Agent of Chaos

to clarify to anyone who thinks ive said otherwise - I am critical of how moo deng has been handled and how it appears that her image is being used for cryptocurrency/etc, but I am not overall critical of her zoo. I would say that after looking at the hippo habitat, it looks nice! I'm not sure where the information regarding habitats in the zoo being crowded/dirty is coming from, but (while I'm not local and have not been there!) to me they look only 'dirty' in the sense that, well, wild animals live in there and they don't prefer pristine habitats. you SHOULD be critical of the care of ANY widely meme'd/popular animal because 99% of the time there's something wrong if it's not a domestic pet, but that shouldnt escalate into outright racist statements about everyone at the zoo are animal abusers/the animals being kept in conditions they clearly aren't. keep being critical of 'celebrity' animals, but calling for boycotts of the zoo entirely etc are both an overreaction and ignorant of more severe animal welfare concerns

also, for fellow usamericans who for whatever reason believe that zoos in other countries are inherently worse quality/mistreating animals (very untrue - any country is capable of improper animal care, and i've been to more than a few terrible roadside zoos in the US) please read about the mistreatment of a kiwi through a 'petting experience' at the Miami Zoo

Your concerns should stay with the animals' welfare. If you are inherently concerned because Moo Deng is in a Thai zoo, think about that more!

Crocodiles afraid of the shovel

Not afraid of the shovel? Apply the shovel!

Happy Shovel Smack Saturday

THE STORY BEHIND THIS

This emerged as a video on a French Subreddit of an crocodile farm where the man holding the shovel is trying to get all the crocs in the enclosure into the water so that maintenance can be done on the enclosure safely.

Unfortunately this has drawn harsh criticism from people believing this is abusive behavior. Crocodiles are strong, heavily scaled and armored creatures. The severity of the bonk this handler is giving them is basically a smack on the tush to get them safely into the water.

I can't believe people actually thought this funny shit was "abusive"

@kaijutegu what do you think about this?

Tl;dr: no, you're reading this, because there's nothing funny about hitting an animal with a shovel and I can't believe I have to say that.

The snouts of crocodilians are some of the most innervated tissues in the entire animal kingdom. They are more sensitive than human fingertips. They can detect the tiniest pressure changes in the water; an alligator in the pitch-black dark can sense the ripples from a single drop of water in an aquarium, even when their hearing and sense of smell are blocked. Their faces are covered with tiny sensory organs. The epidermis is 40% thinner immediately above these tiny sensory organs, while the keratin layer is 60% thinner and more compact. Here's a map of that nerve tissue:

And this guy knows that because when he hits them with the shovel, the moment of impact is on the side of the face. He is making the decision to hurt these animals.

In the stills, you can see that he's going in from the side and the front of the mouth. He's not smacking them on the tail or flank, he's hitting them in the face. These animals are afraid of him, because this man is coming in with a shovel and hurting them, on purpose. Why is the one in that second still opening its mouth and charging? Because it is afraid of the man with the shovel, who has come here to hit it.

Seriously, this is toddler stuff. Did you not learn in preschool that it hurts when you hit things? Did your parents never say "no, we don't hit the doggy, he doesn't like that?" The crocodilians don't like it either! You see how many of them fled or took defensive positions immediately? That's not a good thing in captive animal management! You want them to NOT be terrified of you because a terrified animal lashes out.

Think for a moment about your fingertips. You need those for typing, for scrolling, for touching, for finding out about the world. Now imagine me smacking the hell out of them with a shovel because I wanted you to move. Not fun, right? You'd call me abusive for doing that right? Perhaps I could have found a less-aversive way to get you to move rather than beating you with a shovel. Perhaps I should have learned your body language better, or asked you to move with auditory cues, targeting, anything else other than beating such a sensitive body part with a shovel. Crocodilians are quite trainable and easy to move in zoological settings. Here's a video from Reid Park Zoo showing exactly how their alligator targets and follows a pole:

And because crocodilians are so intelligent and have such strong sensory input, you can move them without having to be in the same room. When I was job shadowing at a zoo many years back, I moved a fully grown male Cuban crocodile away from the nest he was guarding with nothing more than some splashes in the off-exhibit water. I was fourteen and had never worked with a croc of any kind before, and I was able to do it because the zoo had trained their animals to shift. That's basic predator safety. (I mean it's basic animal safety, but I don't want to get into that. I'm talking about how bad of a zookeeper you have to be to think that the only way to shift crocodilians is to hit them.)

Even baby alligators can learn how to follow a target.

Here's a video of Zoo Australia moving the largest species crocodilian, a huge male saltwater croc. This is a far more dangerous procedure, and surprisingly, it can be done without hitting them! You'll notice they do use physical cues here, like the top jaw rope, which is aversive- but also notice where it sits. Compare it to the nerve map above, and the locations where the animals are being hit.

So yeah, this is abusive, and if you think it's not, go smack your hands with a shovel and see how you feel after. You won't like it! Also, maybe we don't hit things, because we are grown ups and have different tools in our skillset. If my one-year-old niece can gently pet a lizard, this grown-ass zookeeper can learn some basic animal handling skills.

Sources

My other long posts about crocodilian behavior, both of which come with peer-reviewed citations

There's a viral video circulating from the Fort Worth Zoo, of two keepers who ended up in a habitat at the same time as a silverback gorilla. Spoiler for good news: neither the humans nor the gorilla got hurt. It's a bad situation that ended extremely well, and that's why I want to talk about it.

The audio for this video is mostly someone praying loudly, so if you need to turn the audio off to watch it, you won't miss anything relevant. If you don't want to watch it, here's the summary: it starts with a keeper running around the corner into the main exhibit, pursued by a large male gorilla. She is quickly able to get into a doorway at the back of the exhibit, but does not completely close the door because the gorilla is standing across from her, watching. He eventually moves off to the right hand side of the exhibit, where we can see a keeper is trapped in the corner at the front. She was trying to move towards the exit as he moved to the right, and she stops, standing very still behind a tree, while he stays along the far right wall. They stay like that for a minute, and then the gorilla runs to the front right corner, and the keeper is able to run to the door in the back of the exhibit and get to safety.

Let's start with basic information. Even though it's just going viral now, this video is from October of 2023. It was taken not by a guest, but by the zoo security officer responding to the situation. Hmmm, seems like he maybe should have been doing something else during that situation, instead of than taking a phone video. It's going viral now because the guy (who is no longer employed at the zoo) decided to post it on TikTok for his five minutes of fame. This guy immediately started giving all sorts of media interviews, answering questions like "why no tranquilizers" inappropriately, making memes out of his own video, generally distasteful shit.

Zoo spokesperson Avery Elander gave a public statement that "thankfully, there was no physical contact between keepers and gorilla, and all staff and animals are safe." A comment from the zoo has also indicated that the incident was due to keeper error. (As opposed to, for instance, something in the fencing breaking.) According to the guy who posted the video, a lock was left unsecured and the gorilla was able to open the door to the habitat. I don't know if I buy it, and again, this just... is probably why he doesn't have a job anymore. By sharing that detail - real or not - he places a ton of public scrutiny and blame on that keeper team. (If that's what happened, I can promise you it will have been dealt with internally.) He also was nice enough to say he wouldn't name the women in the video... but verified they're still staffers at the zoo... which means they're eminently identifiable! Excuse me while I ragequit for a second.

So there's two reasons I wanted to talk about this. The first is to make sure it is well known that this guy is purposefully and intentionally exploiting the worst day of someone's life for media attention. Their lives were in danger, and he's using it for fame. His name is in the media articles - I'm not going to share it because he doesn't deserve that attention. The second reason, though, is because this video is a masterclass on how to survive if you end up sharing space with a gorilla. Every zoo person I've spoken to or seen comment on the video is so, so impressed with how the keepers handled themselves.

The gorilla in this video is 34-year-old Elmo. All apes in AZA zoos are managed in protected contact, so keepers are supposed to be separated from them by a barrier at all times. The zookeepers were in the habitat putting out a mid-day meal when he got out. Watching the video, you can see he's not actively being aggressive towards them - he's not making threat displays or trying to approach them. Mostly, Elmo seems like he doesn't know what is going on and he's kinda freaked out about it. (This is confirmed in the zoo's press statement, too). The staff stayed calm, and importantly, watched and waited to see how he'd move and act.

The zoo did say one thing, though, that's a bit misleading. In one article, their press person I quote as saying “In general, gorillas are considered the “gentle giants” of the great ape species.” Just because this may be true in comparison to other great ape species doesn't meant gorilla aren't still incredibly dangerous. This type of messaging always worries me, because I think it leads people to misunderstand the risks of being close to megafauna. Gorilla are extremely strong animals, and their social norms/behaviors are very different from that of humans. That's why it's such a big deal any time people end up in gorilla habitats, and why sometimes in those circumstances lethal measures have to be taken to protect human life.

These keepers are incredibly lucky to be unharmed. These women stayed safe specifically because they're trained professionals who knew how to act around gorilla, they knew this particular animal well, and they'd learned the escapes from the exhibit just in case this ever happened. We should applaud them for their cool heads and quick thinking.

As for the guy who posted the video? As a colleague put it, may he always step on a Lego.

The keepers did everything right- they must have a really good sense of the big guy's body language, because it looks like they were taking really good care not to excite him any more than he already is. This could have been an extremely bad situation, and the fact that the security guy just stood there and filmed it and then put it on TikTok...

well, I think he deserves harsher than stepping on a Lego. Blacklisted from the industry seems appropriate because even if he wasn't going to use tranqs, the fact that he pulled out his phone and started filming means that he was willing to be distracted in an extremely risky situation. By filming instead of giving his undivided attention and being ready to react, he made a dangerous situation worse!

What the security guy should have been doing: keeping the public calm, getting them out of there. Commotion from people at viewing windows absolutely could have upset Elmo and exacerbated the danger of the situation. (This is actually what happened with Harambe - witnesses noted that the screams of the people watching spooked him.) He also should have been keeping an eye on the situation and reporting back to management as needed - for instance, on if the situation devolved and they might have needed to call up the dart/gun team.

The responding security officer would not have been the person using tranquilizers. Zoos have specifically trained DART teams (dangerous animal response teams) that respond to situations like this. There's a lot of complicated factors to using tranquilizers: they don't knock an animal down immediately, and they can be come more dangerous when aggravated by being hit with a dart before it takes effect; tranquilizers have to be dosed for the animal's body weight and must be prepared by vet staff; tranquilizers and dart guns and also actual guns are always stored safely and require some time to access (e.g. in safes). The first person on the scene, even if they were part of the dart team, needs to stay and monitor what's happening.

There's always safety protocols for all of this stuff. Zoos put a ton of time into contingency planning and doing drills for possible adverse events. This dude did not follow any of it.

It makes me sad to see how common the hate for zoos is in leftist circles. To me, zoos are so symbolic of the determination and optimism in leftist thought that I often use these facilities as an example to keep me going. So when I hear fellow leftists wanting to abolish zoos it makes breaks my spirit a bit. Especially considering how necessary zoos are in the fight against the current environmental crisis.

I am the first to admit that no zoo is perfect. I have worked at a world class, accredited, non-profit zoo and it was FAR from perfect. The institution treated me and the other workers like shit. Burnout, lean staffing, and poor adherence to safety protocols resulted in poorer animal welfare outcomes for the animals. And this is a world class facility. There are many facilities out there that shouldn't exist at all that are hardly better than the menageries of feudal kings.

BUT

Zoos are vital if we want our ecosystems to survive the current mass extinction event.

No other type of institution on earth has saved as many species as zoos. From tiny snails to 1-ton bison, entire species have been returned to the wild thanks to their preservation in zoos.

There are approximately 40 animal species listed as Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN, most of which ONLY exist in zoos and aquariums. Many of these animals are only able to be taken care of because of the decades of animal husbandry science and institutional knowledge built up by our zoos and aquaria by working with other species.

There are many extinctions I cry for, but the ones that hurt the most are the ones happening in front of our eyes. The Javan rhino is all but gone. It's estimated that there would need to be about 100 rhinos for the species to survive genetically intact. There are now less than that, and none in human care. All it would take is a single tsunami or volcanic eruption and the entire population could be wiped out.

But if there were some in human care, if we had acted sooner and established a breeding population based on the centuries of knowledge we have of caring for their closest relative, the Indian rhino, we could have saved them.

So, when I see leftists talking about how all zoos are inherently destructive, I ask you to think ahead. To when polar bears, chimpanzees, or elephants go extinct in their natural homes, don't you want a place where we can save them? Where experienced animal care professionals can foster a population in human care so that one day these creatures can return to their homes? A global system of world class facilities dedicated to the survival of wildlife? So even more creatures don't end up like the Javan rhino; a species we could've saved if we'd had the will and the space to do so? If there had more zoos instead of less?

I'm not asking you to love zoos, I'm just asking that you recognize the practical necessity of their existence in the modern age. We won't survive the coming crises without other species. And they won't survive without us.

Also, besides functioning as a last, worst case scenario sanctuary for species going extinct, zoos also provide crucial funding for on-ground conservation projects, as well as nature education, which, you guessed it, is also important for effective conservation and a sustainable future!

Zoos prevent extinction. This is why I support zoos. This is why the world should support zoos.

Meme credit goes to the zookeepers at www.facebook.com/ZoosSavingSpecies @zoossavingspecies

THIS.

After volunteering at my local zoo for 3 years, I still had friends and family members preaching to me how zoos are animal jail. No. They’re not. A lot of animals would be extinct without them. Yea, there are bad zoos, but you hear about those more because news focuses on bad things.

This is what I do guys! This is the sort of work I’m involved in. Make sure you support good zoos and not the backyard kinds with squalid conditions though!

There should be way more pictures of modern zoos so i just add some more

Seriously zoos do so much important conservation work as well I hate when people shit all over zoos as if the animals are locked up and not looked after

The SF Zoo has two sea lions. Now, if you know SF, you know that sea lions are a Thing. They’re all over Pier 39 and various other beaches in N California. In fact, the zoo is near the ocean, so there are sea lions not 200 yards from the zoo entrance. So having sea lions in the zoo seems sort of superfluous.

Except the sea lions are blind. One was found as an adult after suffering a gun shot wound to the face that destroyed his eyes. The other was found as an adolescent, weak and starving because it had been blinded and unable to hunt. So they were rescued and introduced and the zoo built them a nice pool where they can swim and sunbathe and people toss them fish. It’s not the biggest exhibit, or the fanciest. But it’s a home for them, where they’re safe and well fed. Sea lions aren’t the most romantic of animals, but they’re a part of SF culture and a lot of us have a soft spot for the loud, bulbous things. And because of zoos, these two get to live long, happy lives.

Whenever anyone complains about zoos, I think about Silent Knight and Henry. 

I think it’s St. Louis zoo that is saving big cats in Africa. Scientists couldn’t figure out what was killing off the local lion population. They were dying off from Canine Distemper. The local unvaccinated dogs of the towns would spread the disease to other animals or have it themselves. When the lions ate the infected animals they would catch it as well. You know what that Zoo is doing to stop this disease? They are going over to those towns and vaccinating the dogs for free. The community loves it and people from other villages comes for miles to get their dogs vaccinated as well.

They also do work with camel populations because the local human population use the camels for food sources the zoos help monitor the camels health.

Another zoo, I want to say it’s the Oregon zoo but don’t quote me on that, is helping female inmates. The zoo works with the female prisons by encouraging the inmates to assist in the breeding and raising of endangered species of butterflies. They plant the specific plants that the butterflies and catapillars need, raise them, and release them. These inmates get noted in any scientific journals that get published. They are giving these inmates a sense of accomplishment and validation.

Zoos not only save species but bring together and assist communities in an effort to save the environment. Zoos, good zoos, are essential to the future and I will fight anyone who tries to say otherwise.

PS you don’t see PETA doing any of this.

All of this, say it louder