You won’t see this in the wild

  I snapped this picture of our 4 black bears eating breakfast together. Gus is the one looking up.   In the wild, black bears are solitary. This is definately a rare sight.   Our black bears are all rescues who weren’t able to be released back into the wild. Luckily we have a large enough exhibit for them that they are all able to have their own space. Sometimes they actually like spending time together. Often Gus and YonaRead more
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Lemurs in Crates

I’ve posted about lemur training before and wanted to give an update. Click here and here to refresh your memory. Ring Tailed Lemur physicals are in September! That’s so soon. But we are making progress. Lycus actually had to be seen earlier than expected. I noticed a change in his eyes, a white cloudiness. We had a few days until Dr. Vanderford would be able to see Lycus so I began using the ophthalmoscope (a lighted instrument that is usedRead more
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Snake Enrichment

Even our snakes get enrichment! This morning while in the RHR (reptile holding room) I looked over and saw this… Each animal reacts differently to enrichment, but changing a snakes habitat has the greatest enrichment potential. We switch it up week to week to keep it novel. We do enrichment for snakes 3 times a week. One day is handling each snake for at least 5 minutes, another day is adding natural materials, such as leaves, river rocks, pinestraw, pinecones, twigs,Read more

What do the bears eat?

Bear food for one day Here is the Bear food for one day. 12 apples 6 oranges 12 carrots 6 pears 6 cups of nuts 12.5 lbs of chow (missing from pic)   The bears always get apples and oranges. Every other day they get either carrots or cooked sweet potatoes. Their extra fruit/vegetable  (which is pears in this pic) varies each day between pears, avacados, berries, peaches or plums, heads of lettuce, grapes or raisins, and corn on the cob. EachRead more
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Forget the porridge, give me cotton candy!

Every Thursday the animal department staff (along with any volunteers or museum staff that can tolerate the keepers) go to lunch together somewhere off campus. Occasionally we splurge and go to Golden Corral. A few weeks ago some of the keepers noticed there was blue cotton candy in the dessert section. We decided to take all the cotton candy they had (of course, we waited until we were on our way out to snag it all) so that we could seeRead more