Checking a lion’s blood pressure, drawing blood from an elephant
August 29, 2022 3:02 PM Subscribe
No one enjoys getting a shot at the doctor, including lions! Training helps us give our lions the injections they need. When we say, “line up,” and move our hands along their enclosures, the lions lay down with their sides and hips pressed against the mesh. More from the Smithsonian Zoo on animal care (gorillas, elephants and more!)
If you like this, you'll looooooooove "Secrets of the Zoo" (streaming on Disney+). Every episode they visit 3 or 4 animals, usually one who's breeding or having a baby, one who's learning a new behavior, and one who's having a health crisis. The keepers and veterinarians are the ones talking about the animals, and it's everything from "how we trained an elephant to get an ultrasound" to "what to do when a super-nervous herd animal has to be brought in for medical care" and "here's a cute snake doing cute snake behaviors."
It's about the animals and about the human side of caring for them. Animals do die in the episodes, and you always see their human keepers' emotions. One of my favorite episodes is when they call in a cardiologist-for-humans from the local university hospital for a consult about a gorilla, because the vet wants to get a primate heart expert's opinion before he commences treatment. The Very Senior Cardiologist is just grinning like an idiot talking to the cameras afterwards and going, "I've never had a gorilla patient before!" He says a couple of erudite things about how the heart was alike and different and what he saw on the scans, and then goes back to being excited he got to see a gorilla. (He did not touch the gorilla, just observed behavior and looked at scans and tests.)
My absolute all-time favorite episode is one where they're doing surgery on a black bear and things don't quite go as planned.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:43 PM on August 29, 2022 [15 favorites]
It's about the animals and about the human side of caring for them. Animals do die in the episodes, and you always see their human keepers' emotions. One of my favorite episodes is when they call in a cardiologist-for-humans from the local university hospital for a consult about a gorilla, because the vet wants to get a primate heart expert's opinion before he commences treatment. The Very Senior Cardiologist is just grinning like an idiot talking to the cameras afterwards and going, "I've never had a gorilla patient before!" He says a couple of erudite things about how the heart was alike and different and what he saw on the scans, and then goes back to being excited he got to see a gorilla. (He did not touch the gorilla, just observed behavior and looked at scans and tests.)
My absolute all-time favorite episode is one where they're doing surgery on a black bear and things don't quite go as planned.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:43 PM on August 29, 2022 [15 favorites]
My dad co-authored an evolutionary genetics study that required fresh blood samples from all sorts of creatures, including an elephant. You (well, a trained professional) have to stick them behind the ear. Elephants are more easygoing than lions but still, that seems like a pretty nerve-wracking job.
posted by atoxyl at 5:17 PM on August 29, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 5:17 PM on August 29, 2022 [3 favorites]
Something that seems to be talked about more these days in ordinary pet care is the idea of "cooperative care." I like the idea, but I think there are some difficulties it can't necessarily overcome. Yet I imagine when you're dealing with a lion or an elephant, it's either cooperative care or unconscious care!
posted by praemunire at 8:51 PM on August 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 8:51 PM on August 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
stick them behind the ear
Years ago, I went on a one day animal handling course because I was doing behavioural studies in mice. We were taught the correct kind way to pick up various mammals - mice, rats, rabbits, yes, even guinea-pigs. After lunch we had a session on drawing blood from the same animals: each species had a different access point. There is a large vein in the back of a rabbit's ear from which you can draw 5ml of dark blood . . . that's when I discovered that I am a fainter-at-the-sight-of-blood and was excused the rest of the course.
Many years later some pals were investigating the genetics of the domestication of cattle and I volunteered to get 10cc from one of my father-in-law's goats. That's how I discovered [miss] where [miss] a goat's [hit] femoral vein travels up its inside leg. Doing the task in the fresh air kept me on my feet.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:54 PM on August 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
Years ago, I went on a one day animal handling course because I was doing behavioural studies in mice. We were taught the correct kind way to pick up various mammals - mice, rats, rabbits, yes, even guinea-pigs. After lunch we had a session on drawing blood from the same animals: each species had a different access point. There is a large vein in the back of a rabbit's ear from which you can draw 5ml of dark blood . . . that's when I discovered that I am a fainter-at-the-sight-of-blood and was excused the rest of the course.
Many years later some pals were investigating the genetics of the domestication of cattle and I volunteered to get 10cc from one of my father-in-law's goats. That's how I discovered [miss] where [miss] a goat's [hit] femoral vein travels up its inside leg. Doing the task in the fresh air kept me on my feet.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:54 PM on August 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
My seven year old has been going to a lot of zoo camp this summer, and has so many stories about how they train the animals. This kind of training meant that all the kids could touch Herman the rhino, who was trained to lean up against his enclosure. If you want to get a kid excited, arrange for them to touch a rhino. It comes up in conversation almost everyday, two months after it happened.
posted by rockindata at 3:42 AM on August 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by rockindata at 3:42 AM on August 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
Something that seems to be talked about more these days in ordinary pet care is the idea of "cooperative care." I like the idea, but I think there are some difficulties it can't necessarily overcome. Yet I imagine when you're dealing with a lion or an elephant, it's either cooperative care or unconscious care!
One of my dogs flips out when restrained in any way and has done since he was a tiny puppy, so we spend a lot of time working on cooperative care with him. (He's perfectly fine holding himself still, but it seems to have to be something he has a sense of control over? IDK, in literally every other respect he's a very polite and well-mannered dog.) It's definitely a lot more work-intensive to set up than traditional restraint for vet care, but it's also a lot easier to maintain once you've set the idea up, and definitely less of a pain in the ass than sedatives forever.
We also use cooperative care principles for nail dremeling with my other dog, which I intend to continue doing for all future dogs until the end of time. A lot of cooperative care-style work entails offering rewards for making grooming or medical care easy to get through for animals, and it really makes it much, much easier to work with them. It's part of the same basic principle with which my current lab accustoms mice to handling: if you teach an animal to work with you so that you can access its body for medical care instead of just expecting to catch and restrain it, you need a lot less personal skill to execute basic medical tasks.
Obviously it doesn't always work, either with wild animals or domestic ones. For example, with the singing mice, if you tried to accustom them to handling they'd just bite you faster to make it stop, so it was much easier on everyone's stress levels for humans handling them to simply get very good at handling them as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of time they were being stressed, and that kind of obviates cooperative care. You'll see that kind of thing sometimes, especially in very small animals and prey species. Nevertheless, it's a really great strategy when you can devote the time to it, and it is much easier on everyone in the long run when it comes to getting animals' basic needs met.
posted by sciatrix at 6:56 AM on August 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
One of my dogs flips out when restrained in any way and has done since he was a tiny puppy, so we spend a lot of time working on cooperative care with him. (He's perfectly fine holding himself still, but it seems to have to be something he has a sense of control over? IDK, in literally every other respect he's a very polite and well-mannered dog.) It's definitely a lot more work-intensive to set up than traditional restraint for vet care, but it's also a lot easier to maintain once you've set the idea up, and definitely less of a pain in the ass than sedatives forever.
We also use cooperative care principles for nail dremeling with my other dog, which I intend to continue doing for all future dogs until the end of time. A lot of cooperative care-style work entails offering rewards for making grooming or medical care easy to get through for animals, and it really makes it much, much easier to work with them. It's part of the same basic principle with which my current lab accustoms mice to handling: if you teach an animal to work with you so that you can access its body for medical care instead of just expecting to catch and restrain it, you need a lot less personal skill to execute basic medical tasks.
Obviously it doesn't always work, either with wild animals or domestic ones. For example, with the singing mice, if you tried to accustom them to handling they'd just bite you faster to make it stop, so it was much easier on everyone's stress levels for humans handling them to simply get very good at handling them as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of time they were being stressed, and that kind of obviates cooperative care. You'll see that kind of thing sometimes, especially in very small animals and prey species. Nevertheless, it's a really great strategy when you can devote the time to it, and it is much easier on everyone in the long run when it comes to getting animals' basic needs met.
posted by sciatrix at 6:56 AM on August 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
A lot of cooperative care-style work entails offering rewards for making grooming or medical care easy to get through for animals, and it really makes it much, much easier to work with them.
It seems more ethical, too. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the ethics of dog ownership since I got mine.
posted by praemunire at 9:01 AM on August 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
It seems more ethical, too. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the ethics of dog ownership since I got mine.
posted by praemunire at 9:01 AM on August 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
London Zoo have just completed their annual check of all their animals' vital statistics (article here), which includes some lovely examples of cooperative care.
Sumatran tigress Gaysha stretched out against a giant ruler, eight weeks after giving birth to three Critically Endangered tiger cubs; the only animals not being recorded in the annual event...
posted by In Your Shell Like at 9:46 AM on August 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sumatran tigress Gaysha stretched out against a giant ruler, eight weeks after giving birth to three Critically Endangered tiger cubs; the only animals not being recorded in the annual event...
posted by In Your Shell Like at 9:46 AM on August 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Our new rescue, known as Garbage-Eating Sewercat, is eight pounds of muscle and sinew and canNOT be physically dominated into remaining stationary to have his claws clipped the way our softer, lazier, dumber cats can be. I tried different poses, I tried wrapping him up in a towel, I tried a harness... He doesn't mind having his paws and toes touched and played with, doesn't even really mind the clippers, just hates to have someone confine him or hold him still. He's not aggressive, just bound and determined to squirm and contort himself until he houdinis out of any restraint and wriggles away.
I was despairing until I remembered that he loves watching videos on the internet. Sure 'nuff, I put on Dodo's Odd Couples and he was perfectly willing to sprawl out and watch his Stories while I clipped his claws, easy peasy. Cats are weird.
posted by BrashTech at 11:12 AM on August 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
I was despairing until I remembered that he loves watching videos on the internet. Sure 'nuff, I put on Dodo's Odd Couples and he was perfectly willing to sprawl out and watch his Stories while I clipped his claws, easy peasy. Cats are weird.
posted by BrashTech at 11:12 AM on August 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
In Your Shell Like, thanks for the link to the London Zoo's weigh in.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:16 PM on August 30, 2022
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:16 PM on August 30, 2022
It seems more ethical, too. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the ethics of dog ownership since I got mine.
Yeah, I am generally a big fan of allowing my animals to make choices as often as I can. Plus cooperative care reduces stress and discomfort for everyone--it allows the animal to pace their interaction with an unpleasant task or experience, because inherently the point of cooperative care is creating an environment where the animal restrains itself, and in theory there's nothing stopping the animal from tapping out and communicating, say, 'even though I really want the cookie you're offering to pay me if I put my foot on the rest while you Dremel my toes, I don't want you to do that so I'm not putting my foot on the rest.' Which is legitimately an ongoing conversation I've had with dogs
As with literally anything in animal training and behavioral modification it's possible to use abusively. For any positive reinforcement based technique, part of making the rewards you use to pay the animal for its behavior salient involves controlling the environment to restrict the supply of the good shit, right? So I've observed some people trying to modify animal behavior in ways I think are unethical, by tightly restricting some resource such that submitting to the required behavioral task is literally the only way to acquire that resource, such that you manage to make positive reinforcement coercive by making access to the resource contingent on good performance, with nothing offered for "free".
That isn't generally how zoos are using this technique, to be 1000% transparent. Usually, zoos offer rewards that are partn of the animal's daily diet anyway, so that even if the animal refuses to engage, it still gets access to everything it needs at that time.
I just think the ethics of animal behavior modification are neat and I find that imagining how a given paradigm could become abusive is a good exercise that helps prevent training approaches from becoming coercive. I spend a lot of time thinking about them as a part of how I think about optimal training and management approaches for the various animals under my supervision -- both my pets, like my dogs and cats, but also the mice I'm responsible for at work.
posted by sciatrix at 6:08 AM on August 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Yeah, I am generally a big fan of allowing my animals to make choices as often as I can. Plus cooperative care reduces stress and discomfort for everyone--it allows the animal to pace their interaction with an unpleasant task or experience, because inherently the point of cooperative care is creating an environment where the animal restrains itself, and in theory there's nothing stopping the animal from tapping out and communicating, say, 'even though I really want the cookie you're offering to pay me if I put my foot on the rest while you Dremel my toes, I don't want you to do that so I'm not putting my foot on the rest.' Which is legitimately an ongoing conversation I've had with dogs
As with literally anything in animal training and behavioral modification it's possible to use abusively. For any positive reinforcement based technique, part of making the rewards you use to pay the animal for its behavior salient involves controlling the environment to restrict the supply of the good shit, right? So I've observed some people trying to modify animal behavior in ways I think are unethical, by tightly restricting some resource such that submitting to the required behavioral task is literally the only way to acquire that resource, such that you manage to make positive reinforcement coercive by making access to the resource contingent on good performance, with nothing offered for "free".
That isn't generally how zoos are using this technique, to be 1000% transparent. Usually, zoos offer rewards that are partn of the animal's daily diet anyway, so that even if the animal refuses to engage, it still gets access to everything it needs at that time.
I just think the ethics of animal behavior modification are neat and I find that imagining how a given paradigm could become abusive is a good exercise that helps prevent training approaches from becoming coercive. I spend a lot of time thinking about them as a part of how I think about optimal training and management approaches for the various animals under my supervision -- both my pets, like my dogs and cats, but also the mice I'm responsible for at work.
posted by sciatrix at 6:08 AM on August 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
So I've observed some people trying to modify animal behavior in ways I think are unethical, by tightly restricting some resource such that submitting to the required behavioral task is literally the only way to acquire that resource, such that you manage to make positive reinforcement coercive by making access to the resource contingent on good performance, with nothing offered for "free".
You would not believe how often teachers and therapists tried to get me to use this exact technique to improve my autistic child's behavior when he was little. "He likes to play the drums? Make that a 'reward'!" Like everything was supposed to be a reward for compliant behavior, he wouldn't get anything he liked just by virtue of being a person. That mentality was always a sign that it was time to nope right out of that teacher or therapist relationship.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:17 AM on August 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
You would not believe how often teachers and therapists tried to get me to use this exact technique to improve my autistic child's behavior when he was little. "He likes to play the drums? Make that a 'reward'!" Like everything was supposed to be a reward for compliant behavior, he wouldn't get anything he liked just by virtue of being a person. That mentality was always a sign that it was time to nope right out of that teacher or therapist relationship.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:17 AM on August 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
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posted by spamandkimchi at 3:06 PM on August 29, 2022