Wild Thing: The Smithsonian National Zoo

America is a land of great museums and every museum has spellbinding stories to tell the eyes of any big cat Pierce right through me the National Zoo is our nation's Zoo and as part of Smithsonian we have programs all over the globe we all are working together to try to protect our planets biodiversity so by saving one species we save the whole ecosystem wild thing the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC major funding for great museums is provided by the Eureka foundation dedicated to the educational power of television and new media exercise your curiosity explore America's great museums strolling the grounds at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC is not your ordinary walk in the park the National Zoo is a park full of wild animals we are in a unique position to study their biology the reproductive biology their habits the physics of animal movement and we use those animals as ambassadors for their species so that people appreciate the animals and are inspired to conserve their habitats in nature so well and she is a branch of biology dealing in the study the science of animals so that's a big part of who we are it's also a park it's a place where people come to enjoy themselves and it's a reminder that we don't really be hurt we share it the idea of knowing that as a human being that I'm vulnerable because there are animals out in the wild that are bigger and stronger and faster than me and then I could become the prey and they would be the predator I mean I think that's something that we all are intrigued by many animals on display in zoo exhibits are critically endangered in the wild some are even extinct in nature and only exist in captivity we are really talking about trying to engage our visitors our gas into the plight of what's going on out there in the wild extinctions of species is one problem extinction of habitats is an even bigger problem our scientists work on the ground in very far-flung places from the hottest desert in Africa to the wettest forests of Brazil I love going to Kenya and being able to work with the kori bustard to work with pandas in China I mean how much better can it get it's fantastic I get to work with captive animals I get to work with wild animals and I get to talk to people about some of the stuff we're getting to do in Brazil I like for people to leave the zoo thinking that the National Zoo rocks you know we're great we're going to Namibia we're going to China where we're doing the research in range countries as well that makes me feel really good here in a quiet oasis in the heart of the nation's capital the wild things room the o-line is a nickname for orangutans transit system and we call it the o-line because here in Washington we have a subway system and there's a red line and the Green Line and the yellow line and so we nicknamed our orangutan system the O line crossing directly over the public courtyard the O line is only 40 feet above the ground at its lowest point it's a great way to see orangutans to see them moving up high the way their bodies are designed and even though I've seen it I don't know countless times I still get a thrill it's particularly fantastic when you see our male orangutan the visitors just gasp because it's so spectacular to see him move orangutans once ruled the treetops throughout the tropical forests of Asia now they live only in Sumatra in Borneo and in captivity when we look at an animal in a zoo I think we should feel uncomfortable it's important for us to understand that zoos exists because of what is happening in their natural environment people have a perception that the wild is not disappearing in huge chunks on a daily basis these animals have no place to go in the wild unless we humanity preserves their habitat in nature it take for instance these little monkeys golden lion tamarins they live exclusively in Brazil in an area called the Atlantic coastal rainforest golden lion tamarins are one of the most endangered primates in the world the number one problem is habitat loss and this is true for animals all over the world and the area where the tamarins are from it's right outside of Rio de Janeiro about an hour and a half's drive or so and less than two percent of their habitat remains researcher Jennifer Michael Burke manages the golden lion tamarins national zoo and in Brazil we do treat the golden lion tamarins like they are wild animals because they really are they're not domesticated they're not our pets and any sort of Tamron that has a very close bond with a human does not make a good reintroduction candidate they just simply cannot do the things they need to do to be to be a good wild monkey at the National Zoo golden lion tamarins are born and bred for the purpose of being reintroduced into the wilds of Brazil you guys see there in that apple there and this is what I put inside that Apple you see what those are kneeling mealworms they love to eat those those are like popcorn for the monkeys around 30 years ago there were perhaps less than 200 golden lion tamarins in the wild and everyone knows this is just simply not a large enough population to maintain a long-term viability and now we're actually looking at around 1500 Goldline chairman's as well due to our conservation efforts working with the locals and also a reintroduction program that national zoo had a big role in orange that's an orange it's a little bit of corn what are those grapes monkeys love grapes and what's this banana and all monkeys love bananas it's actually true and what's very exciting is that in 2004 gold lion tamarins were down listed from critically endangered to endangered so that's a big celebration for us before being sent in to the Brazilian rainforest the golden lion tamarins must first learn to be wild monkeys in the zoo each spring the golden lion tamarins are set free in the woods at the National Zoo in a free ranging exhibit area called Beaver Valley hi so this is the area of the golden lion tamarin and they're free to go wherever they like and instead of taking the road what they typically do is take this tree way up high here and cross over and then spend their whole afternoon in this this area over here not free-ranging foraging looking for food sometimes encountering a deer or two that they like to chase out of their exhibit but they really are free to go wherever they want and if they wanted to they could go to the White House and this is the president they can run down the fence line or they can join zoo visitors on the sidewalk here they learn basic survival skills like how to get away from predators or how to forage for food and then we've got this completely successful reintroduction program into the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil where these animals are put down in their nest boxes from the National Zoo they're put into the Brazilian rainforest and they're released out there so what does this look like to you it's a picnic cooler right it's a golden lion tamarin nest box and we've modified it so the monkeys can sleep inside so they can crawl on this hole and then if I open it up see where we have two levels so it's like they're two level condo so many times when we talk about conservation it leaves people feeling sad and helpless but this is a good example of how with just people working together you can really change the future for a species and the future of the planet well some people say well go line terms are small maybe they don't have a huge role in the ecosystem I'd say they probably do be inspired by these animals they are ambassadors for their species the species is an ambassador for its wild habitat the wild habitat is disappearing we have security populations in zoos but they're just representative of the animals that are losing their place in nature because of so many humans take that away as the message of the zoo when people come to the zoo it's not just the one animal that they're seeing or the two animals that they're seeing those animals are representative of a story that we're trying to tell the representative of their species and they're also representative of a lot of the scientific work we're doing to help save these animals both in captivity and in the wild there is no better ambassador for the cause of conservation than the charismatic giant panda well giant pandas are are really the they're the rock stars of the animal world black and white just does something for every human on the planet and these pandas are the ambassador's not only for panda bears in the wild as a species but for bamboo habitat for all that is China Lisa Stevens is curator of giant pandas at the National Zoo the Q factor is a great factor to have when you're dealing with endangered species because cuteness is a great hook to get people interested and to get them to care that's our famous tyshaun doing what he does best which is sleep the panda cub Tai Shan was born at the National Zoo in 2005 using artificial insemination Oh aren't you lucky he might eat some bamboo for us Tai Shan was the first surviving panda cub born at the National Zoo after 30 years of captive breeding trials tribulations and disappointment pandas are a tricky tricky law evolutionarily they don't do themselves any favor they ovulate once a year they generally have one cub every other year under the best of conditions their specialized feeders they need a certain type of bamboo where they starve in the wild this are they're a real challenge the bamboo the giant pandas need to survive only grows naturally in certain temperate forests in China through fossil evidence we know that pandas ranged all the way down into Southeast Asia and all throughout China but with the disappearance of their temperate forests their numbers are now down to just a mere 1,600 we have done a ton of work on pandas we've done the biological science of pandas we've done the nutrition of pandas we've done the reproductive biology of pandas and we have trained over a hundred and fifty Chinese scientists to preserve and conserve pandas in the wild of course reproduction is the essence of survival the goal of any breeding program in a zoo is is really an insurance policy against extinction and so a lot of the techniques that are used in human reproduction and in fertility now procedures like artificial insemination in vitro fertilization we're applying to the endangered species unlike human females who ovulate monthly a panda female has just one chance a year to get pregnant the female only comes in estrus once a year and so she has a very small window of fertility it may be 24 or 48 hours and so not only did we have to develop the technology to do the artificial insemination we had to really get the the window of fertility down to further complicate matters most giant panda males in the captive population just aren't interested in sex only about 15 males in the world will breathe naturally in captivity they may be the best genetic match but they may not necessarily want to breed on their own and so if the natural breeder male does not breathe they were ready for artificial insemination with the semen from another male the National Zoo's famous female panda Mei Xiang came into estrus in 2005 emission is a excellent animal to work with she's one of the high-profile animals not for the zoo only but for the whole DC area dr. Carlos Sanchez led the anesthesia team for the artificial incent nation of Mei Xiang we zoo vets and wildlife events are our jobs based on anesthesia we're trying to do conservation we cannot afford to lose an animal under anesthesia you know it's the other part that not a lot of people see because they just see the end result the cute baby panda but a lot of people get involved for that kind of procedure dr. jogayle howard performed the artificial insemination we used a laparoscope which is an instrument that's used in human medicine a lot to visualize the reproductive tract of the female go through the cervix so that the sperm could be deposited in the uterus the video on the monitor is actually giant panda sperm part was used for the insemination the rest was frozen or cryo preserved it goes into the genome Resource Bank here at the National Zoo which is a repository of sperm embryos even eggs now so this semen could be shipped internationally it could be shipped nationally say to other facilities that have that that have giant pandas like Zoo Atlanta or Memphis Zoo so it's just another tool we have for the genetic management program of endangered species I have to say that the birth of Taishan is one of the greatest moments in my career it was the ultimate reward it you know it was the ultimate reward for all the hard work that so many people put towards saving this species Tyshawn and his parents live along the Asia trail at the National Zoo where the giant panda exhibit is designed to mimic wild panda habitat in China it's very rocky it's hilly the tree species that you see here are comparable to the species that would occur in panda habitat and this is Kai Shawn's favorite tree he likes to climb up and perch right in the middle of this tree Asia trail is a complete immersion we have tried to make people feel like they're really in Asia everything from the landscaping to the exhibits themselves so the colors reflect what Asia is most importantly the six acre Asia trail is designed to make the endangered species who live there feel at home like these intriguing little red pandas with their ringed raccoon style tails red pandas are very similar to giant pandas in that they're developed to eat bamboo but they eat the leaves off the bamboo instead of the stems well historically zoos have been menageries of animals but now there's a lot of science behind living museums if someone was of the mind frame that zoos were circuses are just for entertainment I would initially tell him that's what zoos used to be and that was in the 1800s when zoos first started coming up but the original idea behind the Smithsonian National Zoo was different concerned about the rapid disappearance of American wildlife like the Bison and the beaver zoo founder William Hornaday envisioned a facility that would breed endangered animals in captivity and educate the public about conservation in 1889 Hornaday opened a small trial zoo on the mall outside the Smithsonian castle three years later the Smithsonian National Zoological Park designed by America's premier Landscape Architect Frederick Law Olmsted opened in DC's Rock Creek Valley and you can see remnants of zoos of old especially in a zoo the age of this Zoo that's one of the things I love about working at this Zoo is you can see the history you know of this place some of the zoo's early features are still in place the walkways the landscaping the magnificent reptile house with its intricate brickwork relief carvings columns and other ornamentation the reptile house looks quite reptilian in zoos of past you know these exhibits for concrete and steel people would come by look in the cage see the animal and go to the next exhibit now we're asking you to open your eyes and look we're part of the Smithsonian Institution and so having the backup of the largest museum complex in the world really adds value to what we can do as a zoo no other zoo in the world has that it is our nation Zoo we're free so as such we're available to everybody but we're also available to people around the globe both through our international programs as well as the website the National Zoo can also be watched from somebody's home computer we have the Panda camps there are over 40 cameras in the panda habitat alone there are dozens of cameras elsewhere in the zoo and the cheetah habitat in the elephant habitat and some of the bird habitats and you can go to your computer at home and you can find out lots of stuff about the National Zoo and you can watch pandas 24 hours a day seven days a week personally I think it's very fulfilling to be able to be a veterinarian to have trained all my life for this spot and then have the opportunity to really help animals in the wild dr. Suzanne Murray is chief veterinarian for the Smithsonian National Zoo when we work in the institution that has 2800 different animals and hundreds of different species we really need to be able to jump from species to species at the drop of a hat whether it's a veiled chameleon a kori bustard even for today we'll be had panda ultrasound scheduled in the morning we have great a training and then a golden lion tamarin was ill and then we had to check an elephant who had scene reaction and whether we're working on coral that has a new kind of parasite and we're trying to find the life cycle and how to best treat that or the best way to ultrasound a giant anteater who's pregnant well how long should she be pregnant or how big should the babies be the more we learn the more there is to know on today's schedule is this handsome Micronesian Kingfisher we're about to go through this room into the radiology room we have a Micronesian Kingfisher that's receiving a pre ship examination basically this bird is getting a physical this is the bird that's gonna be going out to another institution to breed will be getting x-rays and a blood sample to make sure it's healthy it's endangered species of bird there's only about 60 to 70 of them in the wild so his genetics aren't very valuable so we have to make sure he's healthy enough one to withstand the shipment and to make sure that we're not sending any diseases to another institution so this bird is currently receiving an inhalant anesthesia anesthesia works by depressing the cardiovascular system and if you have the endangered species if there's only 60 or 70 of them left in the wild you don't want to risk losing an animal so everybody's works quickly as possible there's particularly reviews you need to get on x-rays so that's what they're doing now they line them up just so we can visualize all organs once again to make sure they're nice and healthy we're about to leave okay everybody hop out real quick we have a digital system what you can see here it's a bird's head legs it's the heart the liver the lungs and can you go to the other view is up yet then she can darken it up so we can actually see the kidneys which are right up here once again that's the heart that's the the air sacs the air sacs look very good so far so good the Kingfisher is removed from anesthesia um body up this way a little bit Benny is revived with oxygen the whole procedure takes less than 20 minutes we have one of our senior keepers here she knows a lot about how the animal should be kept how it should be held safely is easy getting ready to wake up now oh good just don't let him go yeah it is and then so you can see the bird waking up it sees and then once again the way that our keeper Aaron is holding she's got a good grasp on his his wings and his head so he's not gonna hurt himself and he's not gonna escape either the bird collection represents the most diverse group of animals at the zoo from the five foot tall flightless cassowary to the common ground pigeon and the bald eagle now down listed from endangered to threatened year round a large indoor jungle houses free flying tropical birds but in warmer weather many of the zoo's birds fly freely in a magnificent outdoor flight cage other birds like the familiar and flamboyant flamingos live mostly in outdoor exhibit yards as does the endangered African kori bustard the kori bustard is the largest flighted birds are huge they take off like a b-52 takes off and when they land they almost crash land and our head veterinarian Suzanne Murray is working with kori bustards in Africa and to be able to actually catch up these birds learn about their health and then release them is fascinating so we learn as much as we can of animals in the wild and then translate that directly into how we can best take care of them here um at the zoo people especially kids they tend to think that most of the great discoveries have already been made and nothing could be farther from the truth our knowledge about you know wild animals about endangered species of his rudimentary at best and there's four thousand four hundred some-odd species of mammals and of that there's probably only detailed knowledge about 200 250 of those species and even animals that were as common as as cheetahs they've been maintained in captivity for the last thousand years or more we didn't know about the reproductive cycle in any detail until about ten years ago people have come to me and said wow this guy knows everything about cheetahs no wait no wait and that's what's great about science to me is that you never run out of questions you know you never run out of questions biologist Craig Sappho who works with cheetahs at the National Zoo as a small-town boy in North Carolina Craig was fascinated with evolution survival of the fittest the idea of hunt or be hunted as I started to learn more about cats and big cats particularly I started to fall in love with cheetahs because of the big cats cheetahs are the most specialized at hunting and performing that one function of hunting things the world's fastest land mammal the cheetah is built for speed with a deep chest small waist and long legs cats are cats they sleep a lot because they're conserving energy for the hunt you'll see that in your in your house cat we see that with the Cheetahs in the confines of captivity zookeepers conduct cheetah training to exercise the cats it's also an opportunity for keepers to talk with visitors a lot of people get really confused when they see us in the yards with the cats it has nothing to do with being people or not being people it has to do with your size and whether or not you're considered a prey item by the cat clearly we're not prey sized for it for a house cat where we are for something like a lion and in some cases we are for something like a cheetah these animals would be animals that it could hunt and kill easily so you'd see a much different reaction from if we had little kids out in the yard while Craig talks with zoo visitors the second keeper manages the cat for safety cheetahs are symbolic of the wilds of Africa the magnificence of animals that can run that fast and hunt that way but they're in trouble I mean they are a top predator in an ecosystem they need to have prey to eat their numbers have been declining for decades they need huge expanses of land they are in big trouble cheetahs have about roughly 12 to 15 thousand animals left in the wild put it in perspective that's from about 50,000 animals in the 1950s so you know just over 50 years later we've taken out more than 50% of those animals today the greatest concentration of cheetahs in the wild is in the country of Namibia in southern Africa but the great spotted cat once ranged throughout Africa the Middle East and even into India that area used to be full full of cheetahs and now it's just pockets here and there and what that does to a species is it eliminates the breeding potential of that species and so that's where cheetahs are really in trouble to insure against total extinction of cheetahs zoos maintain a self-sustained reserve or security population in captivity early breeding efforts for cheetahs failed miserably largely because we didn't understand the science behind breeding cheetahs we just thought you know their cats they'll breed like any cat you know you put a male and a female together they're gonna do what they do naturally nature will take its course it's not oh it works well of course in captivity what's what's interesting is in many cases zoos will actually keep animals in groups and actually having animals in groups suppresses reproductive behavior subdues suppresses ovarian activity I mean there's two parts dr. David wilt head of reproductive physiology at the Smithsonian National Zoo is known internationally as a founding father of cheetah science cheetahs are normally a solitary in nature and and we know that there are territories the animals have territories when those territories cross they have the opportunity to reproduce so we've changed our exhibits to allow for us to manage cats like that we have multiple exhibits we have space to shift cheetahs around anywhere we want to shift them within our compound and get females totally away from males females away from each other which is another important component to it and we're far better at mimicking their natural social structure in their natural lifestyle and so in many cases some of these basic studies have just allowed us to improve the husbandry of the animal which in turn has allowed it to reproduce craig Sappho manages the natural breeding program for cheetahs each cheetahs an individual just like every person is an individual if you look at Ozzie she's just over a hundred pounds you know she's not too much bigger than a big dog Ozzie came to the National Zoo in 2004 from a facility in Texas Suzy was at that time a very valuable cheetah value to us is measured in terms of how well represented is her genetic line amongst cheetahs in North America and she wasn't very well represented within a year za z bred and produced five surviving comes the second litter ever at the National Zoo her sister back in Texas also had a litter so the more family members you add to that genetic line the less valuable she becomes Josie is no longer valuable to us for genetics except if you add the caveat of science artificial insemination think about that because the sperm that comes from Namibia is not represented here in North America on the front line in Namibia is Adrian Crozier a reproductive physiologist with the National Zoo my role is linking the biology of the Cheetahs in the wild with the biology and management of cheetahs in captivity we evaluate the female reproductive health use ultrasound use hormones and do in vitro fertilization and we've banked almost 300 sperm samples from cats in Namibia so all of those samples are frozen in liquid nitrogen and can theoretically be used for artificial inseminations anywhere in the world we nose Ozzy's a great mom she's a proven breeder that's number one that she knows how to do it and a proven good mother sews Ozzy could go from being a very non valuable cat to adding Namibian semen she becomes extremely valuable to further enhance the success of captive breeding the National Zoo has a new nine acre cheetah yard at the conservation and Research Center it's rural research facility in Virginia we build a facility here that will allow us to maintain significant numbers of adult males and adult females we also have a Lovers Lane setup here so the males can run down Lovers Lane and identify the females that are in heat and are receptive to to breeding so now these animals have a ideal place to live to reproduce to be healthy and for us to do our scientific studies well the National Zoo really is is composed of two too great facilities at different locations but we're one zoo one zoo operation home base for the National Zoo's global science is the conservation and Research Center in Front Royal Virginia a 3200 acre facility just 70 miles from the National Zoological Park in Washington DC it's all very private and quiet so the animals that really need that kind of space that really need that kind of quiet are out at the conservation and Research Center and our scientists study their reproductive biology and their hormone cycling and their regular biology so that we can develop effective conservation management plans for those species in nature every October for one weekend only the conservation and Research Center or CRC was short opens to the public they grab scientists staff and volunteers are on hand to talk about the animals and their habitats and to explain captive breeding programs for endangered species it's absolutely true that a species like the prizrak skeez horse or the scimitar horned Oryx golden lion tamarins without the work that zoos have done there's no question those species probably would be extinct today the CRC has about 400 animals from cranes to clouded leopards at least half of the 40 species represented are officially endangered many of them have been taken right from the edge of extinction and and sustained in such a way that they could be reintroduced into the wild climate hi I Eve you go ahead and come in such as the case of the Burmese brow antler deer or Elle's deer a dwindling species native to beyond Mar or Burma hey girls no girls if things don't have stripes and spots and and they don't look like a giant panda people may not know about them but the truth is elds deer our species where there are only about 1,200 that remain in the wild which is fewer than there are giant pandas and yet most people have never heard of them did this is Carmen she's hand raised which is why she's so friendly and this is her daughter Eve she was born on Christmas Eve not this past year but the year before and her other daughter autumn who's three years old in Eve wasn't a natural breeding situations so she may be pregnant she would be due in November Delores Reed is an animal keeper at the CRC are you gonna come outside so we took an interest in elds deer at the National Zoo here at CRC about almost 30 years ago and we are clearly the champions for their captive breeding management more than 100 else deer have been born at the CRC without the work that we started most of us have very very little doubt that that species would now be extinct in the wild this barn is set up as a research barn each stall has a special drain where I can lock the females in and collect urine from them or there's a chute system so I can run animals around separate them do anything I need to with them lock them in if I need to and we do reproductive research here and right now we have our females at this barn my girls went out here hey lady hi girls got some company hey girls this is a species that may not do that well on display in a typical zoo but they do very very well in a place like the CRC I've got 16 females total out here herd animals like the elds deer need space and lots of it these deer are different from say like a whitetail a white-tailed deer is a browser so they eat grasses and tree branches and you'll see them usually in the forested habitat doing a lot of browsing on trees and stuff these guys are actually true grazers so they prefer the grasses which is why there here in this grassy field the fields are specially cultivated mostly with switchgrass a warm season grass from the American Plains the males are in the other barn actually if you pan that way there's a male watching us from his outside run this is the buck Orion he's pretty much come out of rut already this is their normal behavior they're pretty shy males and females are kept in separate areas until a breeding match is made through the elds deer species survival plan species survival plan is really something that only a select number of species have in place but once we have that it means that we're really giving it our highest level of attention to maintain that species for future generations stud bookkeeper Melissa rotten works with a Species Survival Plan or SSP for the elves deer a stud book plays a really important role in a specie survival program because without knowing the pedigree or the background of the animals there would be no way that you could determine which animals should breed with which one if you have that information you can actually do genetic matches you can you know like a dating service you could decide which male should be bred with which female this table here shows you the animals in our population that are the most genetically valuable animals so for example this female Rachel can be paired with this male Bambi to hopefully produce a fawn hey Bambi over in the mail barn the buck Bambi is still in his rut their breeding period their males will do that with each other they're like sizing each other up they'll walk next to each other a parallel walk and say I'm tougher than you are they don't actually want to fight if they don't have to I'm gonna stay right there and rub the door during the rut males exhibit tough-guy behavior in order to attract females you stay over there getting a little too brave she's going to don't be surprising gonna strike the elds deer live in dry deciduous forests in Burma if we save elds deer we save dry deciduous forests and so by saving one species we save Oh whole ecosystem and humans benefit you know very directly from that by the services that those ecosystems provide humans also compete very directly with animals for those same ecosystem services in the last century the Pres well skis horse or pee horse now extinct in the wild lost out to nomads in a battle for water in the grasslands of Mongolia hi ladies hi girls hi girls this is Brandi and Traci Brandi came to us from New York she's about 8 or 10 and Traci's uh been here most of her life she's like 23 all breeds of the domestic horse from Shetland ponies to Clydesdales took to the bit and bridle thousands of years ago the pea horse is not just another breed it's another species and it has never been domesticated they're sort of like the precursor toward to the domestic horse they're one step below the domestic horse they don't have a four lock which is the hair that sort of falls down between most horses eyes they also have they call an erect mane they have a stripe down their back a done stripe and their tails are different to a horse will have long hair pretty much all the way down the length of it these guys have a lot of shorter hair right up at the base of it and all press Walski horses look like this they have the dark nostrils and then a little bit of white and the dark legs and the lighter body this species was descended from only fourteen founders fourteen individuals survived and all living individuals today are derived from those fourteen individuals and so when you only have that small of a founding population genetic management is incredibly important because that's all you're ever gonna have those animals went down to near extinct status so we're trying to do natural breeding here our population has gotten older so we're having some trouble we're not having very much success you were trying to trace their cycles play with them a little bit given hormones to see what we can do to help them along Brandi and Tracey are part of the harem belonging to the P horse stallion named frog we're uniquely positioned to play a major role in helping to conserve them these are herd animals they have males that have harems and they take up space and most zoos are not equipped to handle large loved animals and herd-like situations and what we're trying to do is maintain them for 100 years or 200 years into the future with the idea that some of those descendants will be able to be reintroduced into nature hopefully we'll have you know one day again sustainable populations in the wild but until that time we have this incredibly important responsibility to maintain that genetic diversity the CRC the conservation Research Center plays a huge role in the nationalism not just in terms of where we are now or where we came from but more importantly where we're going set in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the National Zoo's CRC campus is a former US Cavalry Depot old horse barns and pastures are now used for the CRC's collection of endangered species former soldiers barracks serve as housing for CRC students and scientists we can actually use this as a training site for training the current and future generation of conservation professionals they can come and live in a conservation community where they're having first-person relationships with scientists with other say students that are at their same age and stage of development and to work in an environment where there's endangered species propagation and science going on where there's field ecology and lab science going on and we feel that that is a huge asset to what we have at the National Zoo and together it makes really an amazing combination that helps us achieve our mission dr. Carlos Sanchez heads up the National Zoo's international vet training programs the National Zoo has a huge reputation as a training center and I think the most rewarding aspect of this job is the opportunity for me to train other people basically training them to be the new generation of SU vets and wildlife vets dr. Sanchez himself was trained at the National Zoo Carlos Sanchez is the first veterinarian from Mexico that came to the United States and trained in an organized clinical residency program at the top u.s. zoo doing a medical residency in a zoo setting is basically doing a medical resident in the hospital the patients are different instead of having just humans sometimes we have an elephant or a tiger or a fish or a South American main wolf the National Zoo has been working to protect main wolves for nearly 30 years this is a main world that has had our GI gastrointestinal problems basically losses tools for several months it's not responding very well to medications anymore so rather than just change medications we're gonna do a complete exam we are gonna nested eyes these main wolf we are gonna do radiographs we're gonna do oral cavity hair blood samples etc and then we're gonna move it to the surgery suite and do a gastroscopy this is passing a fiber-optic tube and look inside the stomach and then go to the other end and do a colonoscopy as well working under dr. Sanchez is a student vet receiving specialist training in wildlife medicine Jesus us bed that she's been studying in New Zealand so thus far of our international program as well at all testing kidney trying to find out there is a foreign body the intestines are full of gas or they feel particularly fake this is a thin animal definitely and then again try to feel the intestine between your two hands so like yeah nacho we started as a latin-american bed program they are now expanded to international bed program and we bring different veterinarians from different countries and they spend six to eight weeks with us these are developing to going to Africa and China and all over the place but I still have my focus in Latin America our goal in training folks from other countries is not is not to just train them to be the best in their particular region or their particular country is to train them to be the best in the world period people are here because they're passionate about what they're doing agents of our diet they are passionate about the dissemination of knowledge which is after all the founding principle behind the Smithsonian Institution and its museums the Nationals is part of this vast museum complex we have a worldwide network really if you think about it this amazing array of field sites of scientific collaborations that we have all around the world so if there's a species that is native to South America somebody within the Smithsonian has probably worked in that specific area has connections there as knowledge of the ecosystem or the life history of the animal we're working with and that's really an important resource for us to tap into in the case of the main wolf that somebody is dr. Luiz Emmons an independent scientist who has tracked a tiny isolated population in Bolivia for the last seven years she and her team capture the Wolves collect basic health data collar them then track them to determine their activities and their social and reproductive behavior we're gonna put on a GPS radio call the spectacular maned wolf is the tallest member of the dog family they are so secretive that few people even know of them and they are fast being lost to habitat destruction they are protected in nearly 900 thousand acres of the knoll Kempf mercado National Park in Bolivia where only about 30 to 50 adult pairs live this young female is a juvenile judge too small for a collar she is released with only an ear tag the team has followed this world for four years his name is Ernie a six or seven year old male and the father of two happy families got a rotten place he lost it there is a responsibility somewhere for a place like the Smithsonian's National Zoo to step in and take take responsibility for trying to conserve and save a species even though folks may not have heard about it even though it may not be as cute cuddly as some other species that's the kind of role that we can play that really nobody else could do and we've had we're proud of that consider the Cuban crocodile cute and cuddly no endangered yes Cuban crocodiles just sit there in the water with their beady little eyes looking for a prey this particular crocodile with no footing can jump five or six feet out of the water at the National Zoo the Cuban Crocs live in the reptile house alongside other not so cuddly critters from the rare and endangered Grand Cayman Island equina they're called the Blue Iguana because they're their skin turns a really impressive blue to the prolific and popular veiled chameleon and one of the very cool things about chameleons see how their eyes go at different directions at different times that's one of the ways that they're so good at hunting how cool is that don't you think yeah this show email is on display but behind the scenes a female veiled chameleon is recovering from surgery this word right here is our reptile ward and it's held at a particular temperature and a particular humidity one of the things that can happen with reptiles that are about to lay eggs sometimes they don't lay it it's called egg binding in the case of this chameleon we had to take her to surgery yesterday and to open up her abdomen take the eggs out and we actually cut right along here you can see the suture line and now she is awake over in the zoo's Amazonia exhibit house is a humid tropical South American rainforest with plenty of slippery slimy amphibians like frogs one-third of the world's 6,000 amphibian species are threatened with extinction Panamanian golden frogs and other poison dart frogs are incredibly beautiful they're the jewels of the rainforest and they are disappearing Panamanian golden frogs are a very good Sentinel species it means they give us an indicator of how things are going on in the wild because amphibians breathe through their skin they are often the first to succumb to disease or climate change a lot of them Fibby ins worldwide are dying one of the things we need to figure out is why is that what can we do to halt that and should we be taking animals into captivity and hopefully at some point reintroducing them to the wild but in order to do that in order to do this science in order to save species from extinction or restore animals to the wild that requires people we caused the problems by and large and we're the solution to there's one of me and if through my work I can help to create five more that are like-minded or ten more or hundreds more or a thousand more then we enhance the chance of success in the future one of my goals is that everybody that comes through in the National Zoo is engaged with our animals and our professional keepers and interpreters and inspired to take conservation action by the animals anyone who's interested in working with animals there's there's a role for for people whether it's as a vet as a researcher as a keeper and even if it's through volunteering it's a way people can make a difference anyway these are sloth bears the National Zoo has about 800 volunteers people like George Rutherford in man's the sloth bear exhibit on the Asia trail and they are bears pure and simple you'll see this big 300 plus pound bear you'll see these big claws that are three inches long and you'll think oh my god he must be a great predator but he eats more insects and fruits than he eats meat they give us volunteers a chance to show you things like fur and then they lose their claws apparently like fingernails from time to time and the keepers find them and there's an example of a claw those long claws that the sauce bears have aren't use for killing other animals they're used for ripping open termite mounds they'll dig up the termite mound then they blow a blast of air through to clean away the extra dirt and then they suck out the bugs their snouts are developed so they don't have the top front teeth and they will literally put their noses down to the ground where the termite mounds are and suck everything up from the termite mounds this is a big better to live on something that small but in the wild that's about 90 percent of their diet is termites sloth bears are mostly from southern India and Sri Lanka habitat loss is the greatest threat to their survival as it is for wild animals everywhere as humans we have a responsibility to these animals they're not going extinct just because the world is changing for no reason they're going extinct because humans are modifying and taking habitats from the wild animals if the habitat is destroyed human life won't go on as we know it and so if we don't steer kids these days into conservation then the whole world is lost in a world of high-tech high speed low attention spans news can inspire children to care about nature there's a big difference when you read about something when you see it in real life and I've shown children and school kids a picture of an elephant and they're engaged and when they come out of the elephant house after seeing an elephant it's a whole new level of engagement a really excitement and that's one thing that the zoo can offer come to the National Zoo and you take it up several notches kids these days are not allowed to walk into nature unless court it anymore and here a kid can get that close to a poisonous snake or any one of a number of different animals that's the engagement part and then the inspiration part is we hope that that inspires that child to become our replacements be the next Explorer and help to save those wild places and wild animals and become that steward of the environment that we all should be I was in my 20s I thought you know I got that bug to do science I had this idea that I was gonna somehow change the world but at the same time you know one becomes aware that the problems that we're working on or not they're not just single generation problems there are multi generational issues and so there's this responsibility of identifying and nurturing that next generation well for me I've always enjoyed that the natural world and um forests in particular that's kind of where my specific bond has been and it was only in college when I really realized that I could actually have a job doing something like what I'm doing now actually it did my a PhD on cattle but also I was passionate about conservation and animals in zoos linked to conservation projects so I did a very very drastic switch into cats one of the things that that I think is great about being involved in the conservation effort from my position is that we're given opportunities specifically here at this zoo to go and be parts of these things that are changing literally change in the world I believe wholeheartedly in zoos and I believe more importantly wholeheartedly in the National Zoo our mission as Zeus is to make sure that we remind people on a daily basis that the future of humans is linked to the future species other species in the wild there's an analogy with kind of the bolts on the wings of a plane you know you can be looking out the window as you're taking off on that plane and a bolt can fly off and that's one extinct species but how many bolts does it take before the wings fall off and then as as humans were all lost because the earth crashes so I look at each species as a bolt that I have a responsibility to save so that the plane doesn't go down so if we can get people to think about that then we can get them to think about conservation of all the life that's on earth and and that's what zoos are all about learn more about great museums at great museums org you can order this episode of great museums on DVD for 2495 plus 595 shipping and handling call 1-800 to three zero four four five three or order online at great museums org museums hold the treasures and tell the tales of the people and places that make America great major funding for great museums is provided by the Eureka foundation dedicated to the educational power of television and new media exercise your curiosity explore America's great museums

Channel: Great Museums

Views: 194,152

Rating: 4.7102613 out of 5

Keywords: smithsonian, zoo, animals, biology, zoology, conservation, endangered, extinct, extinction, orangutan, primates, panda, golden, lion, tamarin, forest, habitat, monkey, ape, chimp, chimpanzee, gorilla, beaver, ecology, ecosystem, species, tiger, bear, tian, insemination, asia, reptile, chameleon, elephant, anteater, kingfisher, veterinarian, cassowary, pigeon, eagle, flamingo, cats, cheetah, breeding, namibia, research, horse, oryx, leopard, deer, mammals, wolf, crocodile, iguana, amphibian, frog, climate, meerkat, Animal

Id: QMfVrDTjqh0

Length: 56min 43sec (3403 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2009