Chinook?

It has been a really busy beginning to 2011. Chinook let us know in December that cubs were not on the way (see post Polar Bears: What December Brings), and she was ready to join her buddies Kalluk and Tatqiq in life at Polar Bear Plunge. As keepers this is sometimes a worrisome time: not sure if the relationships from the past will still be there. Of course, after some initial greeting time, the famous three were up to their old antics. It is also the time of the year that the girls seem to be best friends, and Kalluk spends more time practicing his basketball skills!

Is that really you?

We used some of this time to do annual maintenance on the front pool: steam cleaning, replacement of lights, fresh mulch, etc. This meant that all three bears would be inside the bedrooms and yard—all together! With great affection, you must know that these three are beyond messy! Besides providing them with loads of boxes, burlap, and hay, they also felt it necessary to bring in fresh mulch from the yard into the bedrooms and the indoor pool—every day! Once back out to the main exhibit, Chinook definitely showed off that she truly is the queen of the mulch roll! Good thing Kalluk has a good sense of smell, as it appeared he was wondering where the brown bear came from!

Recently, Kalluk and Chinook have begun their great flirtation we see around breeding time. It seems a bit early this year, but they seem to be greatly enjoying each other’s company more than past years. Could this be a good sign? Tatqiq is now a bit of a loner and just stays away when the three are together. She has learned that this, too, will pass, and soon her silly, amorous buddies will be interested in playing again.

We are still collecting fecal samples from Chinook in hopes of being able to get a hormonal assay to determine pregnancy; we are now also collecting urine samples. Any information we can achieve will help us better understand polar bear reproduction.

We have also placed on the Wish List a request to give the polar bears snow. Take a look! If we reach our amount, we’ll be sure to give you notice to watch the fun on Polar Cam. Until then, keep doing your part to conserve and help the polar bears in the Arctic. Unfortunately, for all our cold weather down here it has been a very warm winter for our ice bears of the north!

JoAnne Simerson is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Boris is growing before our eyes!

Boris, our young reindeer, mastered his base training and was ready to move on to a more advanced reindeer game (see Reindeer Boris: Basic Training). Since he had done well so far, we decided it would be enriching and beneficial to introduce Boris to a halter so that he could walk with his keeper.

The first time Boris felt his halter slide over his long furry muzzle and up around his ears, he stood quietly for a few seconds, probably a little puzzled. Next, he tossed his head and rubbed his face on his keeper’s shirt, maybe trying to figure out what kind of large bug had landed on his muzzle and wrapped itself around his ears. Help! After a few reassuring words, and a short, gentle introduction to this new creature called a “halter,” Boris began to relax and learn.

Boris takes Keeper Pamela for a walk.

Next, it was time to train Boris to walk calmly while on the lead. We were fortunate that Keeper Brad Wymer had some experience with training horses and was willing to help. He generously offered some pointers on halter training and tested them with Boris. After a few trial runs, Boris became calm and relaxed as he walked beside Brad and did very well with reindeer keepers Matt Price and Pamela Weber as well. Although his attention span was a little short, as long as we kept training sessions brief and positive, Boris responded well. Once again, he was proving himself to be a star pupil.

The reindeer is the only deer that can be domesticated and has been used by people in Lapland as long as 3,000 years ago. Even today, reindeer provide butter, meat, cheese, clothing, and transportation for the Lapp people. Its antlers and bones are used to make tools and utensils, and the tough sinews in its legs are used to make thread. Reindeer have been the economic basis of the Lapp culture for centuries. Because of their popularity, reindeer are raised in many areas of the world outside of their native Arctic.

Boris meets some San Diego Zoo guests. Click on all images to view in larger format.

Knowing that reindeer have been domesticated, we felt comfortable introducing Boris to a halter. That said, reindeer also deserve some healthy respect. Sharp antlers can be dangerous. Because of this, we understood that Boris’s time on a halter would be sweet but short lived. He has already grown into quite the handsome teenager, and will no doubt be an impressive adult.

Sigh….They grow so fast, don’t they? Did time speed up in December? The weeks have flown by, and the Christmas holiday season arrived quickly. It had become the season of holiday treats, Santa Claus, and, of course, reindeer. What a perfect opportunity to introduce our Zoo visitors to Boris! His first public debut was during a Sunrise Surprise Stroll. Lucky visitors got a chance to meet our handsome young reindeer and hear his amazing story firsthand. Since then, Boris has been the star of several Strolls, and if you’re lucky you may see him practicing his stride on exhibit while his reindeer family looks on.

Raising Boris has been a team effort with great results. He has been a joy to raise and rewarding to work with. At just over three months of age, Boris was weaned on December 25, 2010. Christmas Day, of course! After all, he had work to do!

Kim Weibel is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

In 2010, new efforts to protect the polar bear were mounted: conservation advocacy and legislation made dynamic strides (a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “Critical Habitat” designation for denning areas in Alaska) and suffered some hard losses (the Center for Biological Diversity’s petition to list the polar bear as “Endangered” failed to pass). So, while the overarching conservation message and strategy haven’t greatly changed in the last year, this seeming “status quo” belies a very active conservation effort, including the coalescing of years of scientific research, responsible for an ever-improving understanding of polar bears and their relationship with, and dependence upon, their Arctic sea ice habitat.

The recent publication in the prestigious scientific journal Nature by Polar Bears International scientist Steve Amstrup, Ph.D., garnered much attention because it put forth a suggestion, founded in a rigorous scientific analysis, that there is hope for the polar bear. Based on years of data collected on polar bears and their sea ice habitat, Dr. Amstrup and colleagues showed that if people change their habits and reduce the amount of CO₂ they release into the atmosphere, there is hope for the polar bear. If we reduce global CO₂ emissions, we may see a reversal of the current trends of sea ice loss. Of course, it is important to realize that the smallest word in that last sentence is the most powerful: “IF.” “If” we make these changes, the best data available show that we can reverse the trends of overall sea ice losses documented in the past two decades. If we make these changes, the polar bear will continue to roam vast and remote expanses Arctic sea ice.

As an organization, San Diego Zoo Global has focused on the concept of hope and its importance to successful wildlife conservation efforts (see the Zoo’s Ten Reasons for Hope). Without hope, people give up. And when people give up, when they feel that they cannot make a difference, wildlife and wild lands are lost. Along with our conservation partner, Polar Bears International, we are asking polar bear lovers to explore all the opportunities that they have to reduce their carbon footprints by making small changes in their daily lives and household energy use. We need to do these things if we are to save the polar bear. We have the power to make a difference.

Megan Owen is a conservation program specialist at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read her previous post, Su Lin, Zhen Zhen Update.

Calculate your own carbon footprint.
Watch the San Diego Zoo’s polar bears daily on Polar Cam.

Boris takes a bottle feeding from Lead Keeper Tammy Batson.

If you visit Wegeforth Bowl at the San Diego Zoo to see the animal show, you may be treated to watching a sea lion swim, a lynx pounce, or a serval cat leap. These amazing behaviors performed on cue are the result of the many hours of training put in by our dedicated animal behavior staff. Training is key to the success of our animal shows and presentations. Training is also instrumental in animal care and management. On a stroll through the Zoo, you might notice a keeper asking a lion to rub her side against a fence or asking an ape to present his hand or chest. Training is going on everywhere at the Zoo, with animals from great apes to meerkats. Not only can it make life on exhibit much easier for both the animal and its keeper, it is also enriching. Working with a baby animal allows us the unique opportunity to start training at an early and impressionable age. The behaviors young Boris, our newest reindeer, learns to display in his Zoo environment now will help us manage him as an adult reindeer. (See previous post, Boris Learns Reindeer Games.)

Training animals like Boris to become familiar with things like weighing platforms, crates, loading ramps, trainers, and hoof-trimming tools helps prepare them for routine care and management. To introduce Boris to some of these management practices, we began working on a few training basics. Foot and hoof care is occasionally necessary in adult hoofed animals. We wanted to teach Boris to be calm and quiet when having his feet handled, so we began by gently touching his legs and feet. When he was little, Boris made us laugh with his extreme reaction to any fly that might buzz around his legs. Poor Boris reacted to one single fly as if it were a swarm of 10,000, so we weren’t surprised when his first response to our touch was to stomp and snort, trying to escape our fingers. To him, our hands might as well have been a giant fly coming to get him. Aaack! Thankfully, with practice and gentle repetition, Boris learned to stand quietly and eventually even lifted his feet when his hooves were touched.

Another important part of animal care and health is monitoring body weight. To collect the reindeer’s weights, a large wooden platform was set up on top of a scale in the reindeer’s back area. When the adult reindeer walks onto the platform, the keeper can record each animal’s body weight without causing any stress to the animal. Boris had to learn to step up onto the weigh platform just like the adults. We encouraged him to step up onto the platform by using his bottle as the dangling carrot. On his first try, Boris stepped up onto the platform as if he’d done it a thousand times before. No problem for this little guy!

Some training days that were especially fun for Boris were also a comedic scene for us to witness. One day, when a trailer was available, we backed it up to the reindeer pens and opened the door so that Boris could walk in. He walked up and down the loading ramp and sniffed around exploring the big “new thing.” Boris showed no fear. He quickly made a game of the new thing and trotted up and down the ramp leading into the trailer as if he had claimed it as his new fort. He had conquered his first trailer session with ease.

Boris has proven to be a diligent and eager student. His training will be a continued and significant part of his life in our zoo. Although he still has much to learn, he has done very well with his sessions thus far, and we are very proud of him.

Kim Wiebel is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

A young male polar bear is trapped in ice slush.

I’ve just returned from my annual trip to Churchill in Manitoba, Canada, to work with Polar Bears International. This was my 10th year of doing so, and, as many of you know, I have seen dramatic changes in the environment and animals that live there in just this decade. This year has provided the shortest ice season in recorded time: the polar bears lost a full nine weeks of hunting time. The water and air temperatures for November and December continue to be above normal, delaying the formation of ice again this year. The polar bears have been hunting during low tide and have been fortunate to occasionally find harbor seals resting among the rocks. The bears must be vigilant that they return to the shore before the tide rushes in.

The bear at rest after escaping the slush.

I watched with great awe as a young male polar bear learned the hard way that the fast-moving tide with newly formed slush ice can be a life-or-death moment. This moment lasted over two hours for him. At great distance we saw this bear struggling to swim back in to safety. The combination of current and heavy ice slush proved to be an admirable preventer. At times his head disappeared under the surface as he rested. Just as I thought the worst, his head would come up again, and he would make a supreme effort to pick his massive paw, covered in ice, out of the water and push himself forward.

The exhausted bear

Eventually, he made it to ice he could crawl across. At well over two hours of enormous effort he reached solid ice. He lay still for a few minutes and then joyously began to dry off, giving an amazingly animated show of rubbing and rolling. Off he then went to cruise the coastline, still in the hunt for food and survival. He seemed to be teaching us that this is now everyday life for our ice bears when the ice is not forming as it should. How many are not making it back to solid footing? This young male polar bear’s effort to survive makes our effort to conserve seem so minimal.

After resting, he dries off in the snow.

The forecast for the Hudson Bay: a thin ledge of ice should be formed by mid- December.

What does December bring for our polar bears in San Diego? Unfortunately, it does not look like the pitter patter of tiny paws will be filling our ears. Although we were all so hopeful, it looks like we’ll be repeating this process next year. Our girl Chinook has become very active and is spending lots of time playing in back and looking longingly over at her two buddies Kalluk and Tatqiq. We did another ultrasound exam this week and found a very healthy girl but no sign of cubs. So we are now looking to reintroduce our fabulous trio very soon. Putting such large bears together does not come without risk. The introductions and the time they spend together will be determined by their behavior. But if the interactions they have been having in the back area are any indicator, our three will be very happy to have each other to cavort with. We have some fun new balls for play, and we will continue to rotate the three in combinations throughout the day.

Of course, Kalluk and Tatqiq will have to now share their mulch piles with Chinook—please excuse the dirt-filled water! (Thanks, Water Quality Team for keeping the filtration running so well!) Keep watching Polar Cam to stay up to date on how it’s going. Just think, breeding season is just around the corner. Here we go again!

JoAnne Simerson is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo. Read her previous post, Polar Bears: The Latest.

The next big step in Boris’ social introduction was encouraging him to live in the main exhibit with the herd. To help make his move successful, we set up a “creep” for Boris. A creep is a small, safe pen, similar to a “howdy pen,” where a young animal can go to escape the herd and also meet his keepers for bottles.

To train young animals like Boris to come to their caretakers for bottle feedings, we use a method called clicker training. Once a young animal is nursing reliably, we begin using a clicker, clicking it once before offering the bottle and once again while the animal is actively nursing from it. By repeating this at each feeding, the animal learns to associate the sound of the clicker with bottle feedings/food. Training a young animal to respond to the clicker allows him to live with his own kind, where he learns important social skills and herd etiquette while still receiving bottle feedings from his keepers.

Boris enjoys a meal in his creep.

Boris quickly learned that clicker equals dinner and bounded across the exhibit to meet his keeper at the creep. After draining his bottle, and bumping his keeper for more, he’d saunter out of the creep, back onto the exhibit, looking back a few times just to make sure he hadn’t missed any milk.

Just like his wild cousins, one of the things Boris learned about reindeer life was the importance of moving with the herd. On the wild tundra, the large number of herd members help keep a baby safe from predators. At the San Diego Zoo, Boris learned about life with the reindeer herd in his new home.
Part of a keeper’s day includes servicing the exhibit. In order to clean and distribute fresh food, water, and enrichment items, the reindeer keeper moves the herd into holding pens at the top of the exhibit.

Bath time for Boris.

Boris learned to move into the reindeer barns with the herd when his keeper calls and charges out ahead of them when released. He does this with great enthusiasm, proving that he is an official experienced member of the group. Boris joins in the reindeer game of “What’s new out here today?”, bounding about exploring the hillsides looking for browse treats. Boris is especially fond of water and can be seen splashing around in the pond making a muddy mess out of both the pond and himself.

Kim Weibel is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Listen to Boris as he calls to his keeper.

[audio:http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/sounds/reindeer.mp3]

Kalluk grabs a carrot snack.

It’s hard to believe summer is a distant memory, and fall is quickly passing. Can we already be into the middle of November? Six months ago we were all so sure our Chinook would be caring for cubs. We’ve not yet given up, but the wait and uncertainty is almost un”bear”able. We will just have to wait a bit longer to know if we will be welcoming any cubs to our family.

Here is what we do know: as of the last analysis of hormones, October 12, Chinook had not yet had any embryos implant, but her levels were still close to what we would expect of a potentially pregnant polar bear. So if she is pregnant, we would now not expect to see any cubs until late November or early December. We must still keep in mind that these tests are not a perfected science, and we still have many things to learn.

Chinook’s weight has now stabilized, and she is no longer gaining weight; still, she is very picky about what she will and won’t eat. Again, something seen in polar bears that have given birth. Chinook’s behavior seems to be moving away from what we would expect; instead of slowing down, she is becoming more active. This is not entirely a sign of no pregnancy; some females show heightened activity just before they den up. These are typically females that give birth shortly after denning.

Do we dare hope that this is Chinook’s plan? As it has always been here at the San Diego Zoo, Chinook’s needs will dictate everything we do for her. Is she just learning that every fall, if she slows a bit, we begin catering to her every need and give her more “me” time and spa days? And of course she gets those special days of peanut butter soup and belly rubs for ultrasound procedures. She is a very smart girl! Unfortunately, we have yet to see any cubs with the ultrasound. Not to be discouraged: our veterinarians remind us they did ultrasound for three years before they saw a cub with our giant pandas!

Kalluk and Tatqiq are having a great time together. They certainly are enjoying rambunctious water play and daily dirt pile rolls! It would appear Chinook is now not the only dirt bear expert. In the event Chinook does not den up, we would look to putting our threesome together as soon as possible. I shudder to think what the pool will look like with three huge dirt balls jumping off the point!

Fall is also the time when Chinook’s cousins in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, begin to gather at the shore and wait for the ice to form. I am on my way north for my 10^th year in this one-of-a-kind polar bear world. Selfishly, I’m hoping that if Chinook is to give birth, she will wait for me to come home in December. I am also concerned with what I might see with the wild polar bears. This past year saw the shortest recorded ice formation for the Hudson Bay population of polar bears. Not only did it freeze up four weeks late, it also melted five weeks early. The bears had barely six months to hunt. The forecast is not looking any better, and warmer-than-normal temperatures are expected throughout Canada’s Hudson Bay. Although a few degrees may not seem like much, the difference between water and ice is the difference between 33 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 and -0.5 degrees Celsius). A small amount can, in the end, make a huge difference.

What other small thing can you do to reduce your carbon footprint and encourage others to do the same? In the end, it could make a huge difference.

JoAnne Simerson is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo. Read her previous post, Polar Bear Hopes.

Watch the Zoo’s polar bears daily on Polar Cam.

Why would we even entertain such horrible thoughts? What’s with all the doom and gloom?

Realistically, these are all questions zoo keepers, animal care managers, and veterinarians must ask when a zoo animal with no maternal experience is pregnant. Although we always have high hopes that the natural maternal instinct will kick in as soon as the baby is born, we have to prepare for all scenarios. Discussions among animal care personnel eventually lead to a “birth management plan.” The plan may begin with prenatal care, housing changes, camera installation, and den provisions. Somewhere in the middle of the plan are the answers to most of those “what ifs.” We have to decide how long we will leave the new mother undisturbed. We then have to consider how we can effectively assess the condition of the baby if there is fear that the baby is not being properly nurtured. We have to plan for the extreme case of removing the baby for veterinary treatment and hand-rearing. The Zoo’s Nutrition Department and nursery staffs need to develop a hand-rearing protocol and, most importantly, come up with a proper formula replacement. We also have to think about strategies for offering supplemental feedings if the baby’s growth rate on Mom’s milk isn’t up to par.

A tiny Kalluk or Tatqiq is feed formula while in quarantine at the Zoo in 2001.

The hand-rearing portion of the plan is where I come in. I am a member of the five-person Nursery Team at the Zoo. I was one of the keepers that hand-mixed (gallons and gallons of) milk formula for the tumbling youngsters Kalluk and Tatqiq when San Diego welcomed them into our Zoo family nine years ago. It really doesn’t seem that long ago, and it’s hard to believe that Kalluk may be a dad some day! Sorry, I digress…

Anyway, in addition to getting our hand-rearing protocol in order, two members of our nursery staff were able to participate in more than just the standard preparation. Beginning last April, Joanne Mills and I were given the opportunity to be secondary polar bear keepers. How cool is that? It so happened that the nursery workload was light while the polar bear keepers were extra busy. We were quickly shown the ins and outs of exhibit cleaning, bear feeding, etc. (Oh, I could say so much about the opposite sides of the feeding spectrum: polar bears versus nursery babies. I couldn’t believe how much meat was served to polar bears each day!)

It took a whole five minutes to fall in love with the magnificent threesome. I don’t know why it took that long. We soon realized there was a huge advantage to having nursery keepers working with the polar bears at this time of year. If any of the less-than-perfect birth scenarios occurred, Chinook would already be familiar and calm with nursery keepers. If we had to step in to offer any postnatal assistance, we would already have her trust.

Now, unfortunately, it seems as if our window of possible pregnancy is closing. We’ve been so disappointed that nothing has shown up on the ultrasounds. Our high hopes have diminished. If we aren’t lucky enough to see Chinook as a mother this year, we’ll just transfer our high hopes to next year. At least we’ve gone through all the thought processes and planning stages, and we’ll definitely be ready for whatever comes our way, whenever it comes our way.

Becky Kier is a senior nursery keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Boris sniffs the camera.

See Kim’s previous post, Reindeer Baby Boris Comes Home.

As Boris grew older, physical changes in him became more and more obvious. He was getting taller and more muscular. His thick velvet coat was getting even more dense, and antler buds were beginning to grow on top of his fuzzy black head. Every once in awhile Boris would delicately balance on three legs in order to scratch an antler bud with his hoof, as if satisfying a little itch. He also began growing the thick patch of skin and hair that reindeer display under their throats. Boris was beginning to look more like a reindeer and less like a Holstein calf!

Boris with keeper Pamela Weber

Interestingly, reindeer and caribou are the only species of deer in which males, females, and even calves produce antlers (see post All about Antlers). Female reindeer and calves shed their antlers around March or April and start growing new antlers immediately after shedding the old ones. Male reindeer shed their antlers at the end of the winter season, after the rut, and grow them again around January or February. Inside the fur-covered nose of a reindeer are long nasal passages that warm the cold winter air before it reaches the animal’s lungs. A furry scarf or “dewlap” of skin and hair worn under their throats is really an inflatable pouch of skin that amplifies the roaring sound made during rutting season. Other vocalizations reindeer make are honks and bellows. We have heard Boris honk when he is waiting for a bottle and bellow when it isn’t coming quickly enough! Reindeer calves are born with teeth, and when they are just a few weeks old they begin sampling the solid food their mothers eat. In the wild tundra, reindeer dine on the leaves and branches of willows and graze on grasses and sedges. In the winter they use their well-adapted hooves to dig under the snow and ice to reach their favorite food of lichens, sometimes called “reindeer moss.”

Boris sports antler buds.

When Boris was about one week old, he began sampling the solid food that was set aside for him by his keepers. He favored the leaves from the acacia branches hung for him to sample and began picking up strands of hay to taste as well. Although most of it dribbled out of his mouth and onto the ground at first, he eventually learned to chew and swallow a bit of both. Mimicking the adult reindeer, he got better at it and was soon munching his hay and pellet like a pro. Thanks to a very healthy appetite, Boris was gaining about 5 pounds (2 kilograms) a week! He was quickly out-growing his howdy pen and was ready to graduate to the large exhibit. Kim Weibel is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo. Check back soon for Kim’s next post about Boris.

Wild brown and black bears are facing a bleak time of limited food availability in the coldest months of the year. For this reason, late in fall they engage in hyperphagia, compulsively eating anything they can get their paws on. This builds layers of fat that will be essential to keeping them warm and healthy through the upcoming winter. This fat is not only insulation against the cold, but the key to their ability to hibernate. While in their winter torpor, the bears draw on fat to keep their metabolism running, thus minimizing the wastage of their muscle while they fast. Adult female bears need an especially good store of fat to support the energetically demanding processes of birth and lactation while denned up over the winter months.

Pandas are Northern Hemisphere bears, but they do not experience torpor to the same degree as their North American cousins. Unlike the salmon, berries, and roots depended upon by brown and black bears, bamboo does not typically experience seasonal fluctuations in abundance. Only panda females den up, and the timing of their denning seems to coincide with the shooting of bamboo in some areas, making a more nutritious resource available at a time when a new mother needs it most. But the panda males do not experience torpor; they continue eating year-round.

Polar bear females den up in late fall and give birth in November or December. They emerge in the spring. But males don’t den up extensively; instead, the winter is an active time for the males, as the sea ice returns and they can break their fast by hunting on the ice.

Some zoos manage their animals differently, promoting the cycle of hyperphagia and torpor that exists in the wild. At the San Diego Zoo, our cold-weather bears don’t experience the same seasonal food variation as do their wild counterparts. This is why grizzly bear brothers Scout and Montana won’t spend their winter months waiting out the cooler weather; instead, they will be active year-round. Our polar bears, too, don’t have to worry about ice abundance, because the staff supplies them with year-round sustenance. Only our pandas will demonstrate a pattern of behavior typical of their wild counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere.

Of course, it’s a well-known truism around the panda facility: you can always count on Gao Gao to show interest in his bamboo, no matter what or where we are on the calendar.

Suzanne Hall is a senior research technician for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read her previous post, Panda Family Reunion?