Stink Bugs and Coprophagia

So, life goes on as a zookeeper-in-training. It is difficult to come up with something to write about every week. I learn new things every day but it is hard to write a cohesive essay about them without it feeling disjointed.



I’ve learned that colobus monkey’s burps smell singular and peculiarly foul. I have learned that a hose coils much easier when the pressure is released. I have learned that I have no problem hosing mice out of the gorilla enclosures. How can an animal lover happily spray a mouse around the cement floor, you ask? My answer is that if I was charged to clean the zoo’s mouse enclosure I would be sure to hose any skulking gorillas away with identical zest.



Speaking of spraying the gorillas: I have learned that our 12 year old female gorilla, Kiazi despises getting splashed with water. Despite this, she stands in the pool while we toss lunch down from the roof. Inevitably she gets splashed when a kiwi or an apple lands next to her. She shields her face in annoyance and glares at us as if to say, “Watch it, I’m standing here!”



I’ve learned through my research on palm oil that it is particularly difficult to find a good margarine without palm oil. I have also learned that one can make their own margarine with olive oil, milk, and soy lecithin in a blender. Add seasonings to taste.



I’ve learned that zoo animals can develop strange aberrant behaviors such as regurgitating and re-eating. I’ve seen Kiazi eat the same grape about four times; it was too good to eat but once. Another one is called coprophagia, and it means the consumption of feces. I’ve learned that a gorilla named Betty that used to live at the Pittsburgh Zoo would combine these two aberrant behaviors to form one really gross behavior. Super-coprophagalistic-expialadocious!



At any rate, writing about the zoo every week is unrealistic for me. However, I find the world of animals fascinating enough to research, and subsequently write about, every day. Today I decided to find out about stink bugs. Pittsburgh has been inundated with them this year and I have found them on my person more than once in the last few weeks; one flew in my mouth recently. When I was a kid, I called them apple bugs; I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because they are known to eat apples. Or maybe I just made the name up because they were an apple red and green color.



The variety that has taken over Pittsburgh is brown and is called the brown marmorated stink bug. Native to eastern Asia, they were accidentally introduced to Pennsylvania about 12 years ago and have been the bane of fruit farmers ever since.



Wondering why they were called stink bugs I asked a friend at the zoo who seemed to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subject. “Because they smell terrible when you squish them,” was the answer. To the question, “What do they smell like?“ I got the answer, “Like a stink bug.“ I fully intend to squash one to experience the stink bug aroma but I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to smash such a cute little bug. After some additional research I discovered that they can also release their vile smell purposefully through holes in their abdomen when they are frightened. The smell is actually a chemical called trans-2-decenal and trans-2-Octenal.



I caught one the other day and found a small dot on its head that I thought could be a mite hitching a ride. I picked at it for a short while but was unable to break it free. One would think that this disturbing encounter would be enough to set its off its stink but I smelled nothing.



2010 has seen a marked increase in the brown marmorated stink bug and has wreaked havoc on fruit plantations across the state. Stink bugs typically have four generations per growing season in their natural east Asian habitat, but in the U.S. they usually have just one. This year, due to the unusually early and warm spring and summer, they have been allowed to produce a second generation and this extra generation means that the state is seeing more bugs in more places than in previous seasons. Adults are living longer, depositing eggs longer and maturing more generations to lay even more eggs.



When stink bugs eat an apple they pierce the fruit’s outer surface and suck out juices while injecting saliva. The suction and saliva create a dimpling in the fruit’s surface, and rotting and corking in the flesh underneath. The fruit is fine to eat but is rendered completely disfigured and unfit to sell.



Fear not Pittsburghers, the scourge is soon to end; outside at least. Towards the end of fall they begin to search for places to hibernate. Often that place happens to be in our homes, though this can be fun towards the middle of winter. I love it when a confused bug wakes up in my house, clumsily bumping around the light fixtures. The cats love it too.

Job Interview and Botany

Well, I had my first interview the other day with Wild Things Animal Rentals Inc. in Salinas, California, the hometown of John Steinbeck. This job would be really great to have for many reasons. First, Wild Things features an incredible selection of animals including my favorites, tapirs and capybaras. In fact, the animals at this company are so wonderful that all the pictures in today’s web log feature a specimen found in their facilities. Second, they provide animals for movies, television, commercials, and music videos throughout the U.S. This is cool because besides animal keeping, movie making as a career was another dream I had as a child. Third, the location is pretty great; right off the coast of Monterrey Bay and just south of Santa Cruz and San Francisco. It is a beautiful area with a nice mild climate.



Despite being kind of nervous and rambling a bit, I think the interview went pretty well. Now I just need to hope that, though I am just one of many applicants and have only one month of exotic animal experience, my passion and confidence in my abilities was evident through the receiver.



I am sure to be giving more interviews in the future; I send out at least one resume each day. Yesterday I applied to a zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, and today I applied to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Nobody is advertising for a keeper with one month of exotic animal experience but I am applying anyway.



Yesterday at the Pittsburgh Zoo the zoo horticulturist taught a class about the zoo's various trees and shrubs to a selection of interns and keepers. We learned what plants are okay to feed the animals and which ones to avoid. Being from Alaska I was the only one present unable to identify poison ivy; until yesterday I ran the risk of ignorantly trudging through a thicket of the stuff.



While I did learn a lot about toxic and non-toxic plants during the lecture, I also was able to confirm a depressing fact. As much as I would love to be an avid botanist, plants bore the hell out of me. I wish I was the type of person that could get excited about shrubbery. If I could react the same way to a flower or a tree as I do to a squirrel or toad, the world would be a veritable wonderland.

Zoo Ethics and Philosophy

The keeping of animals in captivity can be a controversial issue. Some say that all creatures have a right to freedom and that zoos are exploiting animals for entertainment and profit. Some feel that many zoo animals appear listless and depressed.



The rebuttal that many zoo aficionados spout is that animals are safer in the zoo; their enclosure is free of predators, hunters, poison ivy, and such. I can’t take that tack when defending zoos; I would rather be beset with perils than imprisoned for the rest of my life. Nevertheless, I feel that zoos are important for our society; more important now than ever before.



Zoos not only advance our knowledge on the biology of animals (an essential ingredient for protecting them), but they educate the visitors as well. A good zoo makes it a priority to educate its visitors. Sure, I don’t expect every dolt that walks through the zoo entrance to walk out an expert on biodiversity and conservation. The real power that a zoo holds is its power to help people care, if even for a little bit; and caring is half the battle. I believe that nothing can help the dwindling populations of the polar bear, gorilla, or orangutan if no one ever made an emotional connection with one at the zoo.



Why is the conservation of the elephants important? Besides the emotional attachment we harbor for these large beasts, what do they contribute to us and the ecosystem? Well, they do plow the dirt a little which helps plants, and their poop provides habitat for certain species of beetle, but it is true that their extinction wouldn’t have a huge impact on the ecosystem. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this but I am going to let you in on a little secret: conservationist use elephants and other interesting or cute creatures to garner support for the protection of whole habitats; habitats that contain many creatures that are essential players in the local ecosystem; creatures like slugs, spiders, brown snakes, and warty toads. The interesting species are called umbrella species and they are vital to conservation efforts.



If there is one thing that has surprised me through this zoo internship is that I really enjoy talking to the visitors. I often spend my breaks among the zoo guests, answering questions about the gorillas and talking about important conservation issues. At first I would approach the idiot families and explain that the gorillas were not all male and that they were great apes, not monkeys. I wanted to stamp out ignorance one doofus at a time, but I soon learned that that was much like trying to stomp the cockroaches downstairs into extinction; impossible! Slowly I came more to enjoy telling the children from obviously smart families all about the gorillas. The information is genuinely appreciated and really seems to stick.



At some point zookeepers have to ask themselves why they do it. There seems to be about as many reasons as there are keepers. One guy I work with is apparently a keeper because it is his only marketable skill; he grew up keeping animals in the family’s business and just never stopped. Unfortunately for him, his career lacks the passion that marks the difference between a good keeper and a great keeper. One keeper is driven by her passion for training the animals. She trains them to push their bodies against the bars to facilitate medical procedures; she trains them to enter adjacent enclosures without a fuss; she would train them to clean up after themselves so that she could spend more time training them if she could.



Roseann is not an adherent to the training school of zookeepery. She believes that training is stressful to the animals and that zookeeping should be done with intuition, with an emphasis on fostering natural behaviors. I can see the wisdom in this but to be dead set against training seems unrealistic; isn’t the absence of training a form of training?



Anyway, Roseann is a zookeeper in part because she thinks that animal education is important. From hearing her talk, I get the idea that she is tenuously clinging to the idea that hopefully she is making a difference somehow. However she justifies herself, I think that the gorillas are very lucky to have her. I would like to model my zookeeping self partly after her.



Besides education, zoos have the role of ark or “seed bank”. While the people of the world are fastidiously endeavoring to wipe out the orangutan in the wild, zoos are carefully keeping the orang genetic stock fresh. Someone once asked me, “What is the point in keeping animals for eventual release into the wild if their habitat no longer exists?” This is a good question but it is also a pessimistic one. Maybe I am naively optimistic to feel that we can one day get a handle on our deforestation and designate a spot for these displaced creatures.



Watching after the gorillas nurtures philosophical thought and the parts of the days that I am alone, raking their yard and enclosures, gives me abundant time to mull over some of these thoughts.



To the people that tell me, “Those gorillas sure look sad,” I ask, “What does a happy gorilla look like?” They never quite know. I’m not so sure either.