The scoop on Red Wolf poop

Keeper Katy and I recently attended a talk at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences titled “The History and Future of the Red Wolf (Canis rufus) in North Carolina.” It was given by Justin Bohling from the University of Idaho, who is a graduate student in Lisette Wait’s lab. Besides giving a good background on the history of the Red Wolf Recovery Project administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), he presented his application of some new genetic techniquesRead more
3 Comments

Creature Feature: Donald the eastern box turtle

Donald is another of our education animals that lives behind the scenes. He came to us in March of 2004, and was brought in by one of the animal keepers. The animal keeper had acquired him from one of our volunteers at the time, who had found him injured in the road after being grazed by a car. When first found, one of Donald’s legs was injured and his shell was damaged, and the volunteer thought he was dead. However,Read more
4 Comments

Update on our red wolf brothers

As you might already know, our red wolf brothers were moved to another facility (click here to read the post) so that we could get two new wolves that will hopefully breed (click here to see a picture of our new male, and here to see a movie of Kristen picking up our new female). Kim Wheeler, the director of the Red Wolf Coalition, helps to occasionally take care of the brothers at their new home on the Alligator RiverRead more
1 Comment

Creating a different view, for visitors AND animals

We decided a while ago that it was time to change the perches and trees out of the barred owl exhibit. Seeing as how spare time is precious around here, it wasn’t until last week that Jill and I finally got around to setting our plan in motion. We already had a nice big perching tree ready to go in the exhibit, so last Tuesday we put the tree in while doing a superclean of the exhibit. We still haveRead more
1 Comment

Creature Feature: Baby the Spotted Salamander

With a name like “Baby”, it is probably easy to assume that this spotted salamander is very young. On the contrary, he is 10 years old! That’s right, he actually came to the museum in 1998 as a baby, but old habits die hard in the animal department, so the name has stuck with him for his entire life. Baby is our only spotted salamander, while the rest are barred tiger salamanders. He is one of our many animals thatRead more