Lately

Hi all, sorry it has been a little while since my last update. Life has sped away from me here in Arkansas. The days fly by and then there always seems to be something planned in the evening when I get back to the house. Which is great because I don’t want to miss anything, I want to experience everything I can while I am here. So needless to say, I haven’t had a lot of time at home to catch up on reading, writing and my other hobby type things.

Today was my first ‘Keeper talk’. Basically we pick a subject to speak on and pick a enclosure to give it in front of and give the half hour presentation. It is advertised before hand so people can choose which they may want to come out for. I was the first of the new interns to go so it was a little nerve racking not knowing what to expect or how it has been going for the other interns. The topic I picked was Cat Behavior, the most interesting aspect of the job to me and is something I have always been involved with in some way. I did my talk in front of the Ligers because for one, they respond to enrichment and are quite young and active. I started of talking about enrichment and why we do it and I gave both the Ligers and egg and a heavy duty cardboard roll sprayed with coconut. As expected they went crazy for it and did exactly what I wanted them to do. They grabbed it carried it off and sniffed the coconut. They made what we call a ‘stink face’, where they open their mouth and stick their tongues out to take in the scent. They have a scent organ on the roof of their mouth called the Jacob’s Organ.  So I talked about it for a little and then the background of ligers, about how they are a man made species and have many different genetic risks. Also, how they have a curious mix of behaviors from both species. They chuff like tigers and they are just learning to carol with the lions. I talked about why tigers chuff, it is a greeting to each other to basically say I come in peace. A friendly greeting that if given to them, even by people, they usually respond. I had a little girl ask me to demonstrate, so I chuffed at the female liger and she chuffed back. The little girl spent the rest of the time practicing so she could go try it on all of the other tigers. I steered her towards the friendly tigers that would most likely respond. I moved on to caroling and why/when they do it in captivity and in the wild. I talked about lion mane and the reason for them, I talked about Leopard niches and what that means. I talked about Lion prides, parental care and sexual maturity. Question time and then it was off to the tour.

I am working on a few bio’s of some of the cats here to share with you all and will post tomorrow….