we call it black gold really because you
can learn so many information from an
individual animal just based on its poop
sample my keepers are collecting the
feces on a regular basis to three times
a week we can then put that that poop in
a coffee cup we send it to the hospital
and then within a week to two weeks they
can do an analysis looking at different
hormones we can actually determine when
a female is pregnant so these are
immediate health questions typically
they’re more things like is my female
having normal reproductive cycles is she
capable of getting pregnant and
producing an offspring twenty plus years
ago the only way that we could look at
these kinds of hormone levels was to
collect urine or blood which can be
invasive which means that you may have
to immobilize an animal and do a
procedure that has some risk you know
depending on what the animals eat the
the poop sample smell you know better or
worse herbivore samples tend to smell
grassy like what the animals are eating
carnivore samples tend to smell not so
good big cat samples tend to probably
smell some of the worst but we also deal
with samples when they’re frozen which
really cuts back on the smell we don’t
look at them they’re warm so you know
something you get used to but it’s
really not as bad as people might think
we have some animals that live a
solitary lifestyle we have some animals
that live in a social group so in our
setting here at the zoo if we need to
collect the feces from an individual
it’s very difficult for us to
differentiate the different feces that
we’ll find in the yard so we have to
have ways to be able to identify which
animal produced which pile of feces and
the way that we do that is that we a
very simple technique we can either use
colored beads that we put into the diet
or glitter and it’s not harmful to the
animals and then as it passes through
then we would expect to see that
different colored litter and we can
identify exactly which animal received
that diet ultimate goal is to have the
be self-sustaining so being able to
reproduce individuals when they need to
reproduce and have a population in zoos
that continues to thrive and is healthy
this frog now you might be disgusted at
me doing this but it has a very noxious
skin secretion
can learn so many information from an
individual animal just based on its poop
sample my keepers are collecting the
feces on a regular basis to three times
a week we can then put that that poop in
a coffee cup we send it to the hospital
and then within a week to two weeks they
can do an analysis looking at different
hormones we can actually determine when
a female is pregnant so these are
immediate health questions typically
they’re more things like is my female
having normal reproductive cycles is she
capable of getting pregnant and
producing an offspring twenty plus years
ago the only way that we could look at
these kinds of hormone levels was to
collect urine or blood which can be
invasive which means that you may have
to immobilize an animal and do a
procedure that has some risk you know
depending on what the animals eat the
the poop sample smell you know better or
worse herbivore samples tend to smell
grassy like what the animals are eating
carnivore samples tend to smell not so
good big cat samples tend to probably
smell some of the worst but we also deal
with samples when they’re frozen which
really cuts back on the smell we don’t
look at them they’re warm so you know
something you get used to but it’s
really not as bad as people might think
we have some animals that live a
solitary lifestyle we have some animals
that live in a social group so in our
setting here at the zoo if we need to
collect the feces from an individual
it’s very difficult for us to
differentiate the different feces that
we’ll find in the yard so we have to
have ways to be able to identify which
animal produced which pile of feces and
the way that we do that is that we a
very simple technique we can either use
colored beads that we put into the diet
or glitter and it’s not harmful to the
animals and then as it passes through
then we would expect to see that
different colored litter and we can
identify exactly which animal received
that diet ultimate goal is to have the
be self-sustaining so being able to
reproduce individuals when they need to
reproduce and have a population in zoos
that continues to thrive and is healthy
this frog now you might be disgusted at
me doing this but it has a very noxious
skin secretion
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