many ways. It can allow the keeper to view the animal up close and even have the animal present certain body parts. This  helps if an animal is sick, injured, or in need of medication. Training can be used to a keeper’s advantage by teaching the animal to move from one spot to another or to get into a crate for transportation. Training provides mental stimulation for the animal and is also another form of enrichment!
I would like to thank the RWPZ AAZK chapter for providing the funding for this first Animal Care Staff Conservation and Outreach Program!

We had a wonderful first day of Summer ZooCamp yesterday, learning about all things with wings.  We started with birds and learned that bird wings aren’t just for flying – they’re for camouflage, attracting mates, showing dominance and warning away predators too!  We made a “flashy flyer” – our very own brightly colored bird and took a trip into the rose garden where we learned about why and how birds, their eggs and their chicks are camouflaged.  Being camouflage experts, we took turns hiding our own bird/egg/chick and being foxes or snakes searching for them in the grass.  For snack we made “bird seed” – individualized concoctions of popcorn, chocolate chips, cereal, raisins and marshmallows and learned that birds eat half their body weight each day!  In our animal interviews we met a pigeon, a radiated tortoise and a leopard gecko.   

Here is an activity you might want to try with your kids tonight:

Build a Bird

Birds come in all shapes, sizes and colors – and all for very special and very different reasons.  Visit the website (http://www.rwpzoo.org/education/KidsNCritters.cfm) to download the the templates of bird beaks, heads and legs to build a bird with your child.  How does your bird’s head, beak and leg shape help it to survive?  Take it one step further and create a name and habitat for your bird! 

Until tomorrow,

 Jen Karow – Manager of Family Programs

 By Zookeeper Christy Hudon

You can call them African wild dogs, cape hunting dogs, painted dogs, whatever you would like to call them. But to me they are “the boys”: Kubaki, Phantom, Signal and Thunder. The dogs have been one of the best challenges of my zoo keep­ing career. Having worked most closely with hoof stock for much of my seven years at RWPZ, it has been a good chal­lenge trying to understand the pack fundamentals of the wild dog.

The four boys, I say boys since they are just over two years old, are all brothers. It is completely normal for them to be staying together. At about two years of age they would have left their natal pack and dispersed to­gether in search of a group of females to form their own pack. A pack in the wild is made up of related males with a group of related females that have left their own natal pack. So this is a very natural time for the boys to be coming to us. 

The dogs came to us from The Bronx Zoo. Bonnie Soule, the Zoo’s veterinary technician, and I got a crash course in wild dog care and behavior from their keepers at the Bronx just a few days prior to their arrival. But much more has been learned by ob­serving and note-taking since their arrival. As the boys have settled in, their personalities have come to light and they are easier to tell apart. 

We first learn a distin­guishing white marking on each of them till we learn their per­sonalities. 

Kubaki: the dominant one when it’s needed. He can be distinguished by a white “3” on his left front shoulder. 
Phantom: the champion trainer (he is the first at his training station and doesn’t move till the session is over). He has a white spot at the base of his tail and between the shoulder blades at the base of his neck.
Signal: quite shy but will often be right behind Thunder help­ing to find enrichment (and stealing it from Thunder). He has three spots right in a row down his right side. 
Thunder: the most curious (the first to find enrichment and will do anything in his power to get it) and just a big goofball start­ing much of the play fighting. He is most distinguished not by his white spots but by his “floppy” ear (he is fine—it hap­pened to him when he was a pup). 

Their interactions are truly fas­cinating. As the dogs have de­veloped their dominance, we are learning their social struc­ture and rituals. Whether they are doing their ritual greetings, or enjoying a paper mache aou­dad (lovingly referred to as “fake Libbi”) you can always learn something about them and how their pack structure is functioning.

The wild dogs make three types of vocalizations. The most commonly heard is the high pitched yipping or chattering. The dogs do it when they greet each other after a nap, when they are playing with enrich­ ment and even when they are eating, getting down to those last few mouthfuls and check-ing out what each other has left.

The second vocalization, but rarely heard, is their growl. Generally not directed at each other but towards a new per­son/keeper that approaches a bit too quickly. It is more of an unsure/warning vocalization and it is generally Kubaki who will growl if the pack is all together. 

The only other vocalization they make is a “hoot” sounding just like an owl. It is used to locate members of the pack when they are separated. We have heard it only when they were crated to be shipped here. So it is actually a sound we hope not to hear again.

Providing the dogs with enrichment that will interest them isn’t hard, they like to tear things up; whether it is sticks, bags, boxes or card board tubes. If it can be ripped up into hundreds of pieces they love it. The boys also enjoy trying to make everything stink as bad as they do. Rolling on everything from fresh hay, a stick with aoudad scent, an orange, a shavings bag with a sprinkle of garlic powder or even their own poo. We are always interested in trying new scents and keeping things interesting for the boys. 

The wild dogs have been a great addition to the plains of Africa, not only for the public but for the keeper staff as well. Just a small tip—they are most active in the morning and later after­noon, just as in the wild, otherwise they are likely a mound of sleeping dogs.

Ah, what a life!