SDZG Blog: Indian Gaur

Courtesy of SDZG.

This week's post about Indian gaur conservation was published in two places on the SDZG website:
http://blog.sandiegozooglobal.org/2014/11/20/gaur-game-plan/ and http://blogs.sandiegozoo.org/2014/11/20/gaur-game-plan/.

Enjoy!

Zoooom! Fastest Babies on Land

My job is awesome...I get to see these little monsters every day. On July 13, 2014, Addison the African cheetah gave birth to four cubs at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The cubs weighed one to two pounds each at birth, but now at four months old, they each weigh 16-18 pounds. A full-grown female cheetah will weigh 84 pounds, and an adult male will weigh up to 143 pounds, so these youngsters still have a lot of growing to do.

Addison is a first-time mom. In the wild, female cheetahs are solitary and only interact with other cheetahs during mating. Female cheetahs are attracted to males by the male's stutter-bark. At the Safari Park Cheetah Breeding Center Coalition, one of the males has a particularly sexy bark. His bark was recorded and is played to all the female cheetahs in estrus to induce breeding. It worked on Addison!

Ruuxa (cheetah) and Raina (Rhodesian ridgeback).
Photo and video courtesy of SDZG.

In the wild, cheetahs give birth to a litter of one to six cubs after a three-month gestation. Cheetah cubs have a 70% mortality rate in the first year, due to predation, disease, and starvation. So if a female cheetah has a small litter, she will often reject the cubs and try again next year. At the Park, these rejected cubs are hand-raised by behaviorists to become cheetah ambassadors for Cheetah Run. The hand-raised cubs are paired with dog companions to decrease their stress levels around humans. The dogs become their litter mates: they eat, sleep, and play with the dog, and most importantly, take behavioral cues from the dog.

As a result of this high rejection rate, Addison is the first cheetah to raise her own cubs at the Safari Park in 14 years. She is an excellent mom to her two male cubs, Wgasa and Refu, and her two female cubs, Pumzika and Mahala. All four cubs were named after former Safari Park attractions. The cubs are still nursing but are also starting to eat a raw-meat diet. In the wild, Addison would begin teaching her cubs to hunt around this age. The cubs will stay with Mom for one to two years.

Cheetahs are classified as a "vulnerable" species by the IUCN Red List. In 1900, there were about 100,000 cheetahs living in Africa and Iran; now there are only 10,000. Ten percent of the world's remaining cheetahs live in zoos. Cheetahs' major threats are habitat loss and conflict with farmers. Due to over-hunting, cheetah prey is disappearing, so they eat livestock, and are then shot by farmers as agricultural pests.

San Diego Zoo Global has been breeding cheetahs for over 40 years, and has produced over 130 cubs. SDZG and eight other organizations participating in the breeding program are creating a sustainable captive population so that this incredible species does not go extinct.

Today, the Safari Park's four cubs spent the early morning chasing each other around their exhibit. This is no small feat. As the fastest land animal in the world, these cheetahs will eventually run 70 miles per hour, accelerating from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3 seconds. An adult cheetah can cover 20 feet of ground in one stride. The cubs aren't quite there yet, but Addison chirps and nickers to them when they stray too far. The nickering sounds foreign--almost like one of the aliens chattering in Star Wars. Today the cubs were also playing king of the mountain, climbing on logs and rocks. Two cubs even climbed high into trees! Don't these cubs know they are cheetahs, not leopards? Looks like Addison still has a lot of teaching to do!

SDZG Blog: It's Alive!

Gao Gao, the male giant panda at the San Diego Zoo, chows down on some bamboo.
Photo courtesy of SDZG.

Check out my latest post for the San Diego Zoo Global Blog about giant pandas' favorite food.

SDZG Blog: Northern White Rhinos in Peril

Nola, one of two northern white rhinos at the Safari Park, and one of six left in the world.
Photo courtesy of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

My latest post for the San Diego Zoo Blog is up! This week's edition is about the world's critically endangered northern white rhinos. 

New Media Appearance!

When I worked as a keeper at the Binghamton Zoo, I was interviewed by PBS for their homework hotline. My interview about August, Binghamton Zoo's arctic fox, has aired. Enjoy!

Elise's Safari Park Life Update

In the last few weeks at the Safari Park, a couple things have changed for the better for me. I am still conducting caravan tours into the large field exhibits multiple times per week, but now I am also being trained to lead Behind-the-Scenes tours. On these tours, guests can take a two-hour behind-the-scenes look at various exhibits. The tours are centered around one carnivore exhibit: lions, tigers, or cheetahs. In addition to seeing a carnivore behind-the-scenes, guests also get to feed an animal (normally okapis or a rhino), they get an overview of the large field exhibits, and they get an animal ambassador presentation at the Wildlife Workshop. On the tiger tour, I will even get to take the guests behind-the-scenes to the elephant exhibit! I've taken both the lion and tiger behind-the-scenes tours as a guest, so I am excited to start guiding these tours.

I am also currently doing a Horticulture department loan. The Horticulture department at the Park cares for the Park's collection of 1,750,000 plant specimens spanning 1,800 acres. Not only is the Safari Park one of the top wildlife breeding and conservation facilities in the world, it is also a world-renowned botanical garden. And man, the Horticulture department works extremely hard to maintain that reputation! I've gotten to meet an extremely friendly staff, full of welcoming, encouraging people. I've gotten to shadow arborists and the pest control staff. I've even gotten to drive a dump truck all by myself! I had to lie down to reach the pedals and could barely see over the dashboard, but hey...I did it. The horticulture team arrives at the Park at 6am every day, and leaves by 2:30pm, so that has been a big adjustment to my schedule. Furthermore, the horticulturists face risks every day. In addition to working outdoors in 100+ degree temperatures most days, they operate heavy machinery and have to watch out for rattlesnakes. Two weeks ago, the horticulturist I was working with actually stepped on a rattlesnake! Luckily it was early in the morning and the snake was still cold, so it didn't strike. We called the Park Rangers to come move it for us using a snake hook. It gave us all the heebie-jeebies  and I've been extremely cautious and noisy while weeding from then on.

So far these two extra jobs have been a great way for me to network with keepers, meet staff in other departments, see additional aspects of the Park, and gain more hours of experience.

SDZG Blog: Lions Cubs Meet Dad

"I'm not a jungle gym!"
(Photo courtesy of Focusing on the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park)

My latest blog post has been published on the San Diego Zoo Global site. This time it focuses on the four newest lion cubs and their first introduction to dad, Izu. Spoiler alert: hilarious antics ensued.