humans have altered the environment more
so than any other species that has lived
on the planet and we see animals in our
environment that are having to adapt to
the world that we have essentially
fabricated for them and that includes
them dying as a result of interacting
with humans in that urban environment
the salvage animal program is a program
where we ask people to bring in animals
that they might find dead in their
backyards on the roads that they’re
traveling and to bring those specimens
in to us for research purposes right now
in our walk-in freezer I want to say we
have approximately 6,000 animals Oh
holy moly this animal is a Bullock’s
Oriole and it’s in its breeding plumage
absolutely gorgeous and going to become
a really nifty scientific specimen in
lay terms many people think of it as an
autopsy but we’re not trying to
determine the cause of death we are
simply trying to preserve that specimen
for scientific research this is a
Western king bird he has a broken wing
either he was hit by a car or hit a
window we take heart samples we take
kidney we take liver and we also take
muscle we try to save gut contents
okay so there’s the inside of the
stomach
see looks like it’s Michelle of a beetle
we try to get as much flesh as you can
off of a skeleton but then they go into
our domestic colonies and our domestic
colony is a colony of flesh-eating
beetles they do the dirty work for us if
they are hungry you can put a small bird
skeleton in there and in two to three
days it’ll be completely clean the most
common animals that we receive are
things that you would see in your
backyard squirrel we get a lot of
squirrels we get many American Robins we
get a lot of northern flickers we’ve
recently received a parakeet so that
obviously escaped from someone’s house
that’s a baby chipmunk Wow our
collection exists in the digital world
as an online database that’s searchable
by anyone anywhere on the planet and it
contains as much information about our
specimens as we can possibly have on
there we are essentially mapping
historical change in organisms
responding to us living in an area we
can examine exactly how healthy these
populations are what’s happening to them
in response to things that we are doing
it doesn’t only matter for tracking
evolutionary change in these particular
animals it also impacts us because we
live with these animals in these urban
environments
you
so than any other species that has lived
on the planet and we see animals in our
environment that are having to adapt to
the world that we have essentially
fabricated for them and that includes
them dying as a result of interacting
with humans in that urban environment
the salvage animal program is a program
where we ask people to bring in animals
that they might find dead in their
backyards on the roads that they’re
traveling and to bring those specimens
in to us for research purposes right now
in our walk-in freezer I want to say we
have approximately 6,000 animals Oh
holy moly this animal is a Bullock’s
Oriole and it’s in its breeding plumage
absolutely gorgeous and going to become
a really nifty scientific specimen in
lay terms many people think of it as an
autopsy but we’re not trying to
determine the cause of death we are
simply trying to preserve that specimen
for scientific research this is a
Western king bird he has a broken wing
either he was hit by a car or hit a
window we take heart samples we take
kidney we take liver and we also take
muscle we try to save gut contents
okay so there’s the inside of the
stomach
see looks like it’s Michelle of a beetle
we try to get as much flesh as you can
off of a skeleton but then they go into
our domestic colonies and our domestic
colony is a colony of flesh-eating
beetles they do the dirty work for us if
they are hungry you can put a small bird
skeleton in there and in two to three
days it’ll be completely clean the most
common animals that we receive are
things that you would see in your
backyard squirrel we get a lot of
squirrels we get many American Robins we
get a lot of northern flickers we’ve
recently received a parakeet so that
obviously escaped from someone’s house
that’s a baby chipmunk Wow our
collection exists in the digital world
as an online database that’s searchable
by anyone anywhere on the planet and it
contains as much information about our
specimens as we can possibly have on
there we are essentially mapping
historical change in organisms
responding to us living in an area we
can examine exactly how healthy these
populations are what’s happening to them
in response to things that we are doing
it doesn’t only matter for tracking
evolutionary change in these particular
animals it also impacts us because we
live with these animals in these urban
environments
you
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