OK, I didn’t actually do all of that in 1 day, but you get the feel. I made rhino tarts because our black rhinos are just really bad breeders (in fact I recently heard an amusing story about a male who got things backwards and almost lost all future breeding ability thanks to a well-aimed jab of the horn), so we constantly keep an eye on who's pregnant or cycling.
We’re monitoring the otter because she’s never bred, and we want to see if she has normal oestrous cycles. It appears that she “shuts down” for big chunks of time, which would definitely inhibit breeding.
The hippo is being monitored to see if she’s pregnant. [She’s not.]
The elephant urine samples were collected when several Asian elephants were transferred from Thailand to Australia to start a breeding colony, so we’re looking to see what their stress levels did throughout that whole process. [On a separate note, since they were brought here for breeding, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. Consequently, I recently diagnosed my first elephant pregnancy! Kind of fun.]
And the Indian rhino samples are from a male that experienced a lot of problems earlier in his life: poor exhibit design, which caused him to perform stereotypic behaviours and develop major hoof issues, which led to a series of surgeries to fix the hoof problems. Then he was moved to a new exhibit and his health issues were brought under control, and he seems to be a happy rhino, now! And he's just about to get a girlfriend from LA!! So we’re going back and looking at stress levels throughout the whole ordeal.
So there ya go. And that’s just a fraction of the animals we’re monitoring. But my big disappointment of the day is the lack of synonyms for ‘poop’ in the Microsoft thesaurus. In fact, they don’t even seem to recognize it as a word. Come on, guys – no need to hide it, it’s just part of life. Haven’t they ever read “Everyone Poops”?!?
So do you just laugh when you hear people talk about how shitty their job is?
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm just curious...do you tell the elephant that "the rabbit died" or that the mouse is gone???
ReplyDelete