My wife Sandy, also a lover of big science words, passed along this month’s feature. Fimicolous is an adjective formed from Latin roots that mean “to inhabit dung” and is used to describe organisms that live in, on, and with animal waste. As animal keepers we spend a lot of time dealing with poop and you might be amazed at all the living things that utilize poop. Perhaps most famous are the dung beetles, a group of scarab beetles thatRead more
Posts tagged: #bears
Yona Update
It’s been almost one month since Yona had her day at the vet school. Just about all of the reports are in and the talking continues to determine what the best course of action will be. We will almost definitely be doing surgery in late September when the weather cools to remove the bone fragment from her arm (her medial coronoid process – a bone in her elbow- has fragmented). As always, we’ll keep you updated. Check out the videoRead more
Yona’s visit to the Vet School
What a long day. In February I wrote about Yona’s first radiographs. Today, Tuesday, was the next step. Many of you know that Yona went to North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s Teaching Hospital today. Today was the day to do whatever tests were needed to figure out what was going on with her leg. Whatever is going on is not stopping her from doing anything she would normally do, but we know something is just not right withRead more
Do you know all the species of bears?
For Bear Awareness Week, I thought I would publish this post from a couple of years ago. Although the population information on each species is a little different now, it still gives you a good idea of the bears’ plight in the wild. We have some great stuff going on for Bear Awareness Week, that you can read about in a post that Erin just wrote. And if you come to the bear overlook this Wednesday or Saturday, you canRead more
Bear Aware!
Next week is Bear Awareness Week, and the North Carolina Piedmont Chapter of the American Association of Zookeepers (AAZK), of which several museum keepers and several keepers from the Duke Lemur Center are a part of, will be heading up our activities this year. Bear Awareness week is a week dedicated to learning about bear behaviors, spreading knowledge about bear species and their plights (6 out of 8 bear species are in danger of extinction), and learning how to cohabitateRead more
How Enriching!
Twas a lovely, cool morning last week and I was working in Explore the Wild tending to the bears. The bear enrichment that day was to put syrup in holey balls, and I thought it’d be fun to do it from the bear overlook and watch the bears interact with it. When I got up to the bear overlook, I wondered if I would run into Karyn, a member who I see around the museum quite a bit. I hadRead more