September 24, 2025 • 42 mins
I'm joined by Lauren Augustine, the curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Philadelphia Zoo, for an exciting Galapagos tortoise announcement, cool facts, and the wild (and sometimes glittery-poop filled) details behind-the-scenes at zoos.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show we have a special episode
because I get to talk to someone from a zoo. Now,
this happens to be a human being, so we will
be able to have a nice conversation. There's some really
(00:26):
exciting news coming out from the Philadelphia Zoo and I
am very pleased to have with me today Lauren Augustine,
who is the director of Herpetology at the Philadelphia Zoo. Lauren,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited
to talk to you guys today.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I am. I'm super excited about this news. I don't
know if my listeners have heard it. But first, Lauren,
tell us just a little bit about yourself. What's your
role at the zoo and what kinds of animals do
you work with?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
From the director of her photology, her patology is a
study of the creepy crawley so reptiles and amphibians, of course,
and so my job is to oversee the collection here
at the zoo, their animal care, the staff that take
care of them, and then are conservation programs that are
linked to those very special species.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I think this is something that's key when it comes
to zoos because there's so like as a visitor, you
get to see the animals and maybe you get to
see some of the presentations that happen at the zoo,
but there's a lot of stuff that's happening behind the scenes,
especially when it comes to conservation. So in addition to
actually taking care of the individuals at the zoo, taking
(01:34):
care of their health, their diet, there's also larger conservation efforts.
So you may have a species of animals that is
not doing so well in the wild. I imagine this
is pretty common in herpetology, especially with amphibians, and so
you also have a lot of efforts to actually help
(01:55):
animals that are out in the wild or preserve species
that are endangered.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, we do that in a lot of different ways.
We're really fortunate in her petology we get a large
diversity of species and so they come with a lot
of different needs. Sometimes we can meet those needs for
the species at our institution or through the collaboration with
other institutions, but a lot of times we are looking
at managing those conservation efforts in the field with collaborators
(02:21):
or directly through leading research projects, and so we get
a lot of different avenues to contribute to species conservation
through a modern zoo that takes a conservation first approach.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, that's fantastic. So let's get right into the exciting
news you have. Mommy, the Galapagis tortoise has an announcement
to make. Lauren will be the one to transmit that announcement.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, we're very excited.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Mommy's been at the zoo since nineteen thirty two and recently, Yeah,
we are proud to announce that she is a mommy.
Mommy has sixteen babies that hatched earlier this year from
two different clutches or groups of eggs that she laid
last winter.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's incredible. How old is mommy?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So we estimate mommies around ninety seven years old, but
we don't know. She came right in nineteen thirty two,
so she's been at the zoo a very long time.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Ninety two years.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, that's so she's at least ninety two years old,
if not, who knows a decade old?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, yeah, undready. Yeah, but is this a.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
So, is this a miracle Galapago's tortoise or is this
something that Galapagos tortoises can do in the wild give
birth at such an old age.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
This is something they can do in the wild, give
birth to such an old age. What's so amazing about
Mommy's story is that this is her first time. So
the fact that she hasn't reproduced until this age is
what's so incredible, and that it went so successfully really
is a testament to the long term care of that animal.
Right She's been in our in our care for over
ninety years, and so it's just a really great story
(03:57):
for Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's fantastic. And I would assume this isn't the first
time that you guys have tried having her breed. It's
just this is the first time she's actually produced a
clutch of eggs.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
So with Mommy, the interesting story for Galopagos tortuses in
general is that in the early nineties we did some
genetics work to identify the different species from different islands,
and so when we found out that Mommy was a
Western Santa Cruz Galopagos tortoise, we went through the process
working with our association to bring in a mail for her.
So we wanted to make sure we are breeding and
(04:34):
maintain that genetic lineage for that island species. And so
we had to get a Braso here who came from
the Riverbank Zoo to pair with her because he is
also a western Santa Cruise Island Galopagos tortoise. And so
that is the process of working collaboratively to maintain those
those really important genetics.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Right, because you can't you can't just take sort of
there's a bunch of different populations of Galapagos tortoises, and
so if you got a different Galapagos tortoise, they might
be able to set successfully mate, but then you don't
have that same wild lineage that you're looking to preserve, right, correct,
(05:16):
So that is so exciting. So how often do Galapagos
tortoises mate like, both in the wild and also in captivity.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So here at the zoo, because we are in a
temperate climate, right, it gets colder in the winter, we
have to bring the tortoises in. So every winter we
actually separate the male of braso from the females just
because of space and for a lot of other reasons.
So every spring we reintroduce them together, and so there
is breeding every year, the same thing in the wild.
(05:46):
As they come across each other in the wild and
through territories during breeding season, they will breed, so it's.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
An annual event.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
And then mommy laid actually three clutches of eggs her
first year that she produced eggs for us since meeting
a braso, and so they will lay eggs every year also,
So she did lay three clutches her first year, and
then two clutches this past year that resulted in these
sixteen babies.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's because from my understanding of Galapago's tortoises is that
they it is tricky to get them to actually produce offspring,
particularly in captivity. Is it that the because it sounds
like the mating itself happens with some frequency, but actually
producing a clutch of eggs that are successful seems more rare.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
There are so many factors that go into the successful
reproduction of a species in human care, and especially with
reptiles and amphibians. So sorry, I'm going to call out
that my tax are the best all the time, but
we have so many things that influence the success of
that reproduction, and it's not just one thing, so they're
all playing off of each other and it can be
(06:55):
very complex. So we have to consider the lifespan of
the individual, their age at the time of reduction, and
then their care, the UV light that they've been provided,
their nutritional status, their health status in general. All of
this plays into success. Also their stress levels, right, so
if they can't if they are nutritionally deficient in some way,
their eggs might not be fit to hatch. If they're not,
(07:18):
if they're overly stressed, they might hold onto those eggs
and and affect the hatch rate by not laying them
right away, or even the developmental rates. So there's so
many facets to this, which is why this is so impressive,
because it shows that Mommy's care over the decades has
been very good, that her stress levels are likely pretty low.
I mean, all animals encounter stress, right, but we have
(07:40):
this beautiful outdoor yard. We were able to give her
in a braso the ability to interact should they choose,
but her the ability to get away from those interactions
if she wants to.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Appropriates every important important in every relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yes, exactly, choice alone time. Choice. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
So just the fact that she has appropriate nesting sites
that she likes them as well. You know, we as
humans can say, oh, this is great nesting for a
Galapagos tortoise, but she might not agree. So knowing that
we were able to provide her with those things that
resulted in the success yeats, it's definitely a complicated process.
And then of course the incubation of the eggs is
(08:18):
just adds on to it. And now the rearing of
the offspring. I mean nothing about this is simple.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So how do Galapagos tortoises in the wild incubate their eggs?
And is there a difference between the wild because of
course you're not on that Galapagos islands, so you can't
completely recreate those conditions. So then how do you do
it at the zooke compared to wild incubation?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Great question. And so these guys are whole nesters. So
they'll dig a hole and they'll deposit a clutch of
eggs or a group of eggs into the hole and
then they'll bury it back up and then they're done.
The eggs will incubate in the ground in the wild.
At a zoological institution, in general, we will dig up
the eggs and artificially incubate them. So one of the
major reasons we do that for galopagos tortoises is that
(09:05):
they have temperature sex determination, and so the temperature that
the eggs are incubated will determine the sex of the offspring.
So this is a really important part of their biology
that helps us as population managers. Now I can control
the number of males and the number of females I'm
putting into the population, which is an amazing asset when
you have a smaller population in a zoological institutions. And
(09:27):
so we do retrieve those eggs, but it also gives
us the opportunity to track their development and see where
and if we have challenges, what the problem or the cause.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Of those challenges might be for next time.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
So we do need to track very carefully the environment
that we give these eggs. So temperature and humidity are
two key factors that we monitor very closely when incubating eggs.
But then we're able to track through the four month incubation.
It was a very long incubation the development of these eggs.
You know, try to troubleshoot any challenges and then wait
(09:58):
for these babies to emerge what was in a very
exciting moment.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
So when like little baby birds are born, they will
kind of knock their way out of the egg with
their little they got a little ridge on their beak
and egg tooth. How hard is it for these little
baby Globuka's tortoises to get out?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
They also have an egg tooth.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So reptiles have an egg tooth, yep, and they use
that to break through their eggshell. Yeah, and these tortoises,
they'll we call it pipping the first moment that they
break through the egg shell and then that's a yeah,
it's so cute. And then they did just stay in
the egg for a couple almost a week before they
fully emerge and hatch.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, it's really cute.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's a lot of work. I don't blame them, So
you know, you gotta take a breather after you're hacking
your way out of an egg. This is something that
I have talked about on the show a little bit,
which is the as I get a question a lot
from especially women, which is like it seems really silly
as placental mammals that we carry pregnancies and it's a
(11:00):
huge headache, and I very much sympathize with this, So
then why don't we as humans just lay eggs like
so many other animals do? And I think it's a
really interesting thing you bring up with the things like
changes in temperature and humidity, how much the environment impacts
(11:22):
the eggs. So one kind of cool thing that plus
intal animals did was that we create like a kind
of miniature environment for our offspring, which we can control.
As warm blooded animals, we control the temperature just like
you kind of do with incubating these eggs. I just
(11:42):
find that kind of this is kind of a cool
example of why there is a bit of a trade
off the eggs. Yes, they can usually have more offspring
at once. Maybe Galapaco's tortoises don't have as many offspring
at one time, but there are plenty of egg laying
animals that have so many offsering all at once. But
you can't control that environment as well, and so if
(12:04):
you have if you're a species of animal that likes
to invest a lot into one offspring, laying an egg
usually doesn't make as much sense or comes with more
risks when you're versus having the baby born live. So
(12:25):
that's just kind of a cool kind of application of
some evolutionary biology ideas. But in terms of the rarity
of Galapagos tortoises, why is it so difficult to breed
them and why are they relatively rare in the wild
as well.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Glapa ghost tortoises are critically endangered species, and they're island species,
and so it's really important to remember when you're an
island species that your populations are innately at a higher
level of threat because anything, a storm could come and
wipe out your population. The biggest threats usually to these
(13:06):
island species are human human impacts such as you know,
habitat degradation, but also invasive species. And so because they
have such a limited range and they're naturally smaller populations,
they are at a high risk of extinction, and so
that's why they are critically endangered. They are challenging to breed,
I think in the United States because we have to
(13:27):
move them around and they are very large animals, and
we have to get the right animals together in the
right conditions. You know, reptiles are very seasonally driven their reproduction,
and so being able to provide them the right habitats,
the right social dynamics, and the right, care is not
always very simple, so and moving you know, Brazos almost
four hundred pounds, moving him to Philadelphia was not an
(13:50):
easy feat. So that was probably the hardest part of
breeding these guys, to be honest. But they are a
very long lived species, which gives us a long opportunity
for each individual to get their genetics represented. So that
is one of the fortunate parts of the Galopagos toward
us and their biology.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
That is the that is so interesting to me. How
I mean, I think we kind of as humans, we
tend to think about things in terms of our own lives, right,
so where we go through menopause and we know are
no longer fertile when we're seniors, so then to see
an animal like this, it just seems so strange to us.
But there's not necessarily our perspective, right of us going
(14:33):
through like having a long live span, but then having
a long chunk of our live span where we're not
fertilely reproductive is not necessarily the main blueprint for a
lot of animals. A lot of animals have really short
life spans and they're fertile for most of that lifespan.
The kind of the species that we do see in
(14:53):
the wild that have long life spans like we do,
and a long chunk of that lifespan where we're not
usually is another social species. So you know, for instance, elephants, Right,
so you have a lot of matriarchs there that may
no longer be producing offspring, but they're helping out the
youngsters who don't know what they're doing. So it's so
(15:15):
the fact that this tortoise is able to it has
such a long lifespan, but it also remains fertile. It's
not that it is weird. It's that we have a
specific kind of interesting biological clock which is not shared
by all animals on earth, particularly not necessarily by reptiles.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, what's really fascinating. They've done some research on crocodiles
and what helps the longevity of their fertility is that
they can shut their systems down, so we won't see
the same hormone spikes seasonally in a singly housed female
crocodile that we will see in a crocodile that's set
up with a male and that is reproducing. They can
shut their systems down, which can make them last longer. Right,
(15:59):
So for example, well, mommy didn't lay eggs for twenty years, right,
she didn't go through the process her being paired up
with a braso. The social interactions that is what started
her cycling again and got her laying eggs and moving forward.
So I think that's a really interesting part of it,
like an ectotherms biology, that these animals can kind of
(16:19):
turn it off and turn it on, which helps it
be a little bit of a longer lifespan.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
That is amazing. I mean, it's and it's something that
is coming from like a social cueue, which is so
interesting where you can have these hormones kind of like
activated because she sees a male, not because she's there's
something in the water or her diet has changed necessarily,
although diet changes can also affect fertility for sure. But yeah,
(16:48):
I mean, I another reason to be jealous of reptile
is that the control they have over their production. But
you do you see that in other species. You see
that actually in case gurus have some control over their
reproduction that you know. Sometimes it's like, you know, I'm
just not feeling so I'm going to freeze the development
(17:11):
of this embryo until I feel like things are cool
for me to have a baby, which is, you know,
if only, if only, we could be like that. But
that's that's so interesting. So that sounds like, given that
they are so their reproductive cycle, it's not like human
women where you know, during our reproductive years, unless we
(17:32):
use medical intervention, medication, we just have to have our
periods no matter what. They have some that they're able
to shut that off. So that seems like that could
be another potential challenge thought at a zoo because they
if they're not sensing, if they're not you know, getting
(17:52):
sort of the cues that this is a good time
to be reproductively active, they may not be reproductively active.
Are are there kind of ways like are there challenges
to actually like kind of convince her that, like, hey,
now's a good time to mate or to be reproductively active.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I actually think this is a totally fascinating part of
our jobs is that we really don't know a lot
about the social behavior of reptiles, and we're learning a
lot thanks to zoological institutions, and so some of the
research I've been doing on turtle breeding in general suggests
that the over attention of a male, so the males
(18:32):
don't just go breathe with the female one time, right.
They are very insistent and often there's a huge ritual
of nudging and mounting and circling that takes place as
courtship prior to copulation. And then this constant attention from
the males is anecdotally linked in some species to the
reproductive output of a female, so not just sparking the
(18:53):
female to cycle, but actually the outcome of those eggs.
And so that's a really interesting part of our jobs
because a lot of people would see that also as stressful.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Right, this male is hounding this female. In the wild,
he would come through.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Her territory, breathe with her and then move on. But
in a zoo, maybe she's his only potential mate. They're
sharing a habitat and a territory, and so he's constantly
breeding and reproducing with her, and so there's that stress aspect,
but also the aspect of that Potentially that's what is
going to lead to success. And so I think one
of the things that we're very fortunate about here in
(19:26):
Philly is that we have this large outdoor yard. We
have two go up and goos females as well as
two aldabra females. In with a braso so that he
can share his attention. When we did the first introductions,
we did observe them and do a behavioral ethogram, So
we had staff watching and observing a braso where was
he spending his time because we were very concerned of
(19:47):
mommy and mommy getting stressed out at her older age,
and Abraso did selectively choose to spend most of his
time breeding with mommy, but he did spread out the
love and we didn't see a lot of signs of
stress or indicators that we would want to separate those animals.
And so a lot of like really interesting social behavior
stuff that we really are just now on the cusp
(20:09):
of learning and reptiles is really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I mean, that seems to be quite like that's the
over many many years, like hundreds of years of having zoos,
that seems to be one of the major shifts in
terms of modern zoos, which is understanding that the behaviors
of animals in captivity. You can't just copy and paste
animals from the wild, put them in captivity and then
(20:34):
have their behaviors all be the same. Like a lot
of misunderstandings about animal behavior comes from studying animals in
captivity because it's so much easier to study animals in captivity,
and it's I'm completely for researching animals in captivity because
it's a great opportunity for conservation and understanding animal behavior.
(20:55):
But what the mistakes that we used to make were
assuming that you know, you can have like a pack
animal or a migratory animal, or or or you know,
a tortoise with a really long lifespan and a large
area and then see the exact same behaviors in the
(21:17):
zoo that you would see in the wild. So I
think it is I think it's really important to know that,
like you know, today, like in zoo's I think there's
a lot more awareness of like, all right, we even
if we can't completely recreate the Galapagos Island within the zoo,
having the awareness of, like, okay, what are these sorts
(21:39):
of stressors that these animals might feel, particularly with social animals,
where you know, might you might see aggression in social
animals that are usually a lot more chill in the
wild when they don't have time alone from each other.
And so it's from my perspective, it seems like we've
gone from maybe misunder standing these things many many years
(22:01):
ago to now caretakers and researchers in zoos being really
aware of, Okay, we need to create an environment that
is not stressful for this animal and then to understand
why there might be conflicts among species in zoos. And
I think because I think when people think about reptiles,
(22:22):
they don't think of them as being particularly social, right,
Like they see a crocodile, it's like, well, it's just
sitting there, it's not talking to anyone, it's not groomed,
they're not grooming each other, so they don't seem particular Like,
I think it's easier to understand this concept when it
comes to maybe primates or something, right because you see
their social behaviors that are much more like our own.
(22:44):
But would you say, like in the herpetology department, like,
are there a lot of considerations made in terms of
the social lives of these animals.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So I think one of the things I've loved seeing
as I've worked through my career and moved institutions, is
that one we're not just offering more naturalistic habitats and
trying to elicit more natural behaviors, but we're also using
non natural.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Things to get the same output. Right, it doesn't really
matter how I.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Get the natural behavior as long as I'm listening it
because it's something that's healthy for the animal. And so
that's where enrichment and training are coming in to our care.
And I think the biggest thing for reptile keepers and
fimmin keepers is to first say, we don't actually know
and they communicate in very different ways in us. So,
like you said, it's very easy for me to look
(23:33):
at a primate and recognize play behavior or social behaviors,
but not so easy on a snake that's very old,
factory or using pheromones for a lot of it's communication.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I can't possibly evaluate that right.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So all I can do is use my observations and
develop metrics for evaluation that help us learn more and
collect data and then collaborate with other institutions that might
be seeing something similar or have maybe another a larger
sample size on that species. So I think it's one
of the most exciting parts of our job is that
we're able to fill gaps in data on these species
(24:07):
that otherwise would be unattainable.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Are there other endangered species that you are breeding at
the Zoo, either within the Herpetology department or even outside
of the Herpetology department. Is this sort of is mommy
really especialness is like kind of a unique event or
do you have this breeding of endangered species happening in
other areas of the zoo.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
No, we breed a lot of endangered species here at
the Philadelphia Zoo. In the Reptile department specifically, we have
a lot of different we call them species survival plans.
They're the way we collaborate in North America in the
Association of Zoos and Aquaria to move animals around, like
we moved to Braso here to have ideal genetic genetic pairings.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And so we have Vietnamese.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Box turtles that we're working on breeding. We recently hashed
a dwarf crocodile. We have Chinese crocodile lizards. We have
a lot of different species, a lot of different critically
endangered species.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That we're working on breeding here at the Zoo.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
To develop these genetically sustainable populations, but are then available
for education for research, and then of course we collaborate
in the field with a lot of them as well,
and so they can be representatives for their species here
at the zoo. We had an orangutan born a few
years ago. Yeah, so we do. We work with a
lot of different endangered species here and sometimes our role
(25:28):
is just to house them until they're old enough to breed,
and then we work with the Species Survival Plan to
move animals around and sometimes our job is to pair
them up and breed them. So it just depends on
the species and the populations need at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
For instance, for the baby Galapagos tortoises, are these going
to are they all going to remain in your care?
Are they going to go to other institutions? My sense
is that it's usually conservation, where you have breeding programs.
For releasing into the wild is usually quite different because
(26:02):
the problem is if you have a species that you
have at zoo that you're raising, is that it's not
going to know necessarily how to survive. So you don't
want to just send tortoise out there it's like, all right,
good luck, and then it might not thrive.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So what.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Happens to these baby endangered animals after they're born.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
That's such a good question because we're actually fortunate reptiles
and amphibians that we can have a direct release right
As you mentioned, egg laying species generally have a lot
of offspring, and so we use a technique called headstarting,
where we can rear the juvenile animal in captivity until
it's a certain size and then release it. It has
a much higher chance of success in the wild because obviously,
(26:49):
for instance, tabpoles have a high rate of predation and
mortality in the wild.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's why there are so many.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
It makes sure some animals make it to adulthood and
can contribute to the population. By head starting animals, we
can give them that kickstart in the wild and guarantee
more animals make it, or not guarantee, but increase the
chances that more animals will make it to adulthood and
then become reproductive parts of the wild population.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
However, that does.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Not mean that every animal that we're breeding in zoological
institutions is going back into the wild. There's a high
risk of transferring diseases and a lot of other problems
that we don't necessarily want to perpetuate in the wild
without proper testing and quarantining procedures. So most of our
populations are for sustainability within the zoological field. That allow
(27:36):
us to maintain those genetics if needed, and then also
to research these populations. And so these tortoises will not
go back to the wild. They will be part of
our North American population of western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoises,
which was forty four individuals and now is sixty so
really nice big kick yeah, in the population, and we
will not keep them all. They will have to be
(27:57):
moved out in place to these get very large and
live a every long time, so we will move them
out into the aza population at other zoos within North America.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, I think that's and I think it is something
that is important for people to learn about, which is
that zoos. Natural history museums there's a lot of stuff there,
both living specimens and you know, not living specimens where
it is preserving a lot of information so we can
(28:31):
look at DNA from an animal as this huge library
of information. And you know, obviously with natural history museums
the specimens are almost always not living animals, but you
still have like outside of the like display area which
is for education and is amazing, I love it, but
(28:52):
inside sort of the archives, you have a ton of
stuff that is there for research, and also just to
preserve things that you may not know what to do
with yet. Right, Like one of my favorite examples is
a lot of museums have ear wax from whales, and
they didn't they didn't know what to do with these,
Like they're these like hard chunks, they're almost like they're
(29:13):
kind of like fossils, but it's just hardened ear wax
from whales, And they had no idea what to do
with them for like hundreds of years, but they kept it,
and then finally some researchers realized we can actually like
cut into this and look at it and use it
to understand better whales seasonal diets and migratory patterns. So
(29:35):
I imagine this is something that happens in zoos as well.
Like you are, you have the front facing part of
the zoo, which is educating people, letting people see into
a world that otherwise they would not have access to,
uh and kind of you know, allowing people to explore
(29:55):
the their love of animals, which I think is wonderful.
But then you also have just a massive amount of
information that is either being researched or there in case
we lose some of these animals, so that we still
have at least some of the record of these animals
(30:17):
in living specimens. So can you talk a little bit
about that, like the kind of maybe unseen side of
conservation at the zoo.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, absolutely, So we do have a zoological information system
where we collect vast amounts of data. So while you
come to Philadelphia Zoo and you only see two Glopagos
tortoises or now you know, nineteen, are nineteen or contributing
data to the overall forty.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Four that we have housed currently.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
But then just think about the number of Glophagos tortses
that we've had in human care in North America in
our history. And so every day the animal caretakers are
collecting data, they're collecting important information on each individual here
at the zoo, and then these individuals and they become
part of a population and that amasses a large amount
of data. And so this provides a repository right for
(31:12):
future research and for current research. We never know what
questions we're going to ask or what needs we're going
to have in the future, and what conservation issues might
come up and where that data might be super valuable,
and so often we're fielding research requests as as zoo
professionals from universities where there's a professor or a student
(31:32):
doing their master's research and they would like us to
share data with them, or they would like to come
observe our animals for one of their research questions. So
being able to provide that opportunity is huge.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
This is a question that just occurred to me. So
I don't want to put too much pressure on you,
but what, like, are there any really funny kind of
ways of data collection? Because I've heard stories of the
very creative ways people have to, say, do fecal samples
at zoos or try to figure out, like, hey, whose
(32:06):
poop is this, and then using glitter or dye that's
safe in order to identify whose poop is this? So
is there are there any like really funny ways either
in general at the Philadelphia Zoo or within the herpetology
department where you guys have had to do really weird
things in the name of research.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Well, you named mine.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
I mean for me, I did a fecal hormone study
with crocodilians at a different institution, but I had to
figure out how to get them to be markers in
their fecal samples.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
So that I knew whose species were each and one
way was dye. So and you don't want to use like.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
A red dye, right because they will come out looking like,
you know, oh my god, what's proud animal.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, so one.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Animal got blue dye and had very green poop, and
another animal got glitter. And that was hilarious because when
I was feeding this crocodile one day, it kind of
went up to grab the rat that had glitter in it,
and it hit the rat and it just exploded like
a glitter bomb all over the exhibits. So that was
a really fun day for me when I was like,
(33:11):
oh my goodness, you didn't see that happening.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And glitter gets everywhere, so everywhere probably still there to
this day. Yeah, that's I love that. I mean, you
have to you have to get creative because it's not
like you can't interview these animals.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
You can't.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
They don't use toilets, you can't have them come. Well,
you can do labs on them, but if you're just
trying to let them live their lives and then collect
their collect biological specimens from them, sometimes you got to
feed them a glitter rat. That's amazing. So Yeah, any
(33:50):
other conservation news, any other zoo babies or weird and
wild stuff happening.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
No, I think the biggest news here is that we're
getting ready to you know, we've broke ground and we're
working on our new Bear Country exhibit and so the
opening of that is going to just be phenomenal next year.
And we recently opened the Flamingo walkthrough, so that has
been a really exciting guest opportunity where you can walk
in with some of our some of our flamingos.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Is a nice new habitat.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So just you know, constantly progressing, moving forward, working with
a lot of endangered species here and doing our best
to really push the needle for conservation and animal care.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
That's fantastic. And how are all the How are all
of Mommy's babies doing now? Are they all all good?
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yes, there's doing awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
We're really happy we have an exhibit inside the Reptility
Amphibian House. But in this nice weather, we've been able
to get a group of them outside as well. So
getting them out in natural, full spectrum lighting is just
really beneficial to their health. So we're getting them outside
and they're they're growing like weeds.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I'll tell you that they're they're adorable.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
How okay, just one more like these? How small do
they start off? And then like because they got to
get to be around four hundred pounds eventually.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah, so they hatched around but you know, anywhere between
sixty and eighty grams, so like roughly the size of
a tennis.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Ball right fit in the palm of your hand.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And I mean they are going on five months, six months,
the oldest ones now, and they've doubled in size.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Wow, amazing. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's fantastic. Hopefully
they will be big and cumbersome real soon. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
It's one of the actually the really difficult parts is
making sure they don't grow too fast because they are,
you know, grazers. They're constantly ready to eat, and so
one of the things we learned early on wearing giant
tortoises is that we don't want them to grow too
fast because they'll end up with shell issues and arthritis.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
And that's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
So it's actually a huge job raising these babies. Like
we're weighing and measuring them every month. Our nutritionist is
amazing and she's really tracking their diet intake and what
they don't eat, so we know when do we increase
the food availability to them. It's a really interesting process
that is teaching us a lot about controlling our offerings
(36:05):
to these animals. Because they are hungry and they are ready.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
To eat, they will eat. Uh yeah, I I sympathize
with that if I have a dog. I have a
dog who would eat, who would eat herself sick if
I if I lit her so I can't. But she
thinks I'm a monster for it, and that's just that's
just how it's gotta be. But I can baby Galapago's
(36:28):
tortoise give you puppy dog eyes when they're not getting
enough food or they do. They just kind of look
eh whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
They're just like air biting around like the staff are,
like they're hungry.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
That is that is adorable. Uh Well, before we go,
we're gonna play a little game called the mister Animal
sound game. Guess who's squawking? Last week, the mystery animal
sound hint was this. You can find this animal in
Kara Jaimo's book about sea creatures called Leaving the Ocean
(37:04):
was a mistake. We talked to Karl last week, so
another part of the clue if you have not read
the book is that it's not a bird and it's
not a superhero sidekick. This one is really really tricky
if you haven't read the book. So I apologize. I'm
I'm immediately giving you hard node for this. All right, Lauren,
(37:36):
do you have any gifts? Oh my gosh, this is
such a I would I wouldn't get this one. I'm
just gonna I'm gonna come out with that. It's it's
very very tricky.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Leaning towards a marine mammal, but yeah, I don't know.
I'm thinking like a.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
It does kind of sound.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Like a he was eating a clam there, and that's
where I went with that.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
It sounds it sounds like a happy sound, like a
sea otter. But it's really fascinating because this is actually
a fish. This is this is the sea robin. Congratulations
to Emily m Alaura W and Craig K for guessing correctly.
It is a fish that is able to make this
(38:22):
kind of like weird groaning, gurgling sound that you can
only hear as people. We can only hear it on lands.
So this particular fish is very unhappy to be on land,
so it is complaining, But yeah, fish do not normally
make a ton of vocalizations. It was a big deal
a few years ago and we were able to actually
get some recording devices near coral reefs and found out
(38:46):
that there's a lot more sounds than one would expect
that are being made by the fish and by the
invertebrates that are living in the coral reefs. But yeah,
sound communication, except for with cetaceans whales, it's not usually
going on with a lot of sea life. So it's
really interesting when we find a fish, something that is
(39:09):
not a mammal in the ocean who can make a
sound like why can't.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Make this sound?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
What are they doing down there? Onto this week's mystery
animal sound. The hint is this, you may find these
colorful animals at zoos, but they're not always in an exhibit.
All right, Lauren, do you have any guesses?
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Well, from your hint, I want to say, but I
feel like when I've heard they sounded.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
More like cats than that did.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Well, you're absolutely correct, Will I will be bleeping out
your answer, but the listeners will know that you got
it correctly. I have personal experience with one of these
that showed up in my yard when I was a kid,
and so pretty, so amazing. These are all more hints
for you guys to have figured out. But like, it's
a beautiful animal and then it just makes the most
(40:04):
god awful noise and shrieks at you. It's very intimidating.
And I have seen these at a lot of zoos,
and they're often just chilling out walking around. They're at
the I know for sure they're at the San Diego Zoo,
and usually you can just see them kind of like
(40:24):
hanging out with the visitors. And I've never quite understood
what they're doing there. I do, I'm pretty sure they're
there purposefully, but yeah, they seem to just enjoy hanging out.
So if you guys think you know the answer to
this week's mister Animal sound game, you can write to
(40:44):
me at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. Lauren,
thank you so much for coming on today. Where can
people find more information about Mommy, about the babies, about
the Philadelphia Zoo?
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yep, well it's all over the news Mommy and her Baby,
but you can definitely find out moreation on our website
and then obviously please come to the zoo if you're
in the Philadelphia area such a wonderful place. The reptile
house is open and the babies can be seen inside
and outside seasonally, and Mommy and abraso out in the
yard as well when temperatures are ideal.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Amazing. That sounds so fun. I would love to see
those babies if I was in the area. Maybe someday,
maybe when they're grown, I'll be able to see them.
And thank you guys so much for listening. If you're
enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review,
it's greatly appreciated. That does help me a lot. I
read all the reviews and I appreciate the feedback. And
(41:40):
thanks to the space Cussocks for their super awesome song.
Ex Alumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or he guess what why of you listen
to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't
tell you what to do, but if I was your mother,
I'd probably dig a hole, leave you in there and
bury you again and just hope for the best. See
(42:02):
you next Wednesday. H
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show we have a special episode
because I get to talk to someone from a zoo. Now,
this happens to be a human being, so we will
be able to have a nice conversation. There's some really
(00:26):
exciting news coming out from the Philadelphia Zoo and I
am very pleased to have with me today Lauren Augustine,
who is the director of Herpetology at the Philadelphia Zoo. Lauren,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited
to talk to you guys today.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I am. I'm super excited about this news. I don't
know if my listeners have heard it. But first, Lauren,
tell us just a little bit about yourself. What's your
role at the zoo and what kinds of animals do
you work with?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
From the director of her photology, her patology is a
study of the creepy crawley so reptiles and amphibians, of course,
and so my job is to oversee the collection here
at the zoo, their animal care, the staff that take
care of them, and then are conservation programs that are
linked to those very special species.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I think this is something that's key when it comes
to zoos because there's so like as a visitor, you
get to see the animals and maybe you get to
see some of the presentations that happen at the zoo,
but there's a lot of stuff that's happening behind the scenes,
especially when it comes to conservation. So in addition to
actually taking care of the individuals at the zoo, taking
(01:34):
care of their health, their diet, there's also larger conservation efforts.
So you may have a species of animals that is
not doing so well in the wild. I imagine this
is pretty common in herpetology, especially with amphibians, and so
you also have a lot of efforts to actually help
(01:55):
animals that are out in the wild or preserve species
that are endangered.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, we do that in a lot of different ways.
We're really fortunate in her petology we get a large
diversity of species and so they come with a lot
of different needs. Sometimes we can meet those needs for
the species at our institution or through the collaboration with
other institutions, but a lot of times we are looking
at managing those conservation efforts in the field with collaborators
(02:21):
or directly through leading research projects, and so we get
a lot of different avenues to contribute to species conservation
through a modern zoo that takes a conservation first approach.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, that's fantastic. So let's get right into the exciting
news you have. Mommy, the Galapagis tortoise has an announcement
to make. Lauren will be the one to transmit that announcement.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, we're very excited.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Mommy's been at the zoo since nineteen thirty two and recently, Yeah,
we are proud to announce that she is a mommy.
Mommy has sixteen babies that hatched earlier this year from
two different clutches or groups of eggs that she laid
last winter.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's incredible. How old is mommy?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So we estimate mommies around ninety seven years old, but
we don't know. She came right in nineteen thirty two,
so she's been at the zoo a very long time.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Ninety two years.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, that's so she's at least ninety two years old,
if not, who knows a decade old?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, yeah, undready. Yeah, but is this a.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
So, is this a miracle Galapago's tortoise or is this
something that Galapagos tortoises can do in the wild give
birth at such an old age.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
This is something they can do in the wild, give
birth to such an old age. What's so amazing about
Mommy's story is that this is her first time. So
the fact that she hasn't reproduced until this age is
what's so incredible, and that it went so successfully really
is a testament to the long term care of that animal.
Right She's been in our in our care for over
ninety years, and so it's just a really great story
(03:57):
for Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's fantastic. And I would assume this isn't the first
time that you guys have tried having her breed. It's
just this is the first time she's actually produced a
clutch of eggs.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
So with Mommy, the interesting story for Galopagos tortuses in
general is that in the early nineties we did some
genetics work to identify the different species from different islands,
and so when we found out that Mommy was a
Western Santa Cruz Galopagos tortoise, we went through the process
working with our association to bring in a mail for her.
So we wanted to make sure we are breeding and
(04:34):
maintain that genetic lineage for that island species. And so
we had to get a Braso here who came from
the Riverbank Zoo to pair with her because he is
also a western Santa Cruise Island Galopagos tortoise. And so
that is the process of working collaboratively to maintain those
those really important genetics.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Right, because you can't you can't just take sort of
there's a bunch of different populations of Galapagos tortoises, and
so if you got a different Galapagos tortoise, they might
be able to set successfully mate, but then you don't
have that same wild lineage that you're looking to preserve, right, correct,
(05:16):
So that is so exciting. So how often do Galapagos
tortoises mate like, both in the wild and also in captivity.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So here at the zoo, because we are in a
temperate climate, right, it gets colder in the winter, we
have to bring the tortoises in. So every winter we
actually separate the male of braso from the females just
because of space and for a lot of other reasons.
So every spring we reintroduce them together, and so there
is breeding every year, the same thing in the wild.
(05:46):
As they come across each other in the wild and
through territories during breeding season, they will breed, so it's.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
An annual event.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
And then mommy laid actually three clutches of eggs her
first year that she produced eggs for us since meeting
a braso, and so they will lay eggs every year also,
So she did lay three clutches her first year, and
then two clutches this past year that resulted in these
sixteen babies.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's because from my understanding of Galapago's tortoises is that
they it is tricky to get them to actually produce offspring,
particularly in captivity. Is it that the because it sounds
like the mating itself happens with some frequency, but actually
producing a clutch of eggs that are successful seems more rare.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
There are so many factors that go into the successful
reproduction of a species in human care, and especially with
reptiles and amphibians. So sorry, I'm going to call out
that my tax are the best all the time, but
we have so many things that influence the success of
that reproduction, and it's not just one thing, so they're
all playing off of each other and it can be
(06:55):
very complex. So we have to consider the lifespan of
the individual, their age at the time of reduction, and
then their care, the UV light that they've been provided,
their nutritional status, their health status in general. All of
this plays into success. Also their stress levels, right, so
if they can't if they are nutritionally deficient in some way,
their eggs might not be fit to hatch. If they're not,
(07:18):
if they're overly stressed, they might hold onto those eggs
and and affect the hatch rate by not laying them
right away, or even the developmental rates. So there's so
many facets to this, which is why this is so impressive,
because it shows that Mommy's care over the decades has
been very good, that her stress levels are likely pretty low.
I mean, all animals encounter stress, right, but we have
(07:40):
this beautiful outdoor yard. We were able to give her
in a braso the ability to interact should they choose,
but her the ability to get away from those interactions
if she wants to.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Appropriates every important important in every relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yes, exactly, choice alone time. Choice. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
So just the fact that she has appropriate nesting sites
that she likes them as well. You know, we as
humans can say, oh, this is great nesting for a
Galapagos tortoise, but she might not agree. So knowing that
we were able to provide her with those things that
resulted in the success yeats, it's definitely a complicated process.
And then of course the incubation of the eggs is
(08:18):
just adds on to it. And now the rearing of
the offspring. I mean nothing about this is simple.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So how do Galapagos tortoises in the wild incubate their eggs?
And is there a difference between the wild because of
course you're not on that Galapagos islands, so you can't
completely recreate those conditions. So then how do you do
it at the zooke compared to wild incubation?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Great question. And so these guys are whole nesters. So
they'll dig a hole and they'll deposit a clutch of
eggs or a group of eggs into the hole and
then they'll bury it back up and then they're done.
The eggs will incubate in the ground in the wild.
At a zoological institution, in general, we will dig up
the eggs and artificially incubate them. So one of the
major reasons we do that for galopagos tortoises is that
(09:05):
they have temperature sex determination, and so the temperature that
the eggs are incubated will determine the sex of the offspring.
So this is a really important part of their biology
that helps us as population managers. Now I can control
the number of males and the number of females I'm
putting into the population, which is an amazing asset when
you have a smaller population in a zoological institutions. And
(09:27):
so we do retrieve those eggs, but it also gives
us the opportunity to track their development and see where
and if we have challenges, what the problem or the cause.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Of those challenges might be for next time.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
So we do need to track very carefully the environment
that we give these eggs. So temperature and humidity are
two key factors that we monitor very closely when incubating eggs.
But then we're able to track through the four month incubation.
It was a very long incubation the development of these eggs.
You know, try to troubleshoot any challenges and then wait
(09:58):
for these babies to emerge what was in a very
exciting moment.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
So when like little baby birds are born, they will
kind of knock their way out of the egg with
their little they got a little ridge on their beak
and egg tooth. How hard is it for these little
baby Globuka's tortoises to get out?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
They also have an egg tooth.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So reptiles have an egg tooth, yep, and they use
that to break through their eggshell. Yeah, and these tortoises,
they'll we call it pipping the first moment that they
break through the egg shell and then that's a yeah,
it's so cute. And then they did just stay in
the egg for a couple almost a week before they
fully emerge and hatch.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, it's really cute.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's a lot of work. I don't blame them, So
you know, you gotta take a breather after you're hacking
your way out of an egg. This is something that
I have talked about on the show a little bit,
which is the as I get a question a lot
from especially women, which is like it seems really silly
as placental mammals that we carry pregnancies and it's a
(11:00):
huge headache, and I very much sympathize with this, So
then why don't we as humans just lay eggs like
so many other animals do? And I think it's a
really interesting thing you bring up with the things like
changes in temperature and humidity, how much the environment impacts
(11:22):
the eggs. So one kind of cool thing that plus
intal animals did was that we create like a kind
of miniature environment for our offspring, which we can control.
As warm blooded animals, we control the temperature just like
you kind of do with incubating these eggs. I just
(11:42):
find that kind of this is kind of a cool
example of why there is a bit of a trade
off the eggs. Yes, they can usually have more offspring
at once. Maybe Galapaco's tortoises don't have as many offspring
at one time, but there are plenty of egg laying
animals that have so many offsering all at once. But
you can't control that environment as well, and so if
(12:04):
you have if you're a species of animal that likes
to invest a lot into one offspring, laying an egg
usually doesn't make as much sense or comes with more
risks when you're versus having the baby born live. So
(12:25):
that's just kind of a cool kind of application of
some evolutionary biology ideas. But in terms of the rarity
of Galapagos tortoises, why is it so difficult to breed
them and why are they relatively rare in the wild
as well.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Glapa ghost tortoises are critically endangered species, and they're island species,
and so it's really important to remember when you're an
island species that your populations are innately at a higher
level of threat because anything, a storm could come and
wipe out your population. The biggest threats usually to these
(13:06):
island species are human human impacts such as you know,
habitat degradation, but also invasive species. And so because they
have such a limited range and they're naturally smaller populations,
they are at a high risk of extinction, and so
that's why they are critically endangered. They are challenging to breed,
I think in the United States because we have to
(13:27):
move them around and they are very large animals, and
we have to get the right animals together in the
right conditions. You know, reptiles are very seasonally driven their reproduction,
and so being able to provide them the right habitats,
the right social dynamics, and the right, care is not
always very simple, so and moving you know, Brazos almost
four hundred pounds, moving him to Philadelphia was not an
(13:50):
easy feat. So that was probably the hardest part of
breeding these guys, to be honest. But they are a
very long lived species, which gives us a long opportunity
for each individual to get their genetics represented. So that
is one of the fortunate parts of the Galopagos toward
us and their biology.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
That is the that is so interesting to me. How
I mean, I think we kind of as humans, we
tend to think about things in terms of our own lives, right,
so where we go through menopause and we know are
no longer fertile when we're seniors, so then to see
an animal like this, it just seems so strange to us.
But there's not necessarily our perspective, right of us going
(14:33):
through like having a long live span, but then having
a long chunk of our live span where we're not
fertilely reproductive is not necessarily the main blueprint for a
lot of animals. A lot of animals have really short
life spans and they're fertile for most of that lifespan.
The kind of the species that we do see in
(14:53):
the wild that have long life spans like we do,
and a long chunk of that lifespan where we're not
usually is another social species. So you know, for instance, elephants, Right,
so you have a lot of matriarchs there that may
no longer be producing offspring, but they're helping out the
youngsters who don't know what they're doing. So it's so
(15:15):
the fact that this tortoise is able to it has
such a long lifespan, but it also remains fertile. It's
not that it is weird. It's that we have a
specific kind of interesting biological clock which is not shared
by all animals on earth, particularly not necessarily by reptiles.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, what's really fascinating. They've done some research on crocodiles
and what helps the longevity of their fertility is that
they can shut their systems down, so we won't see
the same hormone spikes seasonally in a singly housed female
crocodile that we will see in a crocodile that's set
up with a male and that is reproducing. They can
shut their systems down, which can make them last longer. Right,
(15:59):
So for example, well, mommy didn't lay eggs for twenty years, right,
she didn't go through the process her being paired up
with a braso. The social interactions that is what started
her cycling again and got her laying eggs and moving forward.
So I think that's a really interesting part of it,
like an ectotherms biology, that these animals can kind of
(16:19):
turn it off and turn it on, which helps it
be a little bit of a longer lifespan.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
That is amazing. I mean, it's and it's something that
is coming from like a social cueue, which is so
interesting where you can have these hormones kind of like
activated because she sees a male, not because she's there's
something in the water or her diet has changed necessarily,
although diet changes can also affect fertility for sure. But yeah,
(16:48):
I mean, I another reason to be jealous of reptile
is that the control they have over their production. But
you do you see that in other species. You see
that actually in case gurus have some control over their
reproduction that you know. Sometimes it's like, you know, I'm
just not feeling so I'm going to freeze the development
(17:11):
of this embryo until I feel like things are cool
for me to have a baby, which is, you know,
if only, if only, we could be like that. But
that's that's so interesting. So that sounds like, given that
they are so their reproductive cycle, it's not like human
women where you know, during our reproductive years, unless we
(17:32):
use medical intervention, medication, we just have to have our
periods no matter what. They have some that they're able
to shut that off. So that seems like that could
be another potential challenge thought at a zoo because they
if they're not sensing, if they're not you know, getting
(17:52):
sort of the cues that this is a good time
to be reproductively active, they may not be reproductively active.
Are are there kind of ways like are there challenges
to actually like kind of convince her that, like, hey,
now's a good time to mate or to be reproductively active.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I actually think this is a totally fascinating part of
our jobs is that we really don't know a lot
about the social behavior of reptiles, and we're learning a
lot thanks to zoological institutions, and so some of the
research I've been doing on turtle breeding in general suggests
that the over attention of a male, so the males
(18:32):
don't just go breathe with the female one time, right.
They are very insistent and often there's a huge ritual
of nudging and mounting and circling that takes place as
courtship prior to copulation. And then this constant attention from
the males is anecdotally linked in some species to the
reproductive output of a female, so not just sparking the
(18:53):
female to cycle, but actually the outcome of those eggs.
And so that's a really interesting part of our jobs
because a lot of people would see that also as stressful.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Right, this male is hounding this female. In the wild,
he would come through.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Her territory, breathe with her and then move on. But
in a zoo, maybe she's his only potential mate. They're
sharing a habitat and a territory, and so he's constantly
breeding and reproducing with her, and so there's that stress aspect,
but also the aspect of that Potentially that's what is
going to lead to success. And so I think one
of the things that we're very fortunate about here in
(19:26):
Philly is that we have this large outdoor yard. We
have two go up and goos females as well as
two aldabra females. In with a braso so that he
can share his attention. When we did the first introductions,
we did observe them and do a behavioral ethogram, So
we had staff watching and observing a braso where was
he spending his time because we were very concerned of
(19:47):
mommy and mommy getting stressed out at her older age,
and Abraso did selectively choose to spend most of his
time breeding with mommy, but he did spread out the
love and we didn't see a lot of signs of
stress or indicators that we would want to separate those animals.
And so a lot of like really interesting social behavior
stuff that we really are just now on the cusp
(20:09):
of learning and reptiles is really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I mean, that seems to be quite like that's the
over many many years, like hundreds of years of having zoos,
that seems to be one of the major shifts in
terms of modern zoos, which is understanding that the behaviors
of animals in captivity. You can't just copy and paste
animals from the wild, put them in captivity and then
(20:34):
have their behaviors all be the same. Like a lot
of misunderstandings about animal behavior comes from studying animals in
captivity because it's so much easier to study animals in captivity,
and it's I'm completely for researching animals in captivity because
it's a great opportunity for conservation and understanding animal behavior.
(20:55):
But what the mistakes that we used to make were
assuming that you know, you can have like a pack
animal or a migratory animal, or or or you know,
a tortoise with a really long lifespan and a large
area and then see the exact same behaviors in the
(21:17):
zoo that you would see in the wild. So I
think it is I think it's really important to know that,
like you know, today, like in zoo's I think there's
a lot more awareness of like, all right, we even
if we can't completely recreate the Galapagos Island within the zoo,
having the awareness of, like, okay, what are these sorts
(21:39):
of stressors that these animals might feel, particularly with social animals,
where you know, might you might see aggression in social
animals that are usually a lot more chill in the
wild when they don't have time alone from each other.
And so it's from my perspective, it seems like we've
gone from maybe misunder standing these things many many years
(22:01):
ago to now caretakers and researchers in zoos being really
aware of, Okay, we need to create an environment that
is not stressful for this animal and then to understand
why there might be conflicts among species in zoos. And
I think because I think when people think about reptiles,
(22:22):
they don't think of them as being particularly social, right,
Like they see a crocodile, it's like, well, it's just
sitting there, it's not talking to anyone, it's not groomed,
they're not grooming each other, so they don't seem particular Like,
I think it's easier to understand this concept when it
comes to maybe primates or something, right because you see
their social behaviors that are much more like our own.
(22:44):
But would you say, like in the herpetology department, like,
are there a lot of considerations made in terms of
the social lives of these animals.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So I think one of the things I've loved seeing
as I've worked through my career and moved institutions, is
that one we're not just offering more naturalistic habitats and
trying to elicit more natural behaviors, but we're also using
non natural.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Things to get the same output. Right, it doesn't really
matter how I.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Get the natural behavior as long as I'm listening it
because it's something that's healthy for the animal. And so
that's where enrichment and training are coming in to our care.
And I think the biggest thing for reptile keepers and
fimmin keepers is to first say, we don't actually know
and they communicate in very different ways in us. So,
like you said, it's very easy for me to look
(23:33):
at a primate and recognize play behavior or social behaviors,
but not so easy on a snake that's very old,
factory or using pheromones for a lot of it's communication.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I can't possibly evaluate that right.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So all I can do is use my observations and
develop metrics for evaluation that help us learn more and
collect data and then collaborate with other institutions that might
be seeing something similar or have maybe another a larger
sample size on that species. So I think it's one
of the most exciting parts of our job is that
we're able to fill gaps in data on these species
(24:07):
that otherwise would be unattainable.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Are there other endangered species that you are breeding at
the Zoo, either within the Herpetology department or even outside
of the Herpetology department. Is this sort of is mommy
really especialness is like kind of a unique event or
do you have this breeding of endangered species happening in
other areas of the zoo.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
No, we breed a lot of endangered species here at
the Philadelphia Zoo. In the Reptile department specifically, we have
a lot of different we call them species survival plans.
They're the way we collaborate in North America in the
Association of Zoos and Aquaria to move animals around, like
we moved to Braso here to have ideal genetic genetic pairings.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And so we have Vietnamese.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Box turtles that we're working on breeding. We recently hashed
a dwarf crocodile. We have Chinese crocodile lizards. We have
a lot of different species, a lot of different critically
endangered species.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That we're working on breeding here at the Zoo.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
To develop these genetically sustainable populations, but are then available
for education for research, and then of course we collaborate
in the field with a lot of them as well,
and so they can be representatives for their species here
at the zoo. We had an orangutan born a few
years ago. Yeah, so we do. We work with a
lot of different endangered species here and sometimes our role
(25:28):
is just to house them until they're old enough to breed,
and then we work with the Species Survival Plan to
move animals around and sometimes our job is to pair
them up and breed them. So it just depends on
the species and the populations need at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
For instance, for the baby Galapagos tortoises, are these going
to are they all going to remain in your care?
Are they going to go to other institutions? My sense
is that it's usually conservation, where you have breeding programs.
For releasing into the wild is usually quite different because
(26:02):
the problem is if you have a species that you
have at zoo that you're raising, is that it's not
going to know necessarily how to survive. So you don't
want to just send tortoise out there it's like, all right,
good luck, and then it might not thrive.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So what.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Happens to these baby endangered animals after they're born.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
That's such a good question because we're actually fortunate reptiles
and amphibians that we can have a direct release right
As you mentioned, egg laying species generally have a lot
of offspring, and so we use a technique called headstarting,
where we can rear the juvenile animal in captivity until
it's a certain size and then release it. It has
a much higher chance of success in the wild because obviously,
(26:49):
for instance, tabpoles have a high rate of predation and
mortality in the wild.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's why there are so many.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
It makes sure some animals make it to adulthood and
can contribute to the population. By head starting animals, we
can give them that kickstart in the wild and guarantee
more animals make it, or not guarantee, but increase the
chances that more animals will make it to adulthood and
then become reproductive parts of the wild population.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
However, that does.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Not mean that every animal that we're breeding in zoological
institutions is going back into the wild. There's a high
risk of transferring diseases and a lot of other problems
that we don't necessarily want to perpetuate in the wild
without proper testing and quarantining procedures. So most of our
populations are for sustainability within the zoological field. That allow
(27:36):
us to maintain those genetics if needed, and then also
to research these populations. And so these tortoises will not
go back to the wild. They will be part of
our North American population of western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoises,
which was forty four individuals and now is sixty so
really nice big kick yeah, in the population, and we
will not keep them all. They will have to be
(27:57):
moved out in place to these get very large and
live a every long time, so we will move them
out into the aza population at other zoos within North America.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, I think that's and I think it is something
that is important for people to learn about, which is
that zoos. Natural history museums there's a lot of stuff there,
both living specimens and you know, not living specimens where
it is preserving a lot of information so we can
(28:31):
look at DNA from an animal as this huge library
of information. And you know, obviously with natural history museums
the specimens are almost always not living animals, but you
still have like outside of the like display area which
is for education and is amazing, I love it, but
(28:52):
inside sort of the archives, you have a ton of
stuff that is there for research, and also just to
preserve things that you may not know what to do
with yet. Right, Like one of my favorite examples is
a lot of museums have ear wax from whales, and
they didn't they didn't know what to do with these,
Like they're these like hard chunks, they're almost like they're
(29:13):
kind of like fossils, but it's just hardened ear wax
from whales, And they had no idea what to do
with them for like hundreds of years, but they kept it,
and then finally some researchers realized we can actually like
cut into this and look at it and use it
to understand better whales seasonal diets and migratory patterns. So
(29:35):
I imagine this is something that happens in zoos as well.
Like you are, you have the front facing part of
the zoo, which is educating people, letting people see into
a world that otherwise they would not have access to,
uh and kind of you know, allowing people to explore
(29:55):
the their love of animals, which I think is wonderful.
But then you also have just a massive amount of
information that is either being researched or there in case
we lose some of these animals, so that we still
have at least some of the record of these animals
(30:17):
in living specimens. So can you talk a little bit
about that, like the kind of maybe unseen side of
conservation at the zoo.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, absolutely, So we do have a zoological information system
where we collect vast amounts of data. So while you
come to Philadelphia Zoo and you only see two Glopagos
tortoises or now you know, nineteen, are nineteen or contributing
data to the overall forty.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Four that we have housed currently.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
But then just think about the number of Glophagos tortses
that we've had in human care in North America in
our history. And so every day the animal caretakers are
collecting data, they're collecting important information on each individual here
at the zoo, and then these individuals and they become
part of a population and that amasses a large amount
of data. And so this provides a repository right for
(31:12):
future research and for current research. We never know what
questions we're going to ask or what needs we're going
to have in the future, and what conservation issues might
come up and where that data might be super valuable,
and so often we're fielding research requests as as zoo
professionals from universities where there's a professor or a student
(31:32):
doing their master's research and they would like us to
share data with them, or they would like to come
observe our animals for one of their research questions. So
being able to provide that opportunity is huge.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
This is a question that just occurred to me. So
I don't want to put too much pressure on you,
but what, like, are there any really funny kind of
ways of data collection? Because I've heard stories of the
very creative ways people have to, say, do fecal samples
at zoos or try to figure out, like, hey, whose
(32:06):
poop is this, and then using glitter or dye that's
safe in order to identify whose poop is this? So
is there are there any like really funny ways either
in general at the Philadelphia Zoo or within the herpetology
department where you guys have had to do really weird
things in the name of research.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Well, you named mine.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
I mean for me, I did a fecal hormone study
with crocodilians at a different institution, but I had to
figure out how to get them to be markers in
their fecal samples.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
So that I knew whose species were each and one
way was dye. So and you don't want to use like.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
A red dye, right because they will come out looking like,
you know, oh my god, what's proud animal.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, so one.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Animal got blue dye and had very green poop, and
another animal got glitter. And that was hilarious because when
I was feeding this crocodile one day, it kind of
went up to grab the rat that had glitter in it,
and it hit the rat and it just exploded like
a glitter bomb all over the exhibits. So that was
a really fun day for me when I was like,
(33:11):
oh my goodness, you didn't see that happening.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And glitter gets everywhere, so everywhere probably still there to
this day. Yeah, that's I love that. I mean, you
have to you have to get creative because it's not
like you can't interview these animals.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
You can't.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
They don't use toilets, you can't have them come. Well,
you can do labs on them, but if you're just
trying to let them live their lives and then collect
their collect biological specimens from them, sometimes you got to
feed them a glitter rat. That's amazing. So Yeah, any
(33:50):
other conservation news, any other zoo babies or weird and
wild stuff happening.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
No, I think the biggest news here is that we're
getting ready to you know, we've broke ground and we're
working on our new Bear Country exhibit and so the
opening of that is going to just be phenomenal next year.
And we recently opened the Flamingo walkthrough, so that has
been a really exciting guest opportunity where you can walk
in with some of our some of our flamingos.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Is a nice new habitat.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So just you know, constantly progressing, moving forward, working with
a lot of endangered species here and doing our best
to really push the needle for conservation and animal care.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
That's fantastic. And how are all the How are all
of Mommy's babies doing now? Are they all all good?
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yes, there's doing awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
We're really happy we have an exhibit inside the Reptility
Amphibian House. But in this nice weather, we've been able
to get a group of them outside as well. So
getting them out in natural, full spectrum lighting is just
really beneficial to their health. So we're getting them outside
and they're they're growing like weeds.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I'll tell you that they're they're adorable.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
How okay, just one more like these? How small do
they start off? And then like because they got to
get to be around four hundred pounds eventually.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah, so they hatched around but you know, anywhere between
sixty and eighty grams, so like roughly the size of
a tennis.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Ball right fit in the palm of your hand.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And I mean they are going on five months, six months,
the oldest ones now, and they've doubled in size.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Wow, amazing. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's fantastic. Hopefully
they will be big and cumbersome real soon. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
It's one of the actually the really difficult parts is
making sure they don't grow too fast because they are,
you know, grazers. They're constantly ready to eat, and so
one of the things we learned early on wearing giant
tortoises is that we don't want them to grow too
fast because they'll end up with shell issues and arthritis.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
And that's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
So it's actually a huge job raising these babies. Like
we're weighing and measuring them every month. Our nutritionist is
amazing and she's really tracking their diet intake and what
they don't eat, so we know when do we increase
the food availability to them. It's a really interesting process
that is teaching us a lot about controlling our offerings
(36:05):
to these animals. Because they are hungry and they are ready.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
To eat, they will eat. Uh yeah, I I sympathize
with that if I have a dog. I have a
dog who would eat, who would eat herself sick if
I if I lit her so I can't. But she
thinks I'm a monster for it, and that's just that's
just how it's gotta be. But I can baby Galapago's
(36:28):
tortoise give you puppy dog eyes when they're not getting
enough food or they do. They just kind of look
eh whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
They're just like air biting around like the staff are,
like they're hungry.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
That is that is adorable. Uh Well, before we go,
we're gonna play a little game called the mister Animal
sound game. Guess who's squawking? Last week, the mystery animal
sound hint was this. You can find this animal in
Kara Jaimo's book about sea creatures called Leaving the Ocean
(37:04):
was a mistake. We talked to Karl last week, so
another part of the clue if you have not read
the book is that it's not a bird and it's
not a superhero sidekick. This one is really really tricky
if you haven't read the book. So I apologize. I'm
I'm immediately giving you hard node for this. All right, Lauren,
(37:36):
do you have any gifts? Oh my gosh, this is
such a I would I wouldn't get this one. I'm
just gonna I'm gonna come out with that. It's it's
very very tricky.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Leaning towards a marine mammal, but yeah, I don't know.
I'm thinking like a.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
It does kind of sound.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Like a he was eating a clam there, and that's
where I went with that.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
It sounds it sounds like a happy sound, like a
sea otter. But it's really fascinating because this is actually
a fish. This is this is the sea robin. Congratulations
to Emily m Alaura W and Craig K for guessing correctly.
It is a fish that is able to make this
(38:22):
kind of like weird groaning, gurgling sound that you can
only hear as people. We can only hear it on lands.
So this particular fish is very unhappy to be on land,
so it is complaining, But yeah, fish do not normally
make a ton of vocalizations. It was a big deal
a few years ago and we were able to actually
get some recording devices near coral reefs and found out
(38:46):
that there's a lot more sounds than one would expect
that are being made by the fish and by the
invertebrates that are living in the coral reefs. But yeah,
sound communication, except for with cetaceans whales, it's not usually
going on with a lot of sea life. So it's
really interesting when we find a fish, something that is
(39:09):
not a mammal in the ocean who can make a
sound like why can't.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Make this sound?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
What are they doing down there? Onto this week's mystery
animal sound. The hint is this, you may find these
colorful animals at zoos, but they're not always in an exhibit.
All right, Lauren, do you have any guesses?
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Well, from your hint, I want to say, but I
feel like when I've heard they sounded.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
More like cats than that did.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Well, you're absolutely correct, Will I will be bleeping out
your answer, but the listeners will know that you got
it correctly. I have personal experience with one of these
that showed up in my yard when I was a kid,
and so pretty, so amazing. These are all more hints
for you guys to have figured out. But like, it's
a beautiful animal and then it just makes the most
(40:04):
god awful noise and shrieks at you. It's very intimidating.
And I have seen these at a lot of zoos,
and they're often just chilling out walking around. They're at
the I know for sure they're at the San Diego Zoo,
and usually you can just see them kind of like
(40:24):
hanging out with the visitors. And I've never quite understood
what they're doing there. I do, I'm pretty sure they're
there purposefully, but yeah, they seem to just enjoy hanging out.
So if you guys think you know the answer to
this week's mister Animal sound game, you can write to
(40:44):
me at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. Lauren,
thank you so much for coming on today. Where can
people find more information about Mommy, about the babies, about
the Philadelphia Zoo?
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yep, well it's all over the news Mommy and her Baby,
but you can definitely find out moreation on our website
and then obviously please come to the zoo if you're
in the Philadelphia area such a wonderful place. The reptile
house is open and the babies can be seen inside
and outside seasonally, and Mommy and abraso out in the
yard as well when temperatures are ideal.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Amazing. That sounds so fun. I would love to see
those babies if I was in the area. Maybe someday,
maybe when they're grown, I'll be able to see them.
And thank you guys so much for listening. If you're
enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review,
it's greatly appreciated. That does help me a lot. I
read all the reviews and I appreciate the feedback. And
(41:40):
thanks to the space Cussocks for their super awesome song.
Ex Alumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or he guess what why of you listen
to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't
tell you what to do, but if I was your mother,
I'd probably dig a hole, leave you in there and
bury you again and just hope for the best. See
(42:02):
you next Wednesday. H
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.