Zoo Logic

Scientist and historian Dr. Danielle Clode returns to discuss her extraordinary 2002 book, Killers in Eden and the documentary that followed in 2004 that explored the unique cooperative relationship between a pod of orcas and their human whaling partners in a small coastal town in New South Wales. Building upon the historic relationship between the aboriginal Yuin people and the killer whale which are viewed as Yuin ancestors, beginning in the early 1800s, European whalers in the town of Eden spared the seasonally returning predators in favor of teaming with them to hunt migrating humpback, blue, and fin whales. Much like a pack of dogs, the orcas would roundup, wear down, and trap the passing massive baleen whales towards the waiting humans and their small boats in the bay. At night, the orcas would even swim towards the shore to slap their tail flukes and alert the whalers that prey was passing near. The improbable interspecies cooperation was based upon the "Law of the Tongue" in which humans would leave whale carcasses anchored in the bay so that the orcas could feed on the preferred baleen whale parts such as the lips and tongue. After a few days, the whalers would haul the rest of the whale to shore to harvest the blubber for whale oil. This unlikely cooperation lasted decades until the end of whaling in the early 20th century.

Animal Care Software

With so many people inside and outside the zoological community paying attention to the Lolita/Toki killer whale story this past year, it was natural for there to be questions about her care, housing, training and future habitat. As events and confusing communications surrounding this beloved animal unfolded up to and including her sudden passing, questions about the role of trade associations like the International Marine Animal Trainers' Association (IMATA) emerged. Michael Hunt has been an active member of IMATA for decades including serving as its Board President on two occasions. He describes the process and narrow scope of IMATA accreditation of trainer development programs compared to other trade associations that accredit entire facilities, infrastructure, and operations. What are an organization's communications obligations to its individual members and what is their oversight role when circumstances like the one involving Lolita warrant increased scrutiny?

Animal care Software

Providing adequate browse for species that specialize in such diet items can be a huge challenge for any zoological institution due to availability, cost, and quality. While many species adapt to the higher cell wall and lower nutrient levels found in grass hay and quality commercial diets designed to supplement the perishable nutrients that fresh browse provides, there are physiological, behavioral, and health-related tradeoffs to feeding animals foodstuffs that vary significantly from what they'd eat in a suitable, healthy wild habitat. Nutritionist, Dr. Katie Kerr has years of experience working with large and diverse animal collections in major US zoos. She discusses her affinity for problem-solving and the ways zoo animal nutrition has improved and where we ought to be headed to further enhance this major component of animal well-being.

Animal Care Software

With a family legacy of rewilding the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, Paul Gardiner has always had a close relationship with Africa's Wildlife and an affinity for filming. Together with his business partner, media executive and content producer Barbara Bellini, they have launched a new content platform on YouTube called Wildlens. This channel in beta testing is designed for those budding storytellers working in the field protecting, preserving, studying, and educating others about Nature and the amazing creatures found in it. Their stated mission is to unite people and animals, ignite engagement, and grow an enormous community passionate about our planet!

Animal Care Software

Starting her career in a more traditional zoo setting in the 1970's, Dr. Laurie Marker has dedicated her professional life to preserving cheetahs in the wild. After what is now Namibia gained independence from South Africa in 1990, she moved to the southern African nation to help reduce the hundreds of cheetahs killed by ranchers and farmers each year. Through the foundation she founded and leads as Executive Director, Cheetah Conservation Fund works to study, preserve, rescue, and most recently, reintroduce wild cheetahs. Dr. Marker describes her team's efforts in the cheetah translocation and rewinding effort underway in India, whose subspecies of cheetah went extinct in the 1950's. Dr. Marker invites zoo professionals and others interested in conserving cheetahs to attend one of her many events scheduled during her US tour underway now.

Animal care Software

Enrichment is a frequently tossed around term but what actually is it?  How is it being used today and is that application appropriate or even effective?  We are on location at the AZA annual conference hosted by Columbus Zoo & Aquarium with applied animal behavior experts Chuck Tompkins and Erin Ivory to discuss the current use of enrichment, how to better maximize its positive impact on animal well-being in managed care and more wild scenarios, and why the term may be a misnomer to cover for the collective historical reservations by some within the zoological space opposed to the idea of "training 'wild' animals tricks." 

Animal Care Software

As the executive director of the Community Conservation Fund for Africa or CCFA, Taryn Gillson works to help build community development through funding generated by ecotourism. Their goal is to assist communities participating in and benefiting from conservation. CCFA is the foundation of the ecotourism leading experts at Mantis following their merger with hotel management giant, Accor. Even more interesting is Taryn's status as a cyber tracker evaluator, the first female in the world to earn such status from the conservation software organization. Cyber tracker's original goal was to preserve and celebrate the dying science and skill of animal tracking for use in research and conservation.

Animal Care Software

Marine biologist Dr. Holley Muraco returns to Zoo Logic to discuss her recent work rehabilitating orphaned beavers. This iconic and unique species was integral to the early history and commerce of western Europeans in North America and narrowly managed to avoid extinction.  Holley also discusses her work monitoring the health of coastal Mississippi, largely via its resident dolphin population, through her new role with MS State University. Holley also discusses her experiences with and the passing of the beloved orca known as Lolita.

Animal Care Software

It's part 2 of our conversation with Dolphin Quest co-founder, Dr. Jay Sweeney beginning with efforts to increase awareness and basic research of at-risk small cetaceans around the globe. Jay discusses some of the other research DQ has supported over its history including some pioneering work studying the off-shore bottlenose dolphins of Bermuda and their amazing adaptations to their deep sea habitat compared to their more familiar in-shore, smaller, coastal cousins. Jay also describes the bold initiative launched 20 years ago called "project newborn" whose purpose was to safely collect neonatal physiological data on fragile baby dolphins to improve their survivability. Jay concludes with some helpful advice for new veterinarians entering the field.

Animal Care Software

Founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, Mantis is a boutique hotel group with a focus on conservation and sustainable eco-tourism. Mantis founder, Adrian Gardiner, born in Zambia, took his childhood interest in wildlife and began a life-long journey towards restoring and rewinding thousands of acres of degraded farmland in South Africa. Among the many boutique hotels Mantis has developed around the world since, Adrian and the Mantis team were instrumental in the early plans to restore and re-wild Akagera National park in Rwanda. Mantis' foundation, Community Conservation Fund Africa (CCFA) is "a grant-giving and fundraising instrument to support company efforts in addressing social and environmental imbalances, and the growing conservation crisis, not only in Africa, but in the world."

Animal Care Software

Most zoological professionals would rather spend each day focusing on providing great welfare for their animals than keeping tabs on restrictive bills moving through Congress or the state legislature. Unfortunately, today's environment necessitates that everyone proactively engage in the legislative and lobbying process in order to prevent anti-zoo groups and their false narratives from convincing lawmakers to enact unnecessary laws that curtail the important work of zoos and aquariums. Zoological Association of America (ZAA) government affairs consultant, attorney Tom Albert discusses recent laws and bills that should concern us all.

Animal Care Software

Our ability to rescue, treat, and hopefully, return stranded marine mammals to sea has greatly improved over the past few decades with advancements in husbandry, medicine, and veterinary care. However, our ability to also behaviorally treat animals, especially juveniles during critical learning periods, to better prepare them physically and mentally for the wild has understandably lagged behind over concerns about animals becoming habituated to human activities and objects. Recently, the Pacific Marine Mammal Center led a pilot study, to explore the benefits of providing rescue animals access to environmental enrichment devices with support provided by KONG company founder, Joe Markham and his team, to determine if such use would increase desirable behaviors while reducing the development of unwanted behaviors such as looking for rescue staff. Several of the coauthors of the resulting paper, Environmental Enrichment Devices Are Safe and Effective at Reducing Undesirable Behaviors in California Sea Lions and Northern Elephant Seals during Rehabilitation, published in the journal Animals discuss the project, including Dr. Hendrik Nollens, Dr. Alissa Deming, lead author Kirsten Donald, and AnimalConcepts' Sabrina Brando.

KORE Zoo & Enrichment

As the son of one of the first female marine biologists in the world and certainly at Southern California's Scripp's Institute of Oceanography, Dr. Jay Sweeney grew up surrounded by aquatic life, surfing, and scientific discovery. Long before he co-founded Dolphin Quest and helped launch the public animal interactive experience with Dr. Rae Stone we know today, Jay worked with SeaWorld and the US Navy's marine mammal program as a young veterinarian devising diagnostic tools, particularly in the area of cytology, to study, monitor, and maintain animal health. But it was at Marineland of the Pacific where Jay recalls a welcoming philosophy that brought biologists, veterinarians, and behaviorists together in the early days of marine mammal display and care to share ideas and best practices-- a philosophy he and his colleagues continue to this day at their exotic locations in Hawaii and Bermuda. Jay speaks fondly of the important animal health role that trainers and keepers play in caring for exotic animals. In his spare time, Jay has developed his interest and skills in art through woodworking sculptures of small cetaceans, which he donates to various conservation organizations to support students.

Animal care Software

Going on an African safari is a dream for many but what should travelers know about their destination before booking with a tour operator?  We spoke to the team from Rickshaw Travels Rwanda about the growth of sustainable ecotourism in the small mountainous country as well as other popular East African locations. While there are many similarities among range countries, each differs not only by the number and type of species and ecosystems, but also in their respective travel infrastructure, capacity, and cost of accommodations.

Animal Care Software

Dr. Susan G. Friedman, professor emeritus from the Department of Psychology at Utah State University is well known among the zoological community for her expertise in behavior change and learning. She consults for a variety of animal organizations and facilities, is a frequent speaker at professional meetings, and her written work has been translated into well over a dozen languages. According to her website, BehaviorWorks.org, the behavior of individuals is always the study of one. She discusses the importance of providing choice to animals and how we can infer what animals are thinking or feeling by their observable behavior and the context in which it occurs.

Animal Care Software

Many people, perhaps most including some scientists, think Monarch Butterflies are in trouble. It turns out, according to Monarch expert and researcher, Andy Davis, PhD from the UGA Odum School of Ecology that Monarch populations over the past decade are stable and may even be climbing. So what began as a Zoo Logic conversation about threats to Monarchs quickly turned into a discussion about the importance of science communications and the difficulty of correcting the public narrative when it is factually wrong. The implications of strongly held, false narratives among the public, media or policymakers are significant and include expensive, misguided and even harmful public policies, what types of research questions are funded or not, and whether data running contrary to the prevailing opinion even gets published in peer-reviewed journals. The parallels to the strongly held narratives about zoos and aquariums and certain charismatic species in human care are unmistakable.

Animal Care Software

Longtime trainer and conservationist Julie Scardina reflects on her time filming Mountain Gorillas with Jack Hanna in Rwanda a mere decade after the 1994 genocide. Julie has since trekked to view these great apes many times across their range in nearby Uganda.   Since her retirement as ambassador for SeaWorld & Busch Gardens where she helped manage their Conservation Fund, Julie leads Mission Wildlife, raising awareness and funds to support important conservation projects in Africa and elsewhere.

Animal Care Software

In a zoological podcast first, the hosts of 4 animal training and welfare related shows, including Zoo Logic, join together to discuss how their respective programs came about, future goals, as well as, content similarities and differences. Guests include Ryan Cartlidge of The Animal Training Academy podcast, Shane Corbett of the recently launched Animal Behavior Conversations podcast from the Animal Behavior Management Alliance (ABMA), and Ari Bailey and Chris Jenkins from The Natural Encounters, Inc., Training and Education Center (TEC) Talk podcast.

Animal Care Software

On a recent extended visit to a zoo, one topic that arose among some of the keeper staff concerned the individual animal well-being pros and cons of hand-rearing predator species versus managing them as parent-raised animals. Historically, many zoos have preferred to let young predatory species, especially elusive felines, be reared entirely by the parent, with minimal contact with human caregivers. As part of long term conservation goals that included the possibility of reintroducing zoo born animals to their original ranges, this husbandry management practice made sense in order to avoid habituation to human beings and activities during critical learning periods. However, even in wealthier nations with ample resources and oversight, the reintroduction, or merely the preservation of existing predator populations like wolves, in the wild has been plagued with setbacks, modest results, and public resistance.

As society sorts out global land-use policies and struggles to find better ways to reduce human-animal conflicts, should our zoological animal management strategies be adapted, at least for the foreseeable future, to reflect this reality? In our noble quest to achieve a conservation dream of future species reintroductions, are we sacrificing individual animal welfare today by not doing everything we can to prepare these newborns for a more likely lifetime in managed human care? Our guest, long time zoo curator Suzi Rapp believes the answer to questions like these requires us to gather more scientific data in order balance the conservation needs of the species with the welfare needs of the individual.

Animal Care Software

After more than seven years of planning, construction, collection planning, staffing and transports, an international team has opened the massive all-new indoor SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi. General Curator, Rob Yordi, has been a major part of the process from the earliest days of specialized teams drawing up next generation exhibit designs to launching operations a few weeks ago. Rob discusses the 8 realm facility that features several "dynamic," multi-species habitats, and how this facility relied on and enhanced decades of SeaWorld animal care, exhibitry, research, and life support expertise to bring species never before seen in that part of the world.

Animal Care Software