To the zoo!

A note to my blogateers: This blog contains comments about breeding and artificial insemination and the anatomy associated with such events, it also contains a brief description of the dissection of a dead monkey. If you can't handle reading this sort of thing, I give you permission to not read this post...but just this once!

The three vet students on the raptor rotation and I went to spend the day at the Montgomery Zoo today.  It's a small to medium sized zoo with about 500 animals.  We started out by doing rounds on the animals that had some sort of medical issue going on.  The first one was a giraffe who had injured her leg.  She had been spooked and fallen in the stall area and as a result had shortening of the tendons in one of her lower legs.  When the injury initially happened, she was basically walking on the tippy toe (that's a medical term) of her hoof.  But, with some splinting of the area to provide support and encourage flexion of her fetlock joint (kind of like our ankle...large animal people ease up! I know it's not the same), her stance was much closer to normal.

We then went to see a pregnant bison.  They aren't sure of her due date because the she and the bull mated several times.  We discussed some signs that we see in any bovine (cows included!) when parturition (birth) is approaching.  I wish I could say that I remembered all the things that we talked about in my large animal class but aside from terms like "winking vulva" and "waxing"...the whole reproduction thing was a bit fuzzy (sorry Brenda! I'm going to redeem myself in another paragraph just wait!).  As we talked about some signs, it definitely came back to me.  So, in case you're dying to know here's a few things the zookeepers will look for: about a week out- swollen vulva, mucousy discharge, "bagging up" or lactation then a day or so out: stop eating and separate herself somewhat from the others.

Next we went to do a neonate exam on a 3 day old big horn sheep.  A few important things to look for are: mental status (i.e. are they alert, running around, curious, etc.), have they pooped, does the umbilicus look healthy and free from infection/inflammation, is it a male or female, ears/eyes/mouth (it's important to look for a cleft palate, which I guess is common enough to be a problem and can cause issues with feeding), conformation issues (limb deformities, etc.) and cardiovascular issues. So for the cardiovascular part, we use our stethoscope to listen to the heart.  Neonates of all species can be born with heart defects that can severely affect their ability to thrive and may be fatal. We listened to this guy's heart and heard a pretty significant murmur (Here it comes Brenda!).  After we all listened, the zoo vet asked us what kind of murmur we thought it was and what grade we would give it.  The way we categorize murmurs depends on where it occurs in the beat. So the normal heart beat is a "lub dub", the lub represents the "systolic" and the dub is the "diastolic" so if a heart beat sounds like lub sssshhhh dub there is a systolic murmur and if it's lub dub ssssshhhh it's diastolic.  I felt that it was a systolic, grade 3 murmur (the grade has to do with how easy it is to hear/it's intensity) and darn if Mr. Zoo Man didn't say the same thing! Kachow!  That's about the only time today I felt like I had any idea what I was talking about so I'm going to revel in that for a moment...

Ok, I'm good. Later in the day, we got called over to the enclosure for the Scarlet Ibis birds...they look like this:

The enclosure is a huge meshy looking tent-like dealy ( I don't know how else to describe it).  Apparently, one of these birds was up towards the top of the enclosure (15+ feet high) when a hawk swooped down towards it from the outside.  The hawk obviously couldn't get to the Ibis (we'll call him Jorge) but Jorge was startled and fell from where he was perched down to the concrete ground below.  According to the zookeeper, he landed on his head.  When we arrived, Jorge was stunned and not able to stand on his own.  We did a quick exam to try to assess his condition.  Now, if anyone remembers back to one of my neuro posts, I talked about pupil size and response to light as part of a neuro exam.  The hard thing with birds, especially wild birds, is that the pupils will most likely be fixed and dilated just due to the stress of being handled by people and secondly, birds have the ability to voluntarily contract and dilate their pupils.  As far as I know, no mammal can do this.  It's a cool parlor trick but it makes it difficult to assess neurological damage based on the eyes.  Since Jorge couldn't stand on his own, we took him back to the clinic, and by "we" I mean that yours truly got to hold the little guy on our short drive back (I felt cool for a brief moment).  As you can see in the picture, these birds have quite the beak.  That kid was not messing around with it either, he nipped at everyone that came anywhere near him, so I had to be sure to get that beak on lockdown.  When we got back, we weighed him (1.09 kg) which is important in determining doses if it's decided to administer medications.  We then just put him in a cage and observed him over the next hour.  He seemed to show signs of recovery rather quickly.  Within an hour, he was upright and sitting kind of on his haunches.  Given, this is not exactly normal for a bird, but it was a huge improvement from his initial condition.  Since he was showing signs of recovery, he was not given any medications and will continue to be under observation.

We also talked, at great length, about artificial insemination (AI).  The staff is preparing to do AI on an Indian Rhinoceros that they have at the zoo.  Thus far in the US, no AI procedures on Indian Rhinos have been successful.  The rhinos have gotten pregnant but the babies have not survived.  The difficult thing about AI is determining when the animal is ovulating, i.e. when is the appropriate time to inseminate.  So there are tests done on the animal's urine and heat cycles are tracked and behavior is monitored and so on and so forth. But, when it really comes down to it, it's still a bit of a guessing game. It was at some point during this conversation that I received a fairly odd compliment-like statement.  Mr. Zoo Man was describing the process of AI and explaining that he, being a large man (he's apparently a professional power lifter in his spare time) with large yet short trunk-like arms insufficient for plunging into the depths of an animal's reproductive tract, would not be the one physically performing the AI.  He then pointed to me and said, "You have the perfect build for doing AI work." My reply? "Ummm, good to know."  Now, spending my time palpating the inner workings of a large animal's hind end has never been a dream of mine, but it's good to know that, should it ever become my dream, I have a distinct physical advantage over many other job applicants.

Last event of the day was a monkey necropsy! A necropsy is just the animal form of an autopsy.  This little squirrel monkey had been found dead in the enclosure that morning.  Apparently, he was an older monkey but there was no outwardly apparent cause of death.  One of the vet students had been through a necropsy rotation so she did the procedure under the guidance of the zoo veterinarian (previously referred to as Mr. Zoo Man).  Often, no definitive cause of death can be determined from a gross (not microscopic) examination of the tissue that is done during a necropsy.  However, we are looking for any obvious abnormalities in the organs such as masses, hemorrhaging, necrosis (dead tissue), various signs of trauma, fluid where it shouldn't be, foreign bodies, etc.  The organs that are removed are preserved in formalin and submitted to a lab for closer examination.  We found some areas of hemorrhage in the small intestine (looks like bruises kind of), the lungs were slightly hardened and the lung tissue did not look healthy in some areas and the right side of the heart appeared to be thin-walled and flaccid indicating possible heart disease.  There was also a fair amount of fluid in the thoracic (chest) cavity that should not have been there.  Any abnormalities that are found are noted on the report that is sent to the lab so that they have a better idea of what organs/tissues to pay closer attention to. 

That was the end of our zoo adventures. It was definitely interesting to get a glimpse into zoo medicine and how different it is from small animal medicine. I used to think I wanted to do zoo med, but I'm pretty sure that I like small animal med much better.  Though there is that whole AI thing...maybe I missed my calling.