Endor the Fennec Fox Has an Enlarged Heart | The Zoo

[Music] look at him sick [Music] indoor what are you doing sweetheart are you tired endor has been my office mate for about seven years now what are you doing wish crap he had some medical issues he came from another facility and he was used to people and not used to being around other foxes and we kind of hit it off we bonded he liked being in here and i liked having him here hey buddy endor is a wonderful office mate it used to just be endor because endor doesn't get along with other foxes but for some reason rue he just took to her apparently we have 15 fanuc foxes here at the bronx zoo some live at tab some live at the old zebra house and we always have two on exhibit at the children's zoo that's so cool i remember when i was in college i would sneak over cut a class or two and come to see the foxes at the children's zoo they fascinated me they were charmers hello am i gonna be in your way if i make some enrichment no no not you grover [Music] these are the small mealworms it's fun to watch them dig for them and try to get them out of the bag they're found in africa they're desert fox and they're found north of the sahara when the wild fennec foxes hear insects and they dig so what we do is we hide them in a bag they'll hear them they have very good hearing but i help them out a little i make a few holes [Music] okay and look he's stalking because he knows something's coming hey guys oh what do i got are you excited buddy [Music] what you got there buddy it's really good to see him as healthy around nine months ago the staff came in the morning and found endor panting open mouth breathing he looked kind of weak and lethargic this was very acute this was a really quick change in his behavior he didn't look good when i saw him so he brought him over to the health center the cardiologist found an extremely enlarged tort they're all special but he's really special i think he's everyone's favorite and it was just so sudden you just didn't expect it and i'm trying to keep my cool in front of the vets and not cry so that was hard the cardiologist said he had one to maybe three months to live and that was ten months ago so we're gonna have the cardiologist come back and do echocardiograms on all our foxes to see if is this something we should expect an older foxes part of me is worried that the echocardiogram will show no change in his heart i don't think that's the case but it's in the back of my mind he's a fighter my boy [Music] hey buddy hi handsome the cardiologist was scheduled to come in today yesterday we were in my office and he's appetite is good he's jumping around great but he's breathing really rapidly just like last time we brought endor with his friend so he wasn't lonely to the animal health center and he is in an oxygen tank right now just to help him breathe take some of the pressure off him he can't go sweetie you have to be optimistic you have to be optimistic for the animal's sake but it's hard there's such a dichotomy of emotion right now you want it to be good but you're prepared for it not to be good i'll come back for you cardiologists agreed to look at indoor but also our 14 other foxes all right little man i'll see you later [Music] hello hello so this is chick-poo girl it was unfortunate for endor that he had this medical episode this one is charlie charlie but it's good for foxes and the zoo population because now we're gonna do a study to see if there's any abnormalities in their hearts is it age-related is zendor unusual or is this something that progresses with an age we can flip her we want to do what's right for fenix not here just at the bronx zoo but all over north american zoos they're so good aren't they are so good all right he sounds good they all appeared normal and uh we got a good baseline so we can characterize them as a population [Music] do you want me to work the door are you grabbing sure come on bud many many years ago endor was put on a low protein diet sometimes a lack of taurine might affect the heart taurine is an amino acid and it's very important for heart health so we thought adding supplemental taurine would help repair his heart or at least stop further damage the other option is that his heart is not repairing itself and eventually might succumb to heart disease all right you're gonna take a listen first yeah okay you just tell me how you want them back in december endor had signs of heart failure some respiratory distress we looked at the heart and at that time the heart was very enlarged breathing much better i mean he's been doing great up until yesterday yeah but he's feeling better yeah i mean he made it past the you gave him a month remember i was mad at you i was really mad yeah so unfortunately it's still very enlarged [Music] i said this chamber is probably twice as big as it should be that left atrium how does that compare to december pretty much it's the same so before we were hopeful maybe it was a diet nutritional and i think there was a component of it for sure the fact that it's been almost 10 months you know it's it's definitely ahead of the estimated trajectory of like a primary dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs but there is a primary cardiomyopathy component here so yeah me too it's feeling better already yeah and he proved you wrong so i'm happy about that he did thank you basically his heart hasn't improved but i i don't think it was much worse you did good underwear i really thought i thought we would fix them [Music] you see it [Music] hi how are you i'm good how are you good good so we have the results back from all the foxes you know the good news is most of the hearts look good the level of taurine in their blood is good it tells us we don't necessarily need to change the fennec fox diet that this study really helps us get closer to a time where we know exactly what ages of fennec foxes we need to start looking for heart disease and then we can really target individuals as they hit that age and say okay now it's time to start getting an echo for this animal so um i think this is a really good start looking at endor's blood work it's clear that he had low turing when he was diagnosed with heart disease and that the supplementation has brought his touring up pretty high he looks pretty good right yeah he looks good you know tomorrow is tomorrow is the year anniversary and dora was given his you're gonna die sentence oh yeah okay he had a monk to live he looks good right now he's looking good i am so happy and dora was such a major part of this he's the reason we did this study you gonna run around [Music] and he looks really good he looks amazing look at that tail go entor has been great he stayed another night at the health center so they could monitor him they weaned him off oxygen and it showed no ill effects so he came back and he's happy and his respiration rate is great you look so good buddy are you having fun out here when you look at endor running and moving around you would think he was a five-year-old fox there's something about the fennec foxes they're these itty-bitty things but they're so tough and resilient they're wonderful animals we did tweak his medicine we'll watch that but he's staying in my office with his buddy roo he's gonna get outside time he's gonna get his toys and his enrichment he's gonna be the happiest venice box in the world find my love every day is a gift but we're gonna have many days but every day is a gift you

Channel: Animal Planet

Views: 55,242

Keywords: animal planet, animal planet us, animal planet full episodes, gator boys, crikey it's the irwins, my cat from hell, too cute

Id: O8PZ0fFJgUI

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2022