I learn all sorts of new things at school. Some of them are unusual or not well known outside the animal-lover world, and some are more generally known, and if I'd bothered to think about it, might have figured it out. But they're all still amazing! And each time I get excited. Here are 5 of my favourites (i.e. the ones I remember right now).
1. The iris (the coloured part of the eye) is a muscle. Involuntary, non-striated, smooth muscle, to be exact. This is filed under "things I should have known, but somehow never thought about."
2. Zoos dread days that service dogs come to visit. Emergency alert calls go out to all the keepers whenever somebody brings a service dog in, and keepers surreptitiously follow the person with the dog and are always on alert. Why? because lots of exhibits (birds, petting zoos, etc) allow for human-to-animal interaction, which naturally means service-dog-to-animal interaction. This is dangerous both for the smaller zoo animals if the service dog's instincts take over, and dangerous for the service dog if it enters, say, the Kea enclosure. Keas are brilliant and angry and have those massive parrot beaks and will mob up on and kill a dog.
They laugh, but really this kea just wants to tear the liver from her still-breathing body.
Oh, and also? One service dog with kennel cough killed 5 out of the 7 Mexican wolf cubs the Cincinnati zoo had managed to breed years ago when for ten years basically everybody thought Mexican wolves were almost extinct (turns out the wolves had managed to move and set up operations in Yellowstone when we weren't paying attention, but it was touch and go for a bit). It's even worse now because people can get their normal pets labeled as service "therapy" dogs. Zookeepers get pretty suspicious when the "service dog" is a chihuahua with a sparkly pink harness.
Uh-huh.
3. Cats are "induced ovulators." They don't have normal periods of ovulation when they drop X number of eggs, mate and get pregnant, and that's that. During mating times the female will drop an egg each time a spiky tom-cat penis penetrates her (no wonder they yell), so actually, if she mates several times during her season, that single litter of kittens can have multiple fathers.
Are you my Daddy?
4. If you like fastidious, self-cleaning, independent-minded dogs (you know, the closest thing you can get to a cat while still being a dog--i.e. a dog that just looks at you when you tell it to do something), go for a:
Vizsla
Basenji
or Dalmation
5. And finally, good zoos do a lot of "enrichment" stuff now. The keepers try to provide toys or mental stimulation for the different creatures in their care. If the creature is, you know, a snake... that enrichment might be a nice new rock, or a different kind of dead rat.
"This is my favourite new toilet paper rollsss."
But the smarter your animals are, the more enrichment they need. Keas and macaws and animals like that get puzzles to play with (kindergarten toys and the little metal and wooden kinds you keep in baskets for when guests come over and none of you can solve them).
"Idiots can't solve a simple puzzle..."
But Bonobo monkeys? Our closest extant relatives? Well, like us, Bonobos enjoy the simple things in life, like squabbling, and then having sex. And eating, and then having sex. And that's pretty much all they ever do, which is really awkward for families visiting the zoo. At the end of their day outside working hard and sexing each other for the entertainment and horror of families everywhere, Bonobos like to kick back and watch TV.
Now, they fall into our "uncanny valley" of being WAY TOO CLOSE TO US FOR COMFORT and can read our facial expressions really well, and make a lot of the exact same ones--hence our discomfort with them (trust me, I hate apes just as much as the next normal person). They're fascinating, but creepy as heck.
Seriously; stop that!
Well, Bonobos love soap operas. It makes sense. What do people in soap operas do? Squabble, eat, drink, and have sex with everybody. Also they overact something terrible. You know how you've been in a waiting room and a soap opera is playing, and you joke that even though you can't hear it, you can still tell what's going on and who's doing who and related to who? Yeah, Bonobos do that, too. They even have favourite soaps.
Oh, no!
The best part? They will get mad if the keepers show a repeat episode. I mean, they'll deal with it if they're really bored and saw that particular episode like, long enough ago, and don't really want to get up and change the channel. But if it's only been a month or something, and they were really looking forward to seeing whether Diana is dating young Anthony or older Jonathon or the men's really old, silver-fox father, they will freak out and scream Bonobo obscenities at the keepers until they fix the problem--just like normal people.
Omg. Get a room.
