Month: September 2018

Greenprint: Ghosts, Goblins and Going ‘Green’ this Halloween

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Halloween is right around the corner, and we’ve found a way to make it both spooky and sustainable. Take a look at what we’re doing to “green” our Halloween and see what you can do at home.

The Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) is preparing for Zoo Boo, our annual Halloween hoopla at the Detroit Zoo during three weekends in October. The events will feature acrobats, story tellers, magic acts, jugglers, live music, extreme pumpkin carving demonstrations and of course, Halloween displays along the “unlucky” 13-station trick-or-treat trail. As part of our Green Journey, trick-or-treat bags will not be provided at the events; guests are asked to bring their own reusable bags. In addition, many of the displays will be made with reusable and repurposed materials such as plastic milk jugs and old tires. We also will have a surplus of pumpkins from Zoo Boo that will be provided to the animals during our annual Smashing Pumpkins event – this year planned for October 10 and 20. Any leftover straw will be donated to local animal shelters to help keep the animals warm in the winter.

You can have a sustainable Halloween at home, too! Here’s how:

  • Support Local Farmers. When it comes to picking that perfect pumpkin to carve, go local. Choosing to buy from nearby farmers not only generates income for the local economy, but it also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide polluting the air. When you purchase from a grocery store, your produce has been shipped from hundreds —sometimes thousands — of miles away, creating more greenhouse gases than your trip to the farmers market. Detroit’s Eastern Market is a great place to start looking for homegrown produce; many communities host farmers markets as well.
  • DIY Your Costume. Packaged Halloween costumes from the store are expensive and are often only worn once. Grab a friend and spend a day going through each others’ closets to see if there’s anything that can make a good DIY costume. Or visit a thrift store to find affordable costume items that can be used again and again.
  • Preserve Your Pumpkin. Before you scoop out the inside of your jack-o-lantern and throw it away, think of all the different things that could be done with it. Pumpkin spice recipes are all the rage right now, and there are so many ways you can try it yourself at home. You could roast the pumpkin seeds for a salty snack, or bake some delicious pumpkin muffins or a pumpkin pie.

    During our Smashing Pumpkins events, we use the leftover pumpkins from Zoo Boo to provide animals with a festive snack and make sure their habitats are engaging. In addition to pumpkins, the animals receive gourds, cornstalks and other seasonal treats from local Michigan producers. While we are appreciative of those who inquire about donating their own leftover pumpkins, we aren’t able to accept them. Instead, we recommend composting leftover pumpkins. We compost any leftover pumpkins using our anaerobic digester, which converts animal manure and other organic waste into methane-rich gas to help power the Zoo’s animal hospital. Learn more about how to compost at home here. Guests can come and watch the chimpanzees, polar bears, giraffes and many other animals eat, play with, roll around in and smash their pumpkins during Smashing Pumpkins.

Doing your part toward making the Earth a better place doesn’t have to be scary. Every effort counts when making sure that all of us – humans and animals – have a place to call home for years to come.

Detroit Zoological Society Helps Students Explore Alternative Dissection

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Millions of frogs are dissected every year in science classrooms across the country and unfortunately, many of these animals are taken from the wild. With more than half of all amphibian species at risk of extinction, it is critical to leave amphibians in their native habitats.

This summer, the Detroit Zoological Society’s Berman Academy for Humane Education purchased state-of-the-art virtual-reality frog dissection software. Combined with 3-D models, students can participate in an engaging, hands-on humane dissection alternative. In its current form, this alternative dissection approach is instilling a better appreciation for amphibians in classrooms, camps and other education programs.

During the DZS’s Summer Safari Camp at the Detroit Zoo this summer, students entering eighth grade focused on veterinary medicine as a potential career. Through this lens, campers used iPads to explore, rotate and connect how a frog’s physiology works beneath the surface. The augmented reality part of the app allows students to zoom in and manipulate the view of the virtual frog on their tables. Hands-on models of the same species of frog allows them to physically take apart and reassemble parts of the frogs’ anatomy. This experience, combined with a guided tour of the National Amphibian Conservation Center, gave campers the opportunity to see frogs in a different light.

Middle school teachers can schedule their class to visit the Zoo to participate in a Learning Lab focused on virtual dissection. In this program, students use the virtual reality software on a classroom set of iPads to learn about frogs and dissect them, without the cost and environmental impact of taking amphibians from the wild. The software also allows students to go through the process multiple times, to better understand frog anatomy while ensuring wild populations of these critically important species are not compromised.

For more information or to schedule a classroom for the Virtual Dissection Learning Lab, visit https://detroitzoo.org/education/school-groups/ or email us at education@dzs.org.

– Carla Van Kampen is a curator of education for the Detroit Zoological Society.

Animal Welfare: Seal of Approval

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The Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) is investigating the effect of foraging opportunities on the welfare of the seals who live at the Detroit Zoo. Foraging is a very important behavior category for animals, as it typically involves mentally and physically stimulating behaviors. Wild gray seals may spend up to two-thirds of their time searching for food. Although they do have well-developed hearing and sight, seals often rely on their extremely sensitive whiskers to locate the fish they eat. This is necessary as visual conditions underwater can be poor and swimming fish may not generate much noise as they move. Instead, the fish – and other prey items – create vibration trails in the water and these are the stimuli the seals’ whiskers detect. Research has shown that harbor seals can use their whiskers to distinguish between objects of different sizes and shapes – a skill they can use to select better prey items when hunting.

Seals living in zoos and aquariums don’t need to forage in quite the same way as they would in the wild, and thus may not engage in as many complex feeding behaviors. As part of her residency with the Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics, Sara Zalewski worked with DZS staff to design a project examining the impact of three different ways to increase foraging behavior in the gray and harbor seals living at the Detroit Zoo. The seals were presented with fish frozen in ice, fish placed on top of a floating disk and sunken tubes the seals needed to manipulate to allow fish to fall out of holes in the tube. All three items were used to increase the amount of the work the seals would have to do to get to the food. As part of this research, Sara found that the seals differed by both species and individual in how they used the items.

The gray seals interacted with the items most when they were first presented with them, and the harbor seals’ level of interaction increased as time went on. The likely explanation for this is that the gray seals were younger and more dominant, and thus were able to use the items more easily. Once they had their fill of the food, they would lose interest and the harbor seals could begin to investigate the items. Dealing with dominance hierarchies can create challenges when providing animals with resources, and is therefore something we have to keep in mind when thinking about the welfare of all of the individuals.

Another challenge was getting the seals to use the items for longer periods of time. It makes sense that less interaction occurs without the motivation of obtaining food, so there is a need for more challenging devices that require the seals to use more of their foraging abilities. One unexpected outcome was that Georgie, one of the female gray seals, would sometimes use a floating disk as a resting place later in the day. However, it could not support her body weight, so she would lay on it on top of something else, such as a ledge in the pool. Other studies have shown that gray seals’ preferred prey, haul out sites, and feeding locations and techniques differ greatly between individuals. Finding ways that items can serve more than one purpose and allow each seal to make use of them as they choose are also goals.

Harbor seals are an especially playful species, including as adults. However, as animals age, play and exploratory behavior tend to decrease, regardless of the species. Additionally, decreases in their sensory abilities may occur. This means that for Sydney, the older male harbor seal, opportunities may be more challenging or potentially less engaging for him.

In order to create more engaging ways for all the seals to forage, Sara worked with DZS staff to refine the items and will observe Georgie and Jersey, the two gray seals, and Sydney, the harbor seal, to see how the modifications affect their behavior. DZS staff members are creating floating devices that the seals can use to rest – as well as interact with for access to fish – and are changing the design of the tubes so that they rest standing up, rather than lying flat on the bottom of the pool. This should make it a bit harder for the fish to fall out, and will be more stimulating for the seals as a result. Finally, Sydney will have some alone time with the items, to ensure the younger and more agile females don’t deplete the food before he has a chance to interact with the foraging devices. During your next visit, you may see these items in the seal pool at Arctic Ring of Life. Although we are only observing the seals at specific times, incorporating these types of behavioral opportunities is part of our daily comprehensive program of ensuring the environments for all the animals at the Detroit Zoo are ever changing and appropriately complex.

– Dr. Stephanie Allard is the director of animal welfare for the Detroit Zoological Society and oversees the Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics.

Notes from the field: Mitigation of Human-Bear Conflicts in Armenia

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The Detroit Zoological Society is conducting ongoing fieldwork in Armenia to assess the population of brown bears and mitigate conflicts that are occurring between humans and bears. Wildlife conservation is an important aspect of the DZS’s mission, and we are renowned for taking a compassionate approach in everything we do. A critical component of this is reducing human-wildlife conflicts around the world. As the human population and land development increases, people are coming into conflict with wildlife more and more from various factors such as predators eating livestock, wildlife raiding crops, and direct threats to human lives.

Armenia is a small country in the south Caucasus Mountains of west Asia between the Black and Caspian seas. Despite its size, Armenia is a hotspot for biodiversity and important for wildlife conservation because of its location at an intersection where wildlife converge from Eurasia, Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

Little is known about brown bears in Armenia; a recent survey of global human-bear conflicts did not include this data, which we think is important. As we are currently involved in wildlife conservation efforts for Eurasian otters in this country, the DZS initiated a project that would assess the distribution and impact of human-bear conflicts in Armenia by conducting interviews and placing trail cameras in and around villages.

Interviewees indicated that the conflict primarily arose due to bears entering orchards, eating fruit and destroying beehives. At times, bears also killed livestock and posed a threat to humans, and by all accounts, the conflict has increased over the last several years. Data from the trail cameras supported these reports. Many pictures showed bears in villages, including mother bears with twins or triplets, which can pose greater threats to humans, due to a mother bear’s instinct to protect her cubs.

There were also many pictures that showed potential competitors for food such as lynx and wolves, as well as prey of bears including wild boar and bezoar goats. Reports from a bezoar goat viewpoint in the area that was established by the World Wildlife Fund confirmed that bears were preying on young bezoar goats.

We are now working on a manuscript that will detail the level and impact of human-bear conflicts in Armenia and encourage research into conflict mitigation, which could potentially include electric fencing, remote-triggered lights and noisemakers and compensation to farmers for their losses. In addition, we recommend exploring bear-based eco-tourism programs, which could potentially add value from the bears’ presence to the villagers.

– Paul Buzzard, PhD., is the field conservation officer for the Detroit Zoological Society.