Zoo InternQuest is a seven-week career exploration program for San Diego County high school juniors and seniors. Students have the unique opportunity to meet professionals working for the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and Institute for Conservation Research, learn about their jobs, and then blog about their experience online. Follow their adventures here!
Today most people are familiar with of the basics of conservation without a hint of hesitation: reduce, reuse, and recycle. However, conservation encompasses so much more than reducing our carbon foot print on the world. Don’t get me wrong it is still very important to reduce the pollution we inflict on our environment—however, people seem to neglect the simple fact that conservation is also about protecting and preserving animals, plants, and natural resources. Believe me, I know that at times it doesn’t seem like an average person, like me or you can really do anything significant to aide conservation efforts, but that can’t be farther from the truth. It all starts with becoming informed. Knowledge is our biggest ally in abetting conservation and making a positive impact in our world.
The Zoo is a lead advocate for wildlife conservation with its work with giant pandas, California condors, koalas, and African elephants. While many divisions within the Institute for Conservation Research have taken part in these efforts to conserve animals and their habits, the Behavioral Ecology department has played a key role in researching and documenting factors responsible for reproductive diversity among animals. This week interns had the amazing opportunity to meet with Director of Behavioral Ecology, Matt Anderson, and Research Coordinator, Jennifer Tobey. The information collected by the Behavioral Ecology department contributes to the conservation of endangered species and their habitats in both the wild and managed care. The team utilizes innovative science, like hormone mapping and sensory ecology, to learn more about elephant socialization and mate selection of koalas.
By analyzing elephant vocalization, Matt Anderson has worked closely with elephants in hopes of better understanding their complex social dynamics. Dr. Anderson hypothesizes that elephants have two different calls: the trumpet call and the rumble call. Most people are familiar with the trumpet call as it is most commonly associated with elephants. The trumpet call is essentially an alarm call used to alert herd of potential danger. The rumble call is low frequency sound that females typically use during mating season and at the end of pregnancy. However, with the use of a spectrograph, which is a visual illustration of the sound frequencies, scientist have unearthed that there is a secret message to the rumble call that is so low that humans can’t hear. About two thirds of the rumble is below 20 hertz which is considered infrasonic. However, by shifting the lower frequencies of the rumble, scientists have discovered that elephants can manipulate the infrasonic part of the rumble to create several varieties of the rumble call. In turn, each rumble call variation translates into different behaviors. It is thought that elephants have evolved to utilize low frequency sounds because low frequency sounds travel longer distances, which helps solitary bull elephants know that females have entered breeding season. Additionally, it is believed that the low frequencies are used when a female announces to the herd that she is about to give birth which triggers the rest of the herd to move in and offer protection by encircling the newborn calf.
As the field of behavioral ecology shifts from the soft science of observation to utilization of more advanced technology, Dr. Anderson has implemented the use of non-invasive remote monitoring to understand mother and infant interaction, juvenile interactions, and herd communications. By using the information collected about the nature of elephant’s communication and interactions, one of Dr. Anderson’s goals is to get herds and solitary bulls to live harmoniously with one another. He also hopes to resolve the conflict between elephants and humans as elephants are often killed for crop grazing. Additionally, Mr. Anderson hopes to inhibit the over population and eventually depletion of reserves by creating safe artificial corridors between reserves. With a better understanding of elephant vocalization and communication, Dr. Andersons believes that within the coming year they will be able to manipulate elephant’s behavior by playing backs different calls in order to remove the herd from hazardous situations and allow them to successfully thrive.
After meeting with Dr. Anderson, the interns were given the opportunity to speak with Ms. Tobey who has done similar research with koalas. Along with evaluating vocalization, Ms. Tobey also studied how chemical communication of kolas affects breeding behavior. For 13 years, as a part of the Koala Conservation Project, Ms. Tobey has set up projects, worked with field biologists, and analyzed data to answer these questions. Given that koalas are solitary animals in the wild, Ms. Tobey was curious to know how koalas located each other to breed. The answer she discovered was one part chemical communication and another part vocal communication. The chemical scent given off as a scent from the male’s sternal gland, and additionally koalas bellow patterns which is a unique form of vocalization. Due to the fact that females actively seek out males, male koalas give off a hormonal scent that has high levels of acetic acid during mating season. The scent indicates to female koalas that there is a potential mate in the area. However, the scent can only reach so far—therefore, male koalas also have unique bellow vocalization to further attract females. By investigating the koala’s low frequency bellows, researchers discovered that during the fall the bellows are less frequent and longer, while in the spring, or mating season, are more frequent and shorter in duration. Due to the fact that animals of the same species occupy the same sound frequency, the shorter more frequent bellows in the spring are a result of competition between males to pass on their genes.
By becoming informed on the zoo’s conservation projects like the ones of Dr. Andersons and Mrs. Tobey, you become catalyst for community involvement. And together, people like you and me can support conservation efforts in order to protect and preserve our environment and animals for generations to come by spreading the word and visiting your local zoo.
Samantha, Conservation Team
Week Three, Winter Session 2016
