Zoo Time
The first winter season was behind
me. It had not been at all what I had anticipated.
I did not approach the summer with the same degree of confidence that I had
gone forth in the fall. I would be working with captive mountain lions of known
ages to develop a method to determine the ages of wild lions. It sounded pretty
easy, but I had thought chasing wild ones would be physically taxing but
straightforward. It was not. What surprises did I have in store for the summer?
A Cap-chur gun was used to immobilize all of the wild mountain lions because they were usually more than 20 feet away and up a tree. We needed closer-up methods for the captive ones. Some of the zoos had squeeze cages. The zookeepers would urge the lion into the cage then narrow it down with a lever so the animal couldn't turn around and was pressed against the side bars. It was easy to inject the immobilizing drug directly into a hind leg muscle and let the lion back out into the big cage before the drug took effect.
Another method involved a blow gun. Lots of lung power was needed for this one since the same kind of dart was used as with the Cap-chur gun and the dart was heavy. Sometimes if a squeeze cage wasn't available a jab stick would be used for an animal confined in a small cage. This one was the trickiest of all since the operator had to give the lion a jab in the hind leg and pull back quicker than the lion could turn around and swat the stick. I was fortunate the zookeepers were familiar with whatever method we had to use and would usually do the immobilizing.
My tour of zoos which had expressed a willingness to let me work with their known-age mountain lions started with the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. They had two female lions, a 13-year old and another one of unknown age. I had worked on one captive lion in Denver and two wild ones. I sort of knew what I was doing. I was lucky that everything went smoothly.
One of the first things I noticed was the difference in the teeth. The wild lions' teeth had no tartar buildup but the captive ones usually had a great deal. This made measuring gumline recession difficult and not very accurate. The tartar had to be scraped off, sometimes leaving the gums bleeding. When I thought about it, it was pretty easy to understand why there was more buildup in zoo lions. Most of the felids in zoos were fed a soft meat product. Wild mountain lions used a natural toothbrush: rib bones. One of the markers of a deer killed by a lion was the ribs would be chewed off often almost all the way to the spine. The broken bone edges would scrape any tarter off the teeth before it even had a chance to coat the tooth.
Another difference was in the ink prints I made from the hind foot. The wild lions' feet were furry and the pads were cracked, sort of like the callouses my feet got when I went barefoot in the summer. Zoo lions' pads were as smooth as if they had been given a pedicure.
After my positive experience with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo I was feeling more confident when we reached the Brit Spaugh Zoo in Kansas. I shouldn't have been. The two animals we worked on first were females and everything went as planned.
The trouble started with the next one, a fat old male. Fat lions look the same as skinny lions from above because they carry their extra weight in a sagging belly. This old boy's belly was really sagging! Several people from the zoo were watching me so I did the easy things first. The body measurements went okay. Weighing him was strenuous but doable. A whisker was easy to snip off. Then the hard part. I got disoriented when I went to take the blood. I mistook the ankle vein for the knee vein because his belly hung below the knee vein. Ankle veins aren't very big on mountain lions. I went through the vein in one leg causing a big hematoma to form (blood seeped from the vein into the tissue surrounding it). I collapsed the ankle vein in the other leg by trying to draw the blood too quickly. The veins were too deep on the forelegs so I tried to take blood from the tongue veins. I was getting desperate! I switched to a smaller needle and my advisor Ken held the lion's tongue. I carefully slid the needle into the vein and slowly, slowly drew back the plunger. The lion had been under for quite a while and was starting to come out. His tongue was not made to spend much time out of his mouth and was drying out. To correct his discomfort he tried to pull it in. Ken hung on with determination but asked me to hurry. I didn't want to collapse this vein as well but understood the need. I hurried and the vein collapsed with only about half the amount of blood I needed. We let the lion moisten his tongue then tried the vein on the other side. By the time he tried to pull it in I figured I'd stop when I was almost ahead. I had almost enough blood.
On to the Topeka Zoo! We were in for a delightful surprise. The young male mountain lion snarled at us from the small enclosure behind the exhibit cage. I thought I was imagining things because his canine gleamed! Teeth, even very clean teeth, usually don't gleam. The zookeeper was watching for my reaction.
"Does he have a silver tooth?" I asked incredulously. He beamed and told me the story. The lion's canine had been broken when he fell on his face after a routine immobilization and the nearby dental school had come to the rescue. The students had fitted him with a stainless steel crown. Good experience and p.r. for the students and great p.r. for the zoo! It wasn't actually necessary because a lion eating soft food really doesn't need his canines.
Even some wild lions are able to make do without, sometimes to the detriment of ranchers. A lion was killed in Utah that had broken all of his canines and was gumming his dinner (sheep) to death with the stubs. Pretty hard work I imagine. Sheep were probably easier to hold onto during the process than deer. Another lion with a disability was killing sheep and shot by a rancher. He noticed the fur was worn off on the inside of the lion's front legs. Further examination revealed stiff wrists from arthritis on its forelegs making it difficult to grab its prey with its claws. It could hold a woolly sheep with its forelegs just fine while it delivered the fatal bite. A deer could probably have just slipped away.
A stainless steel canine didn't make any difference in the parameters I was measuring. I just measured the gumline recession on the other side. Everything else for the two lions was routine and we thanked the zookeepers and headed back to Fort Collins to get ready for our next zoo visits.
The only real zoo tragedy happened when we visited the zoo in Salt Lake City.
A Cap-chur gun was used to immobilize all of the wild mountain lions because they were usually more than 20 feet away and up a tree. We needed closer-up methods for the captive ones. Some of the zoos had squeeze cages. The zookeepers would urge the lion into the cage then narrow it down with a lever so the animal couldn't turn around and was pressed against the side bars. It was easy to inject the immobilizing drug directly into a hind leg muscle and let the lion back out into the big cage before the drug took effect.
 |
| Blow gun and dart |
My tour of zoos which had expressed a willingness to let me work with their known-age mountain lions started with the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. They had two female lions, a 13-year old and another one of unknown age. I had worked on one captive lion in Denver and two wild ones. I sort of knew what I was doing. I was lucky that everything went smoothly.
One of the first things I noticed was the difference in the teeth. The wild lions' teeth had no tartar buildup but the captive ones usually had a great deal. This made measuring gumline recession difficult and not very accurate. The tartar had to be scraped off, sometimes leaving the gums bleeding. When I thought about it, it was pretty easy to understand why there was more buildup in zoo lions. Most of the felids in zoos were fed a soft meat product. Wild mountain lions used a natural toothbrush: rib bones. One of the markers of a deer killed by a lion was the ribs would be chewed off often almost all the way to the spine. The broken bone edges would scrape any tarter off the teeth before it even had a chance to coat the tooth.
 |
| Wild male footprint |
 |
| Captive female footprint |
Another difference was in the ink prints I made from the hind foot. The wild lions' feet were furry and the pads were cracked, sort of like the callouses my feet got when I went barefoot in the summer. Zoo lions' pads were as smooth as if they had been given a pedicure.
After my positive experience with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo I was feeling more confident when we reached the Brit Spaugh Zoo in Kansas. I shouldn't have been. The two animals we worked on first were females and everything went as planned.
The trouble started with the next one, a fat old male. Fat lions look the same as skinny lions from above because they carry their extra weight in a sagging belly. This old boy's belly was really sagging! Several people from the zoo were watching me so I did the easy things first. The body measurements went okay. Weighing him was strenuous but doable. A whisker was easy to snip off. Then the hard part. I got disoriented when I went to take the blood. I mistook the ankle vein for the knee vein because his belly hung below the knee vein. Ankle veins aren't very big on mountain lions. I went through the vein in one leg causing a big hematoma to form (blood seeped from the vein into the tissue surrounding it). I collapsed the ankle vein in the other leg by trying to draw the blood too quickly. The veins were too deep on the forelegs so I tried to take blood from the tongue veins. I was getting desperate! I switched to a smaller needle and my advisor Ken held the lion's tongue. I carefully slid the needle into the vein and slowly, slowly drew back the plunger. The lion had been under for quite a while and was starting to come out. His tongue was not made to spend much time out of his mouth and was drying out. To correct his discomfort he tried to pull it in. Ken hung on with determination but asked me to hurry. I didn't want to collapse this vein as well but understood the need. I hurried and the vein collapsed with only about half the amount of blood I needed. We let the lion moisten his tongue then tried the vein on the other side. By the time he tried to pull it in I figured I'd stop when I was almost ahead. I had almost enough blood.
 |
| Taking a blood sample from a zoo mountain lion |
On to the Topeka Zoo! We were in for a delightful surprise. The young male mountain lion snarled at us from the small enclosure behind the exhibit cage. I thought I was imagining things because his canine gleamed! Teeth, even very clean teeth, usually don't gleam. The zookeeper was watching for my reaction.
"Does he have a silver tooth?" I asked incredulously. He beamed and told me the story. The lion's canine had been broken when he fell on his face after a routine immobilization and the nearby dental school had come to the rescue. The students had fitted him with a stainless steel crown. Good experience and p.r. for the students and great p.r. for the zoo! It wasn't actually necessary because a lion eating soft food really doesn't need his canines.
Even some wild lions are able to make do without, sometimes to the detriment of ranchers. A lion was killed in Utah that had broken all of his canines and was gumming his dinner (sheep) to death with the stubs. Pretty hard work I imagine. Sheep were probably easier to hold onto during the process than deer. Another lion with a disability was killing sheep and shot by a rancher. He noticed the fur was worn off on the inside of the lion's front legs. Further examination revealed stiff wrists from arthritis on its forelegs making it difficult to grab its prey with its claws. It could hold a woolly sheep with its forelegs just fine while it delivered the fatal bite. A deer could probably have just slipped away.
A stainless steel canine didn't make any difference in the parameters I was measuring. I just measured the gumline recession on the other side. Everything else for the two lions was routine and we thanked the zookeepers and headed back to Fort Collins to get ready for our next zoo visits.
The only real zoo tragedy happened when we visited the zoo in Salt Lake City.
Fascinating!
ReplyDelete