That's right, I fed an elephant!
Our field trip today was to the Oregon Zoo, and we got to meet one of the Zoo's elephants up close and in person. Chendra is an Asian elephant from Malaysia. In Malaysia, a lot of the elephant's habitat has been destroyed by farmers who will then start palm oil plantations where they've chopped down the jungle. Elephants often won't leave the area, however, so they are considered pests by the farmers who dislike them eating the crops. Chendra was found near one of these plantations. She was an orphaned juvenile and she'd been injured (possibly with a shotgun) causing her to lose the sight in her left eye. Being without a herd is usually reason enough to prevent an elephant from being successfully released into the wild, and with her age and blindness she was not considered to be a suitable candidate for release. She was brought to the Oregon Zoo in 1999 and has adapted beautifully to captivity and her new herd.
The zoo trains all their elephants in basic commands and this training serves several purposes. First, elephants are prone to infections of the skin, feet and teeth. Not only do they have to be checked frequently for these, they also need routine medical care and treatments. Given that Chendra is the smallest of the elephants at the zoo at 4500lbs, manhandling them isn't really an option, so they're trained to respond to basic movement commands. Chendra lifts her feet, opens her mouth, lays down, lifts her trunk, turns around and stands still, all with one word commands.
The other reasons for training are just as important. Elephants are highly intelligent and keeping them mentally stimulated in captivity can be challenging. Training exercises provide cognitive challenges that keep them occupied and prevent boredom. They also provide a social outlet for the elephants, letting them interact with trainers in a way that promotes trust and affection.
We also got a lecture about animal enrichment from the resident behaviour specialist. A lot of the specifics were (obviously) geared towards captive wildlife, but the concepts could very easily be applied to domesticated animals as well. I've often felt like I have a fairly decent grounding in animal enrichment activities, but the lecture was very interesting and brought up some points that I had never consciously thought about.
One of the main things mentioned was that in assessing an animal's environment, we can't just proceed from a human point of view. That may sound obvious, but while most of us are smart enough to know that a lion doesn't need a fluffy pillow, we are often still guilty of many other human centric mistakes that can negatively affect an animal's habitat. As an example: What does your house smell like? If you say "nothing", that may be true to you, but I can bet it isn't true to your cat or dog. Smell is a portion of constructed habitats (whether for domesticated or wild animals) that is often forgotten. The Oregon Zoo has started keeping spice racks in all the buildings and once or twice a month a different spice will be sprinkled on the ground. This provides novel stimuli and entertainment; much more so than it would provide to animals (like us) with poor senses of smell.
The book I linked to above is one I've been reading on and off for a few months. It's extremely interesting to read and I just wish I had more time in between studying! Temple Grandin has a pretty neat perspective on how animals see and interpret the world, and some of what she says is so simple as to make me think "duh!".....and yet, somehow, I've never thought about it before. It's the sort of mindset that I'm trying to achieve more often because it has the potential to really change how I would do my work. Understanding why an animal does something is huge in terms of knowing how to respond to it. Something as easy as why a cat doesn't like having it's toenails trimmed (in the wild, if something bigger than you grabs your foot, you're a goner) can be made much less frustrating by really understanding how the animal feels about it. Yes, knowing why the cat is trying to claw your arm off may not change the fact that you're bleeding like a stuck pig.....but for me, at least, it helps keep me from getting frustrated or upset.
Anyway, I have more studying to do (always). We're working on muscles in A&P and our dead lab cat (named "High Test" for his fat content) is a little difficult to work with. I'm hoping that having a good grasp of where the muscles should be will help me navigate through his prolific adipose tissue.
Oh, and here's another picture. I took 92 of them today (deleted most due to repetition, but whatever) so I should probably share.
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