Sea Otters, Stingrays, Fox Kits. & A Penguin Update!
I finished my internship at Aquarium of the Pacific several weeks ago, but then I went to Panama and then Harry Potter was just so good I had to write about it. So now's the time to start getting you caught up.
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| Southern Sea Otter |
One of my favorite experiences at AOP was helping with a Sea Otter physical exam. You may not know this, but these cute little creatures are MEAN. I mean nasty mean. Most marine mammals can be trained to be handled or to give blood draws, but not otters. One of our otters was actually trained to allow blood draws and everyone at conferences was like "SAY WHAT?!!!" But we didn't do the physical on that one.
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| Soooo Cute! |
We started out sedating Odin and then brought him in and put him under as Dr. Adams conducted the physical exam and did the blood draw. I was in charge of taking his temperature and monitoring his respiratory and heart rates every five minutes. But here's the thing - marine mammals don't breathe very much. So I was freaking out every time I took his resp rate because it was always only one or two breaths a minute. But he did well. Sea Otters are super cute and their fur is very soft. I loved it.
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| Southern Stingray |
One of the reasons I enjoyed this internship so much was watching Dr. Adams develop new procedures. Zoo and Aquarium animal medicine is constantly being developed. Southern Stingrays breed like rabbits, so most aquariums only keep all male or all female populations. AOP keeps only females. One of them came pregnant though and delivered a young male. This poor guy faced only two options - euthanasia or getting his claspers chopped off. Neither seems too appealing.
So Dr. Adams wanted to develop a new procedure. Up to this point, a vasectomy had never been performed on a shark or a ray, so Lance was on his own as to figuring it out. He discovered that if he goes in through the back (going through the abdomen didn't work since the testes are at the back of the body cavity) he could cauterize the vas deferens. So now there is a new procedure!
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| Arctic Fox Kits |
Now I wasn't there for the arrival of these last little guys, but they're just so cute that I had to post some pictures of them on here. The aquarium recently opened a new exhibit called Arctic and Antarctic: Our Polar Regions In Peril. The face of this new gallery is the arctic fox. And two cute cuddly little arctic fox puppies now have their home in the modified surgery room of the Molina Animal Care Center (wish I was still there!). So enjoy these pics!
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| Magellanic Penguin |
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