Our new baby is Brody, born December 6, 2011. Brody weighed in at 18.3 kg (just over 40 pounds) at birth. He’s a big healthy boy with a good appetite as evidenced by his current weight 5 weeks later – 42 kg (just over 92 pounds).

Houston Zoo Welcomes new bongo calf "Brody"

Brody can be seen every day (weather permitting) on exhibit with his 3 year old mom Penelope. His favorite spot for resting and naps is in the front right hand corner of the exhibit.

Bongos are among the largest of the African forest antelope.

To the casual observer, all bongo calves look alike. But our keepers found a perfect way to tell them apart – they count the white stripes on their side. Bongo can have 10 to 14 white stripes on each side and each side can present a different configuration. For instance, Penelope has 11 stripes on each side.

So, you might ask – what’s a bongo? Well, a bongo is a type of antelope native to the lowlands and mountain forests of Kenya and western Africa. In the wild, bongos are shy and elusive but very social. In fact, bongos are the only forest antelope to form herds.

The Western or lowland bongo is classified as near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN. The Eastern or mountain bongo is classified as endangered.

Photo by Janet Hughes

Cheyenne seems less than patient on the occasions when Aurora is engaged in play away from the mesh introduction panel placed in between their rooms. Chey kiss-squeaks loudly to get her attention, fishes for her with plant stalks or other modified tools, or makes throaty rumbling sounds in her direction. Cheyenne will come over to the introduction door with a blanket over her head to see if the baby will notice, and when she does, Chey engages her in gentle play through the mesh.  Her tenderness and avid interest in this infant is very touching to see.  Indah is a little more rambunctious in her attentions, and it is evident that she will be a great playmate to the baby once they are all together.

Other activities for Aurora include familiarizing herself with the outdoor exhibit, where she goes every morning prior to the zoo opening as the yard is serviced by keeper staff.  Her volunteer caregiver brings her outside in all but very chilly weather, and she curiously investigates the grass, the pool, the wooden structures and the windows. She enjoys sampling various types of edible browse, watching the fish and ducks get their morning breakfast, and just enjoying the morning air and the sounds of the birds chattering back and forth.

Photo by Tammy Buhrmester

Aurora still drinks formula from a bottle, but instead of being held by a caregiver while taking it, she simply receives her bottle through the mesh wall of her room.  This will facilitate the upcoming introduction, as of course human contact will be unnecessary once she goes in with Cheyenne.  She feeds herself bites of fruits, vegetables and primate biscuits and disdains the spoon for her cereal: caregivers just hand her a bowl of the mixture and she makes quick work of it.  She is very comfortable with our more distanced relationship now, which gives us high hopes that she will be quite ready to meet Cheyenne when the time comes.  We expect to start the first full introductions around the first of the new year.  Once Cheyenne and Aurora are fully comfortable with each other, we will work Indah into the mix.

Photo by Diane Chesley

This will be Cheyenne’s  fourth adopted baby since 1999.  Now age 39, she has been a great mom to previous kids Luna, Elok and Indah.  Adding Aurora to her brood is something that fulfills Cheyenne’s seemingly never-ending maternal potential. For Indah, at age 7, having a new baby sister will provide a bit of practice for her own child-rearing skills in the future, as well as letting her roughhouse with someone closer to her own age.

We look forward to the introduction and will keep you all posted on their progress!

Aurora with new flashy smile

Orangutan infant “Aurora” is growing fast, and at the early age of 3 months has decided to grow some teeth. These new incisors resemble Chiclets coming out of her gums and are rather ridiculous looking objects, which she proudly shows off regularly.

She has graduated to some solid foods like rice cereal and banana in addition to formula and is practicing with those choppers daily. Of course, while we are doing introductions with her to birth mother Kelly or potential surrogate mom Cheyenne, we share the goodies with the adults.

Beware of these pearly whites!

As we step up face-to-face introductions, we are also increasing the types and amount of enrichment that she receives. She is now being exposed to everything that the adult orangutans receive: paper of all types, browse, substrates, boxes, plastic toys, and even a mirror, which she found quite entertaining.

Aurora with mirror

Look for Aurora to appear sometime soon on the orangutan exhibit as we acclimate her to the viewing area and guests. This announcement will come soon, so stay tuned!

Photos by Nathalie Jolicoeur.

This means we see all kinds of avian fathers, from the good, the bad and the ugly. Captivity is a little different. If the normal breeding behavior of a male is to mate and leave, keepers have to follow the breeding cycle of the birds closely and then act appropriately to the situation. Do we keep the dad in the area with the female while she incubates the eggs? In this particular species, does the male help incubate? Does the male help raise the young? Will the male show aggression to juveniles once they’ve left the nest? There’s a myriad of questions for each situation. Fortunately, sheer diversity in behavior provides me with so many weird and wonderful stories of avian fatherhood.

Not all mommy birds are June Cleavers. In mammals, the female produces milk and feeds the young, but a male bird can do everything a female bird can, except lay eggs. This results in male birds typically being very involved in the raising of their young, because they can have a tangible and direct hand in the success of the offspring. Monogamy is quite rare in other groups of animals, but over 90% of birds form monogamous pairings, for at least one breeding season. This pairing doesn’t just involve the male gathering food for the chicks. Often, male birds help in the construction of nests, incubation of the eggs, and feeding the young while in the nest and even after fledging, as well as defending their nest and territory.

Hornbills take this monogamy to an extreme. Before laying eggs, a female hornbill of the subfamily Bucerotinae, such as our Rhinoceros Hornbills, will enter into a tree cavity and begin to “mud” herself in, sometimes assisted by the male.  Essentially, sticky material such as mud, food and fecal matter is gathered and plastered around the opening of the cavity, until the opening is just large enough for the female to fit into the cavity. At this point, the female enters the cavity and the opening is almost completely sealed shut, except for a small slit, conveniently beak-sized.

Rhinocerous Hornbill

At this point, the female is entirely dependent on her mate to provide her with food while she incubates the eggs, for approximately 40 days.  Once the chicks hatch, both mother and babies are fully dependent on the food brought to the nest by the father. When the chicks are large enough to leave the nest, the male and the female chip away at the sealed entrance and the  brood makes a break for it. Meanwhile, the father continues to support the family by collecting food for the female and chicks. Talk about a breadwinner!

Our male Sunbittern male has all the traits of a good father. He’s a great provider and very protective of his family.

What this video doesn’t show is how much this bird prepares for a chick.  Once the egg hatches, the baby gets the lion’s share of the food, and the parents won’t eat anything until the chick is full.  This equates to some lean times ahead for dad, so once an egg is laid, keeper staff are greeted in the morning with a male Sunbittern, standing at the door of the kitchen, waiting to be tossed food. We oblige, of course.  During this time, he’s bulking up! Once the chick arrives, the male does the same, except instead of scarfing down the food himself to prepare for the fast, he brings the food straight to the chick on the platform, and won’t stop ‘demanding’ food until that chick is content. Would you like to reconsider your idea of “bird brain“?

Dad and chick

The happy family at meal time. Dad is providing a mealworm.

If you’ve watched March of the Penguins, (and if you haven’t, you MUST!) you know that penguin dads (and moms) are fantastic parents, in some species bringing themselves to the brink of starvation to care for their eggs and young.

Raising two chicks is a big task!

In the avian world, there are few things more endearing than the single father. In some species of birds, the male is the sole caregiver for not only the chicks, but the eggs as well. Darwin, our Double-wattled Cassowary, is a wonderful and larger than life example.  Cassowaries are solitary animals, and they only come together for breeding. Once the female has laid her eggs in the nest the male constructed, she takes off to find herself another male with another nest. The previous male is left to incubate the eggs and care for the young.

When incubating, the cassowary is so dedicated that, despite all scientific reasoning, he spends approximately 53 days without leaving the nest, without even STANDING UP. He doesn’t eat, or take in much water, and somehow, he doesn’t even use the bathroom. It’s like he goes into a torpor of fatherly devotion.  Once those eggs hatch, it’s been said by many that the only thing meaner than a female cassowary is a male cassowary, once you come between him and his chicks.

Darwin, our own cassowary, recently decided it was time for him to become a father. Unfortunately, Darwin’s mate is still on the horizon, and there were no eggs to be had. Paternal instinct fueling invention, Darwin took his large green food bowl, flipped it over, and began to incubate the bowl in earnest. Keepers have begun feeding him in a bowl that cannot be moved, as it became impossible to feed the bird. In a frenzy of devotion to his “egg”, the most food-motivated bird I have ever known, refused to eat, as any good cassowary dad should.

Darwin, incubating his food bowl.

As the title says, it takes all kinds in the world of birds, and I would be remiss not to mention all the keepers in my department that step in to play the role of “Dad”. Not all bird fathers have feathers. We frequently, for one reason or another, have to hand raise baby birds, and all of our bird keepers have had a go at being a parent.

Danny, preparing to feed a turaco chick.

Joshua, with a tiny duckling.

Jeremy, teaching a kingfisher fledgling to eat on its own.

A better look at that turaco chick, because no one puts baby in a corner.

Finally, I couldn’t write this blog without mentioning a bird near and dear to many of our staff. While he never got to be a father, he was the most generous bird dad I’ve been privileged to witness.  As I mentioned above, we take care of 900 animals. It’s not common for bird keepers to get particularly attached to any one bird, as the less interaction we have with them and the more “wild” they are, the better. However, sometimes a bird comes along with some quirks that you just can’t ignore, and they take root in a special place in your heart. Our male Blue-crowned Laughing Thrush did just that.

Blue-crowned Laughing Thrush

This bird’s paternal instinct was so ingrained, that all baby birds were his babies. He lived a good long life in our Tropical Rainforest exhibit, and anytime a chick  hatched, he was there, attempting to feed it, much to the chagrin of many a protective feathered parent in the vicinity.  That’s not to mention that most dove chicks never understood why they were being given worms, instead of their normal diet of crop milk. However, some birds took advantage of his paternal ways, and our adult lorikeets were treated to a worm by the Laughing Thrush every time they squeaked like a nestling.

Several weeks ago, the Bird Department was saddened by the death of his mate.  Throughout his last weeks, the Laughing Thrush seemed to decline without his female by his side, and surrounded by a red-eyed and sniffling bird staff, he left us. We remember him fondly and it’s only fitting that he is mentioned whenever the subject of avian fatherhood is discussed.

Celebrate Dad by giving him a memorable Father’s Day gift this year – name a Houston Toad after him! With your gift, you help us support Houston Toads, a critically endangered species native to Texas. Click here to learn more about Houston Toads and how you can further the Houston Zoo’s conservation efforts that help ensure their survival. [www.houstonzoo.org/name-a-toad]

Come visit the newly-named toads on June 19 from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. as we celebrate a TOAD-ally Awesome Father’s Day at the Houston Zoo. This fun, family event will be filled with crafts, activities, Houston Toad info and much more! This event is FREE with your paid Zoo admission

The interest and support for baby Aurora has been overwhelming – thank you to everyone that has posted comments on the blog and Facebook and to everyone that helped us name her! As I did previously with our maned wolf pups, I thought I would dedicate a blog to some of the frequently asked questions and comments.

Aurora naps with volunteer Janet

Do you need more volunteers?

The short answer is yes, the zoo is always looking for more volunteers. However, the volunteers helping take care of Aurora were selected from a group that has already spend significant time working at Orangutans. Some of them have been here since our first orangutan baby 13 years ago! We have a great group of staff and volunteers taking care of Aurora and while we appreciate the offers of help, we are in good shape.

How do I get that job?

Signing up to be a volunteer at the zoo is a great place to start. We have programs for everyone from teenagers to adults. Volunteers help with educational programs, tours, and work side by side with our keepers helping to care for the animals. Every once in a while, a great opportunity like elephant birth watch or baby orangutan duty comes up, and the first people we go to are the ones that have “put in their time” volunteering at the zoo. If you think you want to work with animals for a career, volunteering is a great place to start.

What can I do to help?

You can support the zoo in a variety of ways. Just coming to the zoo makes a difference – your admission or membership helps pay for important things like baby formula and the wages of all the people that are helping care for Aurora. If you’d like to make an additional contribution, check out Willie’s page.

People often think the only way to help is to donate money, but if you can’t do that there are other options. You can volunteer your time, in any of the ways mentioned above. You can help raise awareness for the zoo and for the plight of orangutans in the wild. Orangutans are under serious threat of extinction due to habitat loss. Once again, you can make a difference by providing financial support to projects in the field, but you can also make a difference by being a responsible consumer. Help raise awareness by spreading the word about palm oil and support companies that are orangutan-friendly. Use social media to spread the word to your friends too.

Aurora by Nathalie Jolicoeur

Half a world away, on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, many caregivers are charged with very much the same set of duties. Babies of every age are pouring into rescue and rehabilitation stations in various states of malnutrition and distress after being ripped from their deceased mothers. The inclination to shield oneself from this information is strong, but we need to know. As we all happily buy our Easter candy or hair conditioner, more palm oil is being planted. Palm oil plantations now blanket most of what was once pristine rain forest, and the change has happened so rapidly that wildlife cannot adapt to it. Adult males, lone adolescents and mother orangutans with babies clinging to them are being killed routinely by plantation workers and tree-fellers. This has resulted in a huge population of orphans at rehabilitation centers, at least the ones who are lucky enough to be rescued before they perish or are imprisoned as pets. Read more about the palm oil crisis here.

Caregivers in Borneo have many more challenges than the ones we face here in the zoo. Here we have staff support, the assurance that formula will not run out, and two possible maternal figures – Kelly or Cheyenne orangutan – to try to introduce the baby to later. There, a constant worry is ever-present: they have hundreds of babies to care for. Will they have enough caregivers to raise all those babies? Will they run out of formula, or cereal, or fruit for the older ones? And, sadly, there are no adult females to act as surrogate mothers for any of them. These babies are all peer-raised: trundled to their forest playground together in wheelbarrows, stuck together into small cages at night where they clutch one another as they would their mother (after they are old enough to be removed from their human overnight caregivers.) They never really grow up with any mothering figure to learn from; all of their important life lessons have to come from humans. The 3-D IMAX film “Born to be Wild” playing at the Museum of Natural Science highlights the struggle faced by caregivers in Borneo.

As I admire our new baby: her miniature ears, her soft orange hair, the perfection of her fingers and toes, my mind wanders. The sadness I feel that our Kelly is not taking care of her mirrors my sorrow for all those mothers in Borneo who have lost their lives for no good reason. And, I grieve for all those wild-born babies, who have lost their only link to what is real in their forest home: their mother.

Kelly and baby Solaris

On May 8th, we will celebrate Mother’s Day at the zoo with a table of information in front of the orangutan exhibit that will give everyone some ideas of how to help. Come to the zoo and look for the “Missing Orangutan Mothers” table that Sunday. Remember we can all help. We can choose what we buy: the “power of the purse” is important; consumers themselves make decisions every day simply with their purchases. You help by coming to the zoo because funds from the front gate go directly to our conservation department, where money translates into action on the ground around the world, including Borneo, where we support the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project (KOCP).

And, when you see a baby with its mother, any baby, be thankful.

 Aurora by Tammy Buhrmester

welcome to the world, kiddo!

Our goal for every primate at the zoo is have their parents raise them whenever possible, but we do intervene if we feel the infant’s health is at risk and that was the case with Kelly and her infant. Fortunately both of them are healthy and we hope to introduce the infant back to Kelly or to Cheyenne, our proven surrogate mom, once she is old enough. In the meantime, we have a big job to do.

Infant orangutans cling to their mothers all the time their first few months of life. In order to simulate this for the infant, caregivers carry her 24 hours a day. She spends her days in the orangutan building at Wortham World of Primates, where she can see all of the orangs and they can all see her. She also requires a bottle of human formula every 2-3 hours day and night so this is literally a full time job. It can be tempting to treat a baby orangutan like a baby human, but our goal is to get her back with orangs, so its critical to make sure she grows up knowing how to be an orangutan.

While we are disappointed that Kelly is not taking care of the infant, we are very lucky to have a team of keepers, supervisors and volunteers that have a great deal of experience caring for baby orangutans. Some of you may recall the first orangutan born here in 1997, Luna, who also had to be raised by keepers. However, she was later introduced to Cheyenne, and since then Cheyenne has adopted two additional orangutans from another zoo, Elok and Indah (Luna and Elok now reside at other zoos). The infant needs to gain a bit of independence before she’s ready to join Cheyenne or go back to Kelly, however, so our team is focused on making sure she is happy, healthy and growing.

Because all this work goes on behind the scenes, you won’t see the infant when you visit the zoo but we will be posting regular updates here on the blog. We’ve also got some additional information on our website, along with a Q&A of frequently asked questions. And you may have noticed she doesn’t have a name. We’re looking for help to pick one, so please help us out with our naming contest!

sniffing out the camera

 Any time we raise an animal instead of their parents, its critical that we find ways to make sure they are properly socialized and grow up to be well socialized, rather than thinking they are people. These pups are cute right now, but soon they will be much larger and wilder, and someday they will go off to be paired with other wolves. In order for that to be successful, we need to make sure they know how to act like maned wolves.

The best option would have been to introduce them to another maned wolf litter that was being mother-raised but there were no other females due at the same time as our pups. So we looked internally and one candidate stood out as being right for the job: Taji, the Anatolian Shepherd Dog.  Taji was raised with the cheetahs and works as part of our Cheetah Ambassador Program. You may have seen her out greeting our guests or hanging out with cheetahs Kito and Kiburi.

When the puppies were just a few days old, we started letting Taji come up to clinic to meet them. She was immediately interested in them and and seemed eager to help.

naptime for everyone

As you can see in this photo, things got off to a great start and so Taji is hired as the latest member of the maned wolf pup team.

Need to catch up on Dora and Diego’s story? Check out these earlier posts.

The puppies will soon outgrow their accommodations, but while they’re here, let’s take a tour. The “puppy room” is located at the Veterinary Clinic. We took over a room normally used to house sick or injured animals and moved in a refrigerator and microwave (for storing and warming formula), a table for all our supplies (scale, bottles, etc.), detailed log books for recording feedings and behavior, and a cot to sleep on. Several staff take turns caring for the pups during the day and someone stays with them overnight. Here’s the latest video, where you can see the setup and of course, some ridiculously cute puppy playing.

In the puppy pen, Dora and Diego have toys, blankets and a crate to sleep in. One of their favorite features is the “puppy fort” which is just a blanket attached to the pen to make a dark quiet space. They like to sleep back here, probably because it is similar to the den that their mother would dig for them in the wild.

hanging out in the fort

Coming soon: Blogs about the puppies’ first trip outside and and introduction to their new friend. Stay tuned! 

 

Why aren’t the puppies being raised by their mother and how is she doing since the birth?

Dora and Diego’s mother, Lucy is still inexperienced at motherhood and that first night she was having some trouble with the pups. Because it was so cold that night, we had to intervene or there was a danger the pups could have frozen to death. For more on how that first night went, check out the first post in this series. Lucy and Seis are doing fine and are out on exhibit together. Unfortunately we won’t be able to put the puppies back with their parents because we still need to feed them ourselves.

Dora and Deigo at 4 weeks old

They are so cute, I want one!

I suspect that most of the time this is said as an impulsive response to cute baby photos but there are a few people out there that think an exotic pet might be a neat idea. On the contrary, its a really bad idea, and here’s why: exotic animals are not domesticated like cats, dogs, goats, etc. so while they might be tame and cute as youngsters, they outgrow that and start acting like wild animals eventually. This usually results in a phone call to the zoo asking us to take the animal because its too expensive, its destroying the house, or worse, it has injured a person or a pet. Unfortunately we can’t take all these animals and their owners struggle to find good homes for them. Still not convinced? There’s more info on our website.

I wish I was there helping raise those puppies – how do I get that job?

Working here at the zoo is one of the best jobs in the world, but its not all playing with cute animals. Zookeeping is hard work, you spend most of your time outdoors, you work weekends, nights, holidays, hurricanes and snowstorms. Its hard physical labor cleaning cages and hauling hay bales, but it also requires a strong educational background in animal behavior, conservation, and biology.

Still want to be a zookeeper? A degree in a wildlife related field is a good place to start but the field is competetive, so you’ll need some experience too. Time spent as an intern or volunteer gives you the chance to do all of the above (for no pay of course). Volunteering is a great way to see if this is the job for you and it also allows people that already have another career a chance to work at the zoo too.

My point is, its a lot of hard work that leads up to the opportunity to do something this special, and whether you are staff or a volunteer, you have to the whole job, not the fun parts.

carnivore keeper Angie feeds Dora

When will the puppies be on exhibit?

We’re still working on the plan for this one, but we hope to have them out for at least part of the day in the next few weeks. Before they can leave the zoo clinic, they have to get their shots and we want to make sure its warm enough for them to go outside. We’ll keep you posted here on the blog when they are ready to make their big debut!

Thanks for all your interest and support and let me know in the comments if you have more questions! And keep checking back for the next news about the maned wolf pups.