Recently in Zoos Category

From City News Service:

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A Masai giraffe that has lived at the Los Angeles
Zoo since 1983 has died, likely due to complications that arose while giving
birth to a stillborn calf, zoo officials said today.
   The giraffe, Asali, was a year old when she arrived at the zoo from
Kenya. She had given birth to 12 calves during her time at the zoo.
   ``The Los Angeles Zoo is saddened by the loss of Asali,'' said Zoo
Director John Lewis. ``Over her many years here at the zoo, Asali was viewed by
millions of visitors and over two generations of school children. For many who
will never travel to Africa, Asali served as an ambassador to her wild cousins
and provided our guests with the opportunity to marvel at the beauty and
massive height of this species.''
   According to zoo officials, veterinarians worked for two days to remove
a stillborn calf from Asali. She died shortly after the calf was removed.
   Asali was one of the last wild-caught Masai giraffes to enter the United
States, zoo officials said. The 12 calves she gave birth to were sent to zoos
across the country, and several have given birth or sired offspring of their
own.
   Bob Barnes, the zoo's registrar, said he remembered helping to transport
Asali to the zoo from Los Angeles International Airport in 1983.
   ``We loaded her shipping crate onto a stake-bed truck and drove her up
the Harbor Freeway to the zoo,'' he said. ``She wasn't full grown, so we could
easily drive the truck underneath the overpass. The crate didn't have a top and
a lot of the people on the Harbor Freeway were surprised to see a giraffe
driving past them.''

This story has everything I like. It has land dealings right out of "Chinatown." It has monkeys, lots of monkeys.

And it was written by a good friend of mine.

Doug Irving, currently at the Orange County Register has what is certainly the coolest beat in all of journalism: He covers the Santa Ana Zoo.

Yeah, I've never been there either. How many of you even knew Santa Ana HAD a zoo?

But here's the best part: Under an agreement with the man who donated the property 60 years ago, the zoo must maintain population of at least 50 monkeys at all times or his heirs get to take the property back.

Well, wouldn't you know it, the monkey populatioin recently dwindled to 48. What do you suppose happened next?

Go read the story and find out. I'll give you a clue. It has a happy ending. When you're done, send Doug an e-mail about bees. Doug LOVES bees.

Photo from the Orange County Register

A life without predators, good medical attention and a healthy diet are causing zoo animals to live longer, according to this AP story.

I feel their pain

The Golden Years have arrived at the nation's zoos and aquariums, and that is taking veterinarians and keepers, along with their animals, into a zone of unknowns. Do female gorillas, now frequently living in to their 40s and 50s, experience menopause? Can an aging lemur suffer from dementia? How do you weigh the most difficult choice -- between prolonging pain and ending life -- when the patient is a venerable jaguar who's been around so long she's come to feel like a member of the family?

All of those questions hang on a larger one that, until recent years, has been left to educated guesswork based on limited evidence.

"How old is geriatric? How old do animals really live?" says Sharon Dewar, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Park Zoo, whose keepers have adjusted to Rollie's toothlessness by serving him a diet of soft-cooked veggies. "That's the million-dollar question."

It was a year ago Saturday -- on May 24, 2007 -- that Reggie the alligator was finally captured and carried away from his home of 2 years at Machado Lake in Harbor City.

Because this is L.A., Reggie is now a zoo exhibit.

But we miss Reggie. So we drove up to visit him this week at Griffith Park to check in and take some pictures.

He seemed well-adjusted, just hanging out and swimming leisurely in his little zoo pool.

Although who can really know with an alligator?

There will be a story and more pictures in Saturday's (May 24) Daily Breeze to mark the milestone.