The northern elephant seal is the second largest seal in the world. It can grow to 14 feet in length and weigh more than 4,000 pounds. Its diving skills rival those of the sperm whale. A northern elephant seal can dive deeper than a mile and stay submerged for almost 2 hours. Their pups can weigh well over a hundred pounds.
One young female of the species had a profound influence on me back during the days when I spent my free time as an animal care volunteer at a center that took in sick and injured seals and seal lions in order to treat them and return them to the wild. The seal’s name was Gimpy.
Gimpy’s story began on April 1st, 1994.
On April Fools Day 1994, a young elephant seal arrived at the center as a patient. The pup came in suffering from a head trauma that had left her paralyzed on her left side and with limited vision. Being the 21st animal of the year, she was listed as No. 94-21. No one who saw this northern elephant seal pup on her first day at the center thought she would survive the week. Boy, did she fool us! The pup that seemed to have everything going against her would not only survive, but would serendipitously leave a long-lasting legacy. She would become historically significant, a media darling, and a hero. In essence, she would become the seal version of Forrest Gump.
Eventually No. 94-21 regained use of her paralyzed side, but it was apparent that she would never fully recover all of her motor functions. This left her slower and less coordinated than the other seal patients. Because of the special challenges she faced, it took Gimpy a while to master the art of swallowing fish. She had to be hand-fed by volunteers and staff who had to hold her neck straight and steady while gently guiding a sardine down her throat. She was usually very calm and gentle around her caretakers while they helped her to eat.
Jackie, who was in charge of animal care at the center back then took a special interest in Gimpy, guiding her through pinniped physical therapy to help her to relearn how to walk and swim like a seal. With impaired motor skills, her adaptation to the rehabilitation pools was slow. Gimpy was first introduced to a shallow (human) baby pool where she could get used to the water without danger of drowning. One of her favorite activities in this tiny pool was to sit just outside the pool, putting only her head underwater so she could blow bubbles. She seemed to like the sensation of the bubbles on her whiskers.
Gimpy’s first few ventures into the larger pools were done with the center’s staff acting as lifeguards so that we could pull the pup out of the water if she got into trouble. During these sessions, we found that, even though Gimpy could swim, she was not able to negotiate the steep sides of the pool in order to lift herself out of the water. Eventually a wooden ramp was constructed so Gimpy could get in and out of the water with ease. A seal ramp would later be incorporated into the new rehabilitation pool built at the center; a legacy from the lessons learned from Gimpy’s treatment.
By the fall it was clear that, with Gimpy’s limited motor skills, she could never be released back into the wild. A search was conducted to find a home for her. However, there were no facilities in the United States at the time that housed elephant seals (this was four years before the opening of the Aquarium of the Pacific). At first it seemed that there would be no where for her to go, but Jackie persevered and, utilizing her old professional marine-mammal trainer contacts, found a home for Gimpy ``across the pond’’ in Portugal.
In December the necessary papers were filed and a travel container was constructed for Gimpy in preparation for her trip to Europe. The folks at the center did not plan on the snail’s pace of processing the international paperwork. Gimpy would outgrow the container long before the final approval would be received and a much larger one would eventually have to be constructed. Another six months would pass before she would finally be on her way. Jackie used that time to teach Gimpy some basic husbandry behaviors that would make things easier for her in her new home. Jackie trained Gimpy to relax during tactile exams and medical procedures. She even got Gimpy used to taking sponge baths! As a result, when the seal went through a difficult annual molt, a medicated sponge could be used to alleviate the sunburn-like condition of her skin. It was also during this time that I started to spend a lot of time around Gimpy to the point that she got used to me being around as I fed her and cleaned her pen. She never showed any aggression towards me and would in fact just hang out near me as I cleaned her pen. Normally volunteers were instructed not to let wild patients bond with them so as to ease their transition back to the wild but in the case of Gimpy, since she would eventually go to a zoological facility, we actually let her get use to having humans in her environment.
Because she was always at the center, Gimpy became a media favorite. Whenever a local TV crew or news photographer needed an image of a seal, there was Gimpy ready for her close-up! Her face graced many newspapers and newscasts. She also had fans who stopped by the center weekly just to see her swimming in her pen with the wooden ramp.
In 1995, her second spring at the center, Gimpy saw a new generation of Elephant seal pups arrive for treatment. One incident in the midst of this new stranding season assured that I would personally never forget the lovable seal.
Gimpy was housed in a pen with half a dozen current-year elephant seal pups. These pups were teething with newly erupted canine teeth. They were using these new ivories to bite each other and anyone else that came within range. That is, everyone except Gimpy. As a yearling, she outweighed the largest of these pups by well over a hundred and fifty pounds. When confronted by a feisty pup, she merely remained silent using an effective, open mouth warning—bobbing her head in a threatening manner. This caused the troublemaker(s) to remember just how much bigger Gimpy was and to back away.
Yet, in all of the weeks that I watched her use her silent threat, I never actually saw her strike another seal, let alone anything else. It was all a facade. Gimpy was a gentle giant.
We were shorthanded one morning during my shift as an animal care volunteer so I unadvisedly entered a pen by myself to clean up after the morning feed to get the uneaten fish out of the pen and pool. Using a crowding board to protect myself, I maneuvered around the yelping seals to do the necessary cleaning. While I was distracted by an aggressive seal that struck my board, my foot slipped on a half-eaten sardine. The bottom of the board slipped forward as my body belly-flopped to the deck, knocking the wind out of me. Dazed, I looked up to see three angry seals approaching. Each seemed to be intent on trying out their new canines on me! I reached for my board but one of the pups had already moved on top of the now flat and useless barrier, preventing me from picking it up. I knew I was soon going to be a teething ring for a bunch of yelping, aggressive seal pups. Then from the corner of my eye I saw another large mass of seal blubber moving up beside me.
``Oh great,’’ I thought. ``I’m going to get it from all sides.’’
Then I realized that it was Gimpy. She had picked that moment to move toward me. Perhaps it was to figure out what the commotion was all about. All I knew was that at that moment she became my sanctuary from those attacking seals lumbering toward me. I crawled on my hands and knees over her.
``It’s just me, Gimpy,’’ I said as I got her between me and the pups.
Gentle Gimpy didn’t even flinch as I collapsed next to her. That is until the yelping pups got closer. Then Gimpy initiated her silent open mouth threat that caused the other seals to back off. Gimpy had saved me from a mauling! At that point I was able to catch my breath, get to my feet and recover my crowding board. To me, she became a hero seal that day (Her rescue of me, greatly edited, even made the pages of Reader’s Digest).
On June 7, 1995, Gimpy started on her journey to Portugal. Waiting for her at her new home was a handsome male elephant seal and a caring group of marine mammal trainers. And what did the trainers name their new elephant seal princess? Gimpy! (They pronounced it ``Jimpy.’’)
Gimpy is the reason why the elephant seal is my favorite pinniped.
I love visiting the kindergarteners at Cesar Chavez Elementary School here in Long Beach, where the Aquarium of the Pacific provides monthly science classes for children in all the classes there.
The egg science lesson made for an interesting day, partly because the children were a bit more talkative and excited. Not only was this particular Friday also the first official day of the Long Beach Grand Prix that was held only streets away from the school—it was so close that you could hear the noise of the cars and smell the burnt rubber that emanated from the track—but also it was a day in which four of the six classes were being taught by substitute teachers.
That said, we still had a great time, with Emily starting each of the classes by holding up a chicken egg and asking the children to tell her what it was, resulting in choruses of “it’s an egg” coming from the youngsters. When she asked if any of them helped cook eggs at home, we were quite surprised to see that almost every child in each of the classes responded by raising a hand. “Wow, we have a lot of chefs here,” Emily exclaimed every time, much to the enjoyment of the children, if their giggles were any indication.
Next, Emily cracked the egg open into a clear glass bowl, then showed it to the children by walking around so that all could see it, explaining that the bright yellow part is called the yolk and that the clear part, which she told them turns white when cooked, is called the egg white, or, teaching them a new word, the albumen. Emily explained that the yolk is nourishment for the baby growing within an egg, and the albumen protects the little one from harm.
During this same lesson to kindergarteners last year, taught by Shelley, the children repeatedly responded one answer when Shelley asked them about it. The part on the outside of the egg, the children responded, when asked, was “it’s an egg!” “Yes, this is an egg, but what is this part of the egg that is on the outside and is hard?” “It’s an egg,” they kept answering. It was so cute!
This year I saw that they answered the same way every time, both when asked what the yellow or white parts were called. One little boy even responded that it was the “huevo;” none at first seemed to get that each part of the egg has a different name.
By the end of each 30-minute class, most of the children finally seemed to grasp the different names for each part of the egg, but when asked what the yellow ball (yolk) is called, one boy said it was the “yo-yo.” Last year, in response to the same question, a little boy blurted out, “It’s the yogurt!” What fun these children can be!
Emily then read a book entitled Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones, which featured all sorts of eggs that animals lay, in addition to the chicken eggs with which the children are most familiar. Beforehand, Emily told each class that they were going to be asked questions about the book after she read it, and told them that they thus should pay extra close attention.
It’s funny how I often learn something new in these kindergarten classes, and this year it was one of the teachers who did so as well. “I didn’t know a (duckbill) platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) lays eggs,” she exclaimed when Emily finished reading the book.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t know that this mammal laid eggs either, nor did I know that another mammal, the spiny anteater (Tachyglossus aculeatus), also lays eggs. These two creatures, which come from Australia, are the only egg-laying mammals, apparently.
The questions that followed the book reading basically were to find out whether the children had absorbed the information that Emily read to them. “What animals lay eggs,” she asked each class. The answers varied, but in most cases included chickens, fish, birds, snails, spiders, frogs, dinosaurs, octopuses, and sharks.
Because this science lesson included a focus on sea turtles, Emily had to start asking them about another animal that is large, lives in the ocean, and has a shell, but only one boy in one of the classes actually remembered that this creature was mentioned in the book and was the one that Emily was trying to get them to answer.
Emily then picked up a ping-pong ball and told the youngsters that sea turtles hatch from eggs that are the same shape and almost the same size as the diminutive ball that she held in her hand. She also told them that when the turtles come out of these eggs, they are about the size of the palm of a small hand. That’s pretty amazing when you think of how large they can become.
In order to get out of their shells when they are ready to hatch, these creatures use an “egg tooth” to crack them open, having been left all alone on the beach with their mothers far away, she told the children. We then all pretended to be sea turtles, putting our hands in front of our noses and moving them up and down to simulate the actions of a baby sea turtle escaping from its shell to go off into the ocean. Children this age always seem to enjoy such things.
Emily then told the children that we had a surprise for them, and it proved to be just that, to hear the oohs and aahs and giggles that came out of the children when Emily inflated a model of a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the largest sea turtle, which also is the deepest diving, most migratory, and wide-ranging of all such animals. The adult leatherback, which can reach 8 feet in length and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, is far bigger than these kindergarteners, and this model sure proved the point.
In fact, in last year’s science class on eggs, I remember one little girl in particular who was so amazed as the inflatable turtle grew larger and larger. Seated on a nearby floor mat, this little girl just stared at it in amazement.
As it grew larger, her eyes grew larger as well. Almost to herself, she started saying “Oh my goodness ... oh my goodness ... OH MY GOODNESS,” and then jumped off her mat onto another child sitting nearby. It was so cute. Even though she knew that it was an inflatable, and thus a fake sea turtle, she still became somewhat alarmed when she saw how large it could really get!
This year, two giggling girls commented in unison that the inflatable sea turtle was “humongous!”
Afterwards, the children took seats at desks in the classroom, where they could practice to be first graders, and where they could put together a craft of a small sea turtle hatching out of its egg, Emily told them. Each child received a round piece of thick paper with a zigzag line drawn on it, which they were supposed to cut to make two jagged halves. These were the “egg shells” to which they attached cut-outs of sea turtles, to simulate the moment when they hatch. Many of the children commented happily that they were going to take their baby turtles home.
And that, my friends, is how we learned all about eggs at Cesar Chavez Elementary. For my other blogs on previous kindergarten classes I attended, check out my posts about science lessons on where the sun goes when it gets dark and the characteristics of living things .
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A company called Catalina Water supplies our water, and they bring it in from the Pacific Ocean. Contrary to what the name implies, however, this water does not come from Catalina Island. Instead, they have a facility located on the Los Angeles Harbor where they draw the water through a small inflow pipe reaching about 40 feet out. The water that is collected is then treated using several types of filtration to remove particulate matter as well as removing or breaking down any toxic chemicals. It is then brought to the Aquarium via large trucks and pumped into one of our 125,000-gallon reserve tanks.
In all of our exhibits combined, we have a total of about 1.1 million gallons of water. Of that 1.1 million gallons, the Aquarium filters approximately 1,000,000 gallons of salt water per hour, which is the equivalent of about 55 swimming pools per hour! In a future post, I hope to go into detail about our three main types of filtration: chemical, mechanical, and biological. Until then, thanks for stopping by and stay tuned! And if you can’t wait (or simply want to check this out in action, book a Behind the Scenes Tour on your next visit!).
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First things first---What is a mudskipper?
The Aquarium of the Pacific’s Online Learning Center describes mudskippers as---
“--- torpedo-shaped gobies. They have muscular, arm-like pectoral fins that function as legs when they are on land; two dorsal fins; and, depending on the species, their anal fins can be joined to form a sucker that aids in climbing. A muscular tail allows them to “skip” over land. Mudskippers also have lateral lines on their foreheads. Early in the larval life of these fish, their eyes migrate to the top of their head, where they are located close together. Internally, their protuberant eyes have cones above for color vision and rods below for monochromatic vision, allowing the fish to see both above and below water at the same time. Mudskippers have adapted to an amphibious lifestyle so that they can shuttle back and forth from the water to land. Many of these fish actually spend 90% of their time on land! When in the water, they breathe with their gills as most fish do. Before climbing out onto land, these fish fill their over-sized gill chambers with water, creating an oxygen tank that allows them to breathe out of water. On land, these fish also moisten their gills periodically by wiping them with their fins. To get additional air, mudskippers can also breathe through their blood capillary-rich skin, and blood-rich membranes in the back of the mouth and throat. They often keep their tails in water and roll in puddles to keep their skin moist. Mudskippers’ fins have adapted so they can walk, jump, swim, and climb. Their pectoral fins are used to move about on land where they don’t actually walk, but instead move in little hops by keeping their bodies rigid and jerking forward on their fins. This movement is called “crutching”. The pelvic fins of some species are joined together under the body to form a type of sucker that helps these fish creep up rocks and mangrove roots.”
All of the above is interesting in itself but to me what make mudskippers extremely endearing is their behavior. They jockey for position on the rocks above the waterline by making little “skips” and will display their iridescent blue tipped dorsal fins to intimidate other mudskippers like dogs will raise the fur on their backs in a threat display to establish hierarchy. Skippy takes this dog imitation one step further by climbing up the side of the rock wall and out of the tank when called by Aquarium staff when the display is opened from the top for cleaning and feeding. Aquarium Vet Tech Colleen trained this behavior to the point that she can call the little mudskipper up onto the ledge at the top of the exhibit where she can feed Skippy in peace without having to worry about the venomous sea snakes below. Of course its one thing to describe how Skippy climbs up out of the tank, its another thing to actually see it done so I’ve included in this blog a video clip of Skippy the Mudskipper:
The next time you’re on the 2nd floor of the Aquarium in the Tropical Pacific Gallery make sure to check out Skippy and his mudskipper buddies in the sea snake exhibit. They are quite entertaining to watch.
So how to tell one kind of shark egg from another? Here is a quick breakdown:
Whitespotted bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium plagiosum): Eggs are typically opaque and the outer surface looks clean. The yolk is easily visible without having to hold the egg up to a light source. They are larger than a chicken egg.
Epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium ocellatum): These are easy to identify. If it has a metallic luster, appearing as if it is plated with copper, that is an Epaulette shark egg.
Brown-banded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum): Eggs must be held up to a light source for the yolk to be visible. The outer surface is covered with black spots and looks solid. They are typically the same size as a typical chicken egg unless laid by “Big Mama”, the enormous four foot bamboo shark who is the largest resident of the Shark Lagoon’s touch pool.
Zebra shark (Stegostoma fasciatum): If the egg is larger than your hand, you got a zebra shark egg. Large sharks lay large eggs.
These are the most common eggs we find. Many other sharks like the black-tip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) give live birth and therefore, do not lay eggs.
It is important to note that the eggs must be removed from the exhibit in a timely manner. We all know what happens when we leave eggs sitting around. They go rotten and rotten eggs can quickly foul the water. Of course, fertile eggs are moved to the nursery where they can hatch but the infertile ones must be discarded. Since most sharks do not reproduce via parthenogenesis, it is safe to say that all the eggs are infertile if there are no males present.
]]>Lorikeet Forest was closed because of all the digging they were going to be doing for the watershed exhibit, as the dust such work creates is not good for our feathered friends. So they were kept behind the scenes, except for some of the younger ones that were born here and kept on display in a large enclosure next to the one of Lola the Sulfer Crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita).
When I was in Lorikeet Forest on my first chance back in after it opened, I had fun watching people interact with the birds and remembering some of the more comical or interesting moments that I’ve spent with them and guests myself.
One time a little boy was fascinated with one particular lorikeet, which was perched on my arm. He wanted to know specifically which species of bird I held. I’m not good at remembering who’s who, as it were, but with the help of our visitor’s guide, which he had handy, we saw a picture that enlightened us as to its species, which was that of a Green Nape lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus haemotodus). Once learning this information, the boy seemed satisfied, then he thanked me, and went off with his school group. I was pretty impressed at his interest in knowing the specifics.
Another time a young girl of about 10 was feeding one of our colorful little birds when it suddenly stuck out one claw and, aided by its beak, grabbed the little plastic nectar cup that the girl was holding. It then stuck its beak inside the cup and started drinking, holding it with the claw. I swear, it looked almost human and it was quite funny all at the same time!
“That little turkey,” the girl’s father said with a chortle, while the child appeared a little perturbed. The man then turned to the grabby bird, saying: “You’re a smart one, aren’t you? You learned!” Then the lorikeet dropped the cup, which landed upright, with some nectar remaining inside.
The man picked it up and offered it back to the same bird, which again grabbed it and finished off the nectar, then tossed the cup aside and started moving around in what appeared to be an impromptu and quite entertaining jig. It was almost like a victory dance for having grabbed the cup away from humans!
Yet another time there, a man and woman were trying to feed the birds. With a Lorikeet on one arm, the man held out a nectar cup and the bird sipped away happily. The woman in the meantime, tried to find a second bird so that she could feed it with the cup she held in her hand, and it was not long before she was successful and stood happily with a Lorikeet on her arm as well.
However, the bird that the man was feeding--I’ll call it “Big Guy” since he was a bit portly compared to the rest--immediately shooed the bird away from the woman’s arm, and then proceeded to drink nectar from the cup she had offered to the previous drinker. But then, as soon as another bird approached the man’s nectar cup, “Big Guy” immediately shooed that bird away, then started drinking from that cup!
“Big Guy” kept doing this over and over again, entertaining us tremendously in the process. The man did lecture “Big Guy”, though, telling him that that he was being a touch rude about the whole thing. What a glutton! “Big Guy” didn’t seem to mind being berated for his behavior. Instead, he just kept right on sipping nectar, continuing to keep watch to make sure that no other birds took sips from what he obviously felt were “his” nectar cups!
Come visit Lorikeet Forest and be entertained yourself. Maybe I’ll see you there soon!
Well, if I were to start talking about operant conditioning, stimulus-response, BF Skinner, discriminative stimulus, primary and secondary reinforcement, least reinforcing scenario and variable and non-variable reinforcement I usually end up getting a lot of blank stares back. So I’ve learned to put it in more personal terms.
Here in a nutshell is how to train an animal—Make it a happy experience when an animal does what you want them to do and don’t give any feedback when they don’t. Give a positive reaction for a behavior done correctly and don’t give any reaction (sort of a mini time-out) when they behave incorrectly. In marine mammal training we call it using positive reinforcement.
For many animals its food that makes them happy. For instance, our sea otters are very food motivated. They will do just about anything to get their tasty clam reward. So when they do a behavior correctly like placing their paw on a target pole when asked, they receive a clam as a reward. It reinforces the desired behavior. However for some animals, other things like a pat on the head or a favorite toy may be used as a reward. I once knew a bomb sniffing dog whose favorite reward for finding explosive material was to be allowed to play with her favorite rubber ducky. Yes a rubber ducky! Even the fun of the training session itself can be a reward for the animal. Parker the sea lion is a prime example of this. He loves to work with his trainers even when he’s not hungry.
Sometimes it may be awkward or impossible to get the reward to an animal exactly when they do the behavior you want (it would be difficult to toss a fish to a sea lion that’s in the middle of a back flip), so you have to have some way of bridging the time between when the correct behavior was done and when the reward is given. With our marine mammals we can use a whistle as a bridge to let the animal know that it has done something correctly and that their reward will follow. We teach this bridge early in their training by blowing the whistle whenever we hand a fish to the animal. They soon associate the whistle with the food (think Pavlov’s dogs) and react positively when they hear it. They’ve learned that when they hear a whistle that they have done something correctly and that a reward will follow. The timing of the bridge is also important. If you are training Parker the sea lion to leap high out of the water you want to blow your whistle when the jump is highest. If you give the bridge while Parker is still going up, he will interpret the correct behavior as just the leap itself. If you give the bridge when he is on his way down, he will think that the fall is what you want. By bridging at the top of the leap, you let him know that the height of the jump is the behavior you want (we call this the criteria of the behavior).
An important thing to keep in mind when you are training an animals is that you don’t want to make the training session itself frustrating for the animal so it best to take baby steps with the critter you are training and break down the behavior you want to teach down into smaller behaviors that can more easily be rewarded. Keep the sessions positive. The first baby step I used in training our blind seal Ellie to retrieve a ball was actually having her touch the ball or ring held in my hand that I splashed next to her. From there I used baby steps to train her to find and push the objects back to me and then gradually increased the distance of the retrievals. Each small success could be rewarded and built on each other. You should also make sure that the hand and voice signals you give the animal to perform the behavior are consistent from session to session so as not to confuse the animal about what you are asking for. Never set up an animal for failure by making a step too hard or confusing thus frustrating the animal and always try to end a training session on a positive note like asking for a simple behavior that an animal can do easily for a reward.
Another training consideration that you also want to make sure of is that the actions and environment surrounding the behavior being trained are neutral or positive experiences. For example, you don’t want to teach a dog how to walk on a leash by suddenly snapping the leash on the dog and pulling the confused animal along a busy street filled with scary cars and trucks. If you did you just associated the leash itself with an unpleasant experience. You first want to introduce the leash gradually and as part of a pleasant experience like feeding or play time or perhaps a pat on the head.
To give an example, I once taught a rabbit to walk on a leash out in public. Wanting to take our pet rabbit Buster with us on a road trip to my wife’s home town in Kansas, I decided to train the bunny to walk on a leash using the training skills I had acquired working with the Aquarium of the Pacific’s seals and sea lions. That way Buster didn’t have to stay in her kennel all the way to Wellington. She could stretch her paws when we stopped to stretch our legs. First I had to figure out what I could use as a reward for Buster doing what I wanted. Buster was not a food motivated animal. What she did enjoy was a rub on her head so I used that as her reinforcement. To bridge the gap between when she did something I wanted and Buster getting her head rubbed, I used the word “Good” as a bridge. I would say “Good” every time I would rub her head. She soon associated the word with the positive experience of her head being rubbed. I then broke down the behavior I wanted to train into smaller steps. I first placed the harness that I eventually wanted to strap on Buster nearby on the ground during the times that I would give her a rub on her head. Later I would lay the harness on her for short periods, all the while reinforcing her calmness around the harness. Eventually she got used to me actually strapping the harness on her for extended period. Only when she was completely use to the harness did I actually attach the leash to it. From there we went back to baby steps which eventually led to her gradual introduction to walking with me while on the leash-first in a quiet public park and then later on a busy bike path at the beach where I reinforced her calmness around people and bikes.
While knowing the steps to train an animal is important, it’s just as important to have a bit of knowledge about the animal’s Natural History. In my bunny scenario&mdashA hare like a jackrabbit has the first instincts to quickly hop away from a threat. A rabbit like Buster who was part brush rabbit and part domesticated rabbit; however, has a different threat response than its cousin the hare. Rabbits will actually huddle still under brushes and other objects to hide when a threat is near, using their jumping abilities to escape only as a last resort. Thus I knew that when Buster got real nervous she would huddle around my legs and I could respond by reassuring her and calming her down. If I didn’t know this fact about rabbits, I might not have taken notice of her nervousness and she could have tried to bolt away from her perceived threat while on the leash and injured herself.
How long did it take to train a rabbit to calmly walk on a leash? Unlike sea lions, rabbits have a very short attention span so I only trained her in short 5 minute sessions once or twice a day depending on my schedule. All in all it took about 10 weeks from introduction of the harness to confidently walking out in public. One of our practice walks involved a humorous story. I was walking Buster on her leash along the beach when an upset looking lifeguard came toward us while angrily pointing at a sign on a post. When he got closer he did a double take and then started to laugh. What had happened was when he saw me with an animal on a leash he assumed it was a small dog and was pointing to the NO DOGS ALLOWED ON BEACH sign. I guess because the sign didn’t say anything about rabbits, he allowed us to continue our beach walk. When Buster finally made her trip to Kansas she was a well trained animal companion.
Just because you don’t have a handy sea lion around doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun training animals. Any critter can be trained as long as you know what makes it happy!
Tangs are herbivores and they love algae. In their natural environment, they help the coral reef by keeping algae at bay and reduce stress on the coral. Thus, it was only natural to utilize the tangs’ innate ability to control algae at Shark Lagoon. The alternative solution was to manually scrub the walls of the exhibit. Who wants to do that (OK, so we still have to do that, just not as often!)? Besides, the tangs add tons of movement, color and life to Shark Lagoon.
There are over five species of tangs at Shark Lagoon. The powder blue tang, Acanthurus leucosternon, is one of my favorites. It has a bright yellow dorsal fin, a black mask over its face and a beautiful shade of baby blue all over its body. The powder blue tang has a pretty aggressive demeanor but considering that it is living with sharks, that may not be a bad thing. Other tangs in the exhibit are the naso tangs Naso literatus, palette tangs Paracanthurus hepatus, yellow tangs Zebrasoma flavescens, and sailfin tangs Zebrasoma desjardinii.
The reason why it is a bad idea to touch these fish is twofold. First of all, they have sensitive skin with a thin mucous layer. Too much rough handling can damage their skin which can lead to infection and disease. Second, all tangs (also known as “surgeon fish”, and you will see why) have small blades at the base of their tail which they use for protection (we call them scalpels). A tang can use these blades to inflict damage on predators or anything that may cause them harm. Therefore, it is best to leave the tangs alone, let them do their job and just enjoy having them in Shark Lagoon.
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“Calamari in my hand---
Fancy name bestowed by man.
Kids will eat it with a bib---
To a seal it’s just a squid.”
I wrote the above on the food prep room dry erase board during a giddy morning when, after opening up a box of squid to prepare for the marine mammals, I noticed that the word “Calamari” was written on top of the box. For some odd reason it struck me as funny that the same food that our seals and otters were eating every day was being used by restaurants to prepare a meal for human customers who were going to pay a premium price for the dish.
Calamari is one of those classy delicacies served at finer restaurants. In its breaded human consumption form it is hard to recognize that the meal set in front of you is actually Loligo opalescens--- also known as Market Squid. This same specie is used by the mammalogists at the Aquarium of the Pacific to feed the seals, sea lions and sea otters in the exhibits. However there is more to this critter that goes beyond its fancy restaurant moniker. The story of Loligo opalescens in our local water is quite impressive. So impressive in fact that Jacque Cousteau once devoted an entire television documentary show on this little squid. The following is the story behind the squid sitting on your restaurant plate.
A couple months ago the night seas of the San Pedro Channel were lit up as bright as Las Vegas as dozens of fishing boats equipped with strong spot lights could been seen close to shore setting their nets. What brought them to the channel was the spawning of millions of market squid. “Panning for Sea Gold” is what commercial fishermen call the harvest of Loligo opalescens in the waters off the coast of Southern California. Indeed tens of thousands of dollars can be made in a single night by a fishing boat during a squid run. The bright lights of the boats lured the squid to the surface where they could be netted.
The market squid grows to about eleven inches long (just the right bite-size for a hungry seal or sea lion). Its eight arms are about half the length of its mantle and its two tentacles are about two thirds the length of the mantle. The coloration of the squid can change from an almond white to a reddish brown. A parrot-beaked predator whose propulsion comes from a siphon under its neck, it is the most abundant squid in California waters. Its near shore breeding sadly is bittersweet for the squid. Although the fertilizing, laying and attaching of the female’s egg casting to the ocean floor insures the continuance of the species, the adults themselves will die soon afterwards.
Loligo opalescens is an important commercial catch that is exported around the world. It is the frozen squid most likely found in supermarkets. It is also an important link in the marine food chain. During the recent squid runs off the Palos Verdes Peninsula I witnessed sea lions, sea birds and dolphins joining in a night orgy of feeding as hundreds of thousands of squid were drawn to the bright lights of commercial fishing boats gathered less than a mile off Point Vicente. As full nets of squid were pulled in, big bull California sea lions leaped inside the cradle of the nets to gorge themselves on the concentration of squid within, leaping out just as the nets drew close to the boats. Common, Rissos and Bottlenose dolphins stayed in the periphery of the lighted area picking off the squid at the edges while hundreds of Western gulls swooped down to pick off what the marine mammals and fishermen missed. All this frenzied activity for the little squid known by the classy name of Calamari.
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Milo was born in May 2006 at another facility. He had to be hand raised by husbandry specialists because his mother wasn’t quite ready for a pup at the time of his birth. He was bottle fed for a while, and then weaned on to fish. While he and Harpo were housed behind-the-scenes, Milo would always try to be the dominant one and boss Harpo around. Since they have gone into the main exhibit, however, it seems Milo is also interested in making some new friends!
Harpo was born a month later than Milo, and the two have been together ever since. If there’s one thing that young sea lions love to do, it’s play! Harpo is a very playful sea lion, even if he has to play by himself. One of his favorite things to play with is ice! He’ll take a cube and toss it in the air, catch it, toss it, catch it, until it finally melts. Then he moves on to the next cube. Occasionally during a feeding/training session he’ll do the same thing with his fish. With his playful demeanor, he’s made some new friends in the Seal and Sea Lion Habitat as well!
I had some time during my volunteer day last Friday to observe how things were going in the exhibit. It seems that all is well, and Parker (our 6 year old male) is showing the new kids around just like he did with Odin. The four of them can frequently be seen swimming around the exhibit, hanging out together. There were even a few times they were all floating on the raft together, either barking at one another or sleeping. The sight of all of them sharing that raft is one of the cutest things I’ve seen in a long time! I recommend a visit to the Aquarium sometime in the near future so you can witness Harpo’s playfulness and Milo’s mischievousness for yourself. Come and have a look at the newest members of our fantastic, dynamic pinniped family!
]]>With a recent federal government study saying that all Americans should do so twice a week to be more healthy, it is important that we choose our fish carefully for a variety of reasons.
In other words, we want fish that can sustain their populations, we want them caught and farmed in ways that don’t harm the environment, and we don’t want other fish or animals hurt in the process. It sounds simple to some people, I suppose, but keeping track of which fish is sustainable is a never-ending process that is more difficult than one might think.
Enter the Sustainable Seafood Forum (SSF), which is a partnership between the Aquarium, leading seafood distributors, restaurateurs and retailers. Members are committed to providing their customers with healthy seafood choices that are clearly identified and documented as coming from either sustainable wild stocks and/or sustainable aquaculture (fish farming) operations. Partners include SMG, the Aquarium’s food service provider, King’s Seafood Restaurant in Long Beach, and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. For more on the Sustainable Seafood Forum, click here
To make sustainable seafood choices before you leave the house for the market or a restaurant, you also should check out NOAA’s Fishwatch website, where you can find all sorts of information on quite a few types of fish.
The weekend before our update, the SSF’s Sustainable Seafood Day was held at the Aquarium, with guests learning the ins and outs of choosing the right seafood, and while I missed this one, I have attended similar events and I highly recommend them to all fish lovers. They also have fish tastings and recipes for sustainable seafood. Yum!
The NMFS is the agency responsible for managing fisheries in U.S. waters, with the sole purpose involving regulating when, where, how, and how much people fish, but the process of actually designating a species as sustainable is not yet perfect, so this is somewhat problematic. The NMFS relies on equations such as optimum sustainable yield, and the maximum economic yield a resource can provide without decreasing the potential of the population to provide this economic yield.
With keeping an eye on how fish are caught, the NMFS looks for fishing methods that have, for example, some bycatch, which is animals that die as a result of being caught and discarded or otherwise harmed during the process of fishing. Longlining is one such method, but it does not do the damage that dredging or trawling can do to the ocean floor. The NMFS also must keep an eye out for fishing methods that cause such problems as habitat destruction, overfishing, and even waste issues from aquaculture that can affect the sustainability status of fisheries.
Confused yet? I know I am. Why should you even care about any of this, some of you may ask. Well, it’s easy to say that you can just refuse to eat seafood altogether, but consuming seafood does have its benefits.
Selected species are high in omega-3 fatty acids that are beneficial to the human heart and which are not producible by the human body. Knowing what species of seafood to eat, how they are fished, and their levels of contaminants can help maximize the benefits while reducing the risks.
Mercury is a well-documented seafood contaminant especially in fish that are highly migratory, like tuna, or the bottom dwellers, such as halibut, one of my favorites. By choosing seafood based on how healthy it is for you, you already are taking part in sustainable seafood practices.
Despite the difficulties in figuring out whether fish are sustainable, the SSF and NOAA’s FIshwatch website can help. The SSF has as its advisors, distinguished scientists, who are experts on health and nutrition, aquaculture, fisheries, and environmental and social sustainability, and all involved in the forum are committed to working with fisheries and aquaculture operations to move them toward sustainability through education.
Criteria used by SSF in selecting sustainable choices include healthfulness, with the SSF concerned about the nutritional value and contamination levels for all populations of seafood, in order to be able to provide advice to sensitive populations, which include pregnant women. Other sensitive populations are nursing women, those who plan to become pregnant in the next 12-18 months, children younger than age 6, and individuals with weakened immune systems.
People who are considered “sensitive” should avoid eating not only seafood listed by SSF as “Some Seafood to Avoid,” but should also avoid such fish as swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico (also called golden bass or golden snapper), Spanish mackerel from the Gulf of Mexico, haddock, herring, fresh or frozen tuna, and walleye from the Great Lakes or Canada.
These same groups may eat some seafood, but in limited servings every week or month. The acceptable seafood includes halibut, mahi-mahi, croaker, wild trout, marlin, grouper, and canned tuna.
For the rest of us, sustainable seafood includes salmon that is farmed or wild caught, herring, mackerel (Atlantic jack), chub mackerel (Pacific), sardines, Arctic char, anchovies, farmed or wild-caught striped bass, mahi-mahi, whitefish, farm-raised rainbow trout, Pacific flounder/sole, and whitefish. Others are farmed kampachi, tilapia, clams, mussels, and wild-caught halibut, which during the forum a few Saturdays ago were prepared and served by chefs from SMG, and King’s Seafood Restaurant and by Chef Lynne Preslo, who is a member of the Aquarium’s Board of Directors. The fish were supplied by Santa Monica Seafood Company and Long Beach Seafood Company.
Some seafood to avoid eating, again as per environmental, social and health standards set by scientists and governmental agencies, are Atlantic cod, bluefin tuna, orange roughy, Chilean seabass, shark, red snapper (Gulf of Mexico), canned albacore tuna, and Atlantic flounder/sole.
For good information about your seafood choices and to find recipes for sustainable seafood, check out NOAA’s FishWatch website. You also can read a bit about sustainable seafood and what we feed our animals in my fellow blogger Staci’s Oct. 26 entry.
I hope that I’ve been able to pique your interest in eating only sustainable seafood not just for your health, but also for the health of our planet.
Happy eating!
]]>The acclimation process is quite simple. All you have to do is slowly add water from the new environment to the old. Take for example, the picture to the right. We are acclimating a ray to the quarantine area. The hose to the right is slowly adding water from the quarantine tank into the container the animal is in. At the same time, the hose to the left is slowly draining water out of the container so that it does not overflow. The key is to change out all the water in the container slowly, over the course of 1-3 hours. This way, we give the animal ample time to adjust to the new water’s chemistry.
For a smaller animal in a smaller container, we do the same thing but on a smaller scale. We can use two airline tubings to let new water slowly drip in and old water slowly drip out.
What about enormous animals? We can acclimate them to the new environment like all the other cases. However, sometimes it is easier to ditch acclimating them altogether. Recently, we had to move the bowmouth guitarfish out of Shark Lagoon because he needed a time out. At the time it was decided that he should move, the bowmouth guitarfish weighed roughly 90 lbs and was 6 feet long. Unfortunately, we did not have a container large enough to fit him so we decided not the acclimate him. Instead, we drained all the old water out of P3, the holding tank he was going in to, and ran a hose into P3 from Shark Lagoon! Soon, P3 was filled with Shark Lagoon’s water. The bowmouth could be carried from Shark Lagoon and placed into P3 immediately because there was nothing different about the water chemistry in his new residence! This was a special case. For all other animals making a transition from one place to another, we must acclimate.
The extremely large volume of water in the ocean normally keeps temperature, pH or any water parameters from changing drastically. We must always take that into account to ensure that all the animals at the Aquarium remain comfortable.
Another one of our program critters is Baxter the Kalabeck’s or Blue-tailed monitor lizard. I learned that Baxter isn’t just your regular everyday monitor. He is in fact a representative of a recently rediscovered species. I am a big fan of the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Aquacasts and listened to them regularly on my IPod while flying around the country on my business trips. In the synopsis for the Aquacast “A Lost Lizard Found” it states that “Monitors are intelligent carnivorous lizards that include the Komodo dragon, the largest lizard in the world. A species of monitor known as “Kalabeck’s monitor” was rediscovered in the 1990s after it had been re-identified as a distinct species. Baxter the monitor at the Aquarium is an example of this species.” These podcasts are a wealth of animal and environmental information and quite professionally done, sounding like a segment right out of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on National Public Radio.
One of my favorite program animals (next to my buddy Paddington the Pademelon) is Orion the Kestrel. He represents the smallest of the falcon species. A very calm and easy going bird, Orion is just as at home in the Great Hall of the Aquarium or in front of Shark Lagoon as he is in his muse just in back of Lorikeet Forest. Once known as the American Sparrowhawk, American Kestrels like Orion feed mainly on mice, lizards, insects and other small creatures. Sparrows actually make up a very small part of their diets. These falcons are abundant in our local area. You can tell that Orion is a male kestrel as he has the characteristic blue-gray wings with black spots. Female kestrels are larger and have Rufus wings barred with black stripes.
Elvis the King Snake is quite the charmer when you watch him curl up on the arm of his handler while flicking his forked tongue out to investigate his surroundings. A representative of the many non-venomous snakes of the world; certain species of King Snakes will actually hunt and eat venomous snakes like rattlesnakes and copperheads. That’s how they got their names, the “King” of snakes. Elvis and the other program animals give our visitors an up-close and personal look at some of the creatures of the Pacific Rim and help the keepers get the word out on the importance of these critters in the balance of nature.
To learn more about our program animals, check out the Aquarium’s Aquacast called “Program Animals”. The synopsis for this Aquacast is “Animals from land as well as the sea call the Aquarium home. Aquariums of the Pacific visitors have the opportunity to not only interact with marine animals, but also discover some unexpected terrestrial creatures as well. These creatures are referred to as Program Animals, and include various mammals, birds and reptiles.” You can download the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Aquacasts from the podcast section in iTunes.
And if you’re at the Aquarium and see a small kangaroo-like critter being pulled around in a kiddy cart, come on over and say hi to Paddington the Pademelon as he makes his rounds in his “Paddy-Wagon”. He represents the smallest of the kangaroo family which along with pademelons includes the kangaroo and wallaby. Like the other program animals, Paddington is an animal ambassador for his species and his Eco-System..
A Brief History
Back before they were hunted almost to extinction, sea otters could be found in many areas of the Northern Pacific from Japan all the way over to Alaska and down through Baja California. Man discovered the luxurious fur coat of the sea otter and almost wiped them out completely during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fortunately, in 1911 the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and Russia signed the International Fur Seal Treaty, which made the sale of otter fur illegal. It is estimated that there were only about 1,000 – 2,000 animals left out of the original populations of several hundred thousand to more than a million! In California, the surviving Southern sea otter population consisted of only 20–30 animals. In 1972, sea otters were protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and then in 1977 Southern sea otters were listed as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Fur and Food
Sea otters don’t have a thick layer of blubber like most marine mammals, so they have to rely on other adaptations to stay warm. The first of these we’ll talk about (again) is that beautiful fur coat! Amazingly, sea otters can have up to one million hairs per square inch. That’s the equivalent of ten human heads of hair! They will blow air into their fur, which creates a warm, insulating layer that helps them maintain their body temperature. The otter’s skin will stay almost completely dry underneath. It is imperative the animal keeps it’s coat immaculately clean in order to be able to thermoregulate properly. That’s why a large part of a sea otter’s day is spent grooming and cleaning their coat.
Sea otters have an extremely fast metabolism, which is another way they maintain their body temperature. To fuel this metabolism, sea otters need to eat around 25% of their body weight every single day! For instance, a 100-pound sea otter would need to consume at least 25 pounds of food per day. These animals spend a large part of their day foraging for food, with their diet usually consisting of sea stars, sea urchins, clams, crabs, mussels, and whatever else they can get their paws on! They are extremely resourceful, even using rocks and shells as tools to aid them in breaking open the shells of their catch.
The Bad News: Sea Otters Are Still Threatened
Though sea otter populations are in the process of a very slow recovery, these animals still face numerous threats besides their natural predators. Sadly, humans pose the greatest threat to sea otters. Fertilizers and other contaminants are washed into the water from the land, containing chemicals and other things that can cause disease or death. Oil spills are extremely detrimental to otter populations because the oil coats the otter’s fur, making it impossible for the animal to stay warm. The otter ends up freezing to death or being poisoned from ingesting the oil while trying to clean its fur. Even animal waste (including flushed cat litter/feces) can contain parasites or bacteria that can cause illness and eventually death.
The Good News: We Can Help Sea Otters!
I hope you will join me in doing all we can to help sea otters. Even though their numbers are up slightly more than a few years ago, they’re still very vulnerable. Here are a few suggestions if you’d like to help:
Thank you for reading, and for all you do for the oceans!
]]>(As you may remember from a previous blog, I help out in the kindergarten classes whenever possible, and I always enjoy my time there immensely, as I did on this particular Friday morning.
The rug, new this year, was a hit with the children, who rushed to get seats on squares of their favorite colors. Until last year, the children sat on dull-colored individual carpet squares (well, they were rectangles, actually) that were a pain in the neck to put out and then put away, since they’re actually pretty heavy when you stack a few on top of each other, and we always had to straighten them in between classes. This rug simply rolls up and stored above some cabinets, totally out of the way for when Room 18 is used for other purposes.
Its colorful nature is what makes the rug so appealing. Maximo told me he really liked their bright nature, adding that the green was his favorite, after which he plopped down on a verdant square. The bold colors of the rows, in order from one end to the other, are blue, green, orange, and red.
Throughout each 25-minute science lesson, the children were their usual attentive selves, obviously interested in everything they were learning about the characteristics of things that are alive. Emily took them through a variety of exercises to push home the point that living things all have certain characteristics and help the children remember what they are.
As I look back on each class, all I can say is that it is so true that children are such little sponges.
Emily, who started teaching this class this year, began each lesson by asking the children if they had enjoyed a field trip to the Aquarium that the kindergarten classes took earlier in the week and, of course, they responded in a resounding and exuberant chorus of “yes!” In one class, a little one excitedly added, “I saw you (there)” as Emily nodded her head and indicated that she remembered the encounter.
During the first two sessions, Emily read Clark, the Toothless Shark, a story about a shark born without teeth. Clark befriends a frightened squid that is running from a large ray, and the squid takes refuge in Clark’s mouth. To repay him for his help, the squid enlists the aid of four mermaids to fish for gold coins in a sunken treasure so they can make false teeth for Clark. Everyone lives happily ever after.
“Is this a true story?” “No.” “Why not?” “Sharks don’t talk, fishes don’t talk, mermaids don’t talk,” they replied. Mermaids? Do they know something I don’t? Gee, maybe I need to get to the beach more often!
Somehow, the time allotted for the class just wasn’t long enough to get through the entire lesson plan, even though it seemed to be enough in the same class last year. Oddly, nothing seemed different to me between this year’s session and the one we had last year. After two tries to include the book, Emily opted to refrain from reading it for the rest of the day. That’s too bad, because it’s a cute story, which was intended to be a starting point from which to discuss real and pretend and then segue into alive and not alive. Luckily, the lesson still could be taught without the book.
It was great to see all eyes always glued on Emily as she asked questions, applauded the right responses, gently explained why wrong answers were incorrect, and provided them when they were not forthcoming.
Early in the lesson, Emily asked for examples of the types of things that are alive. “Fish, are they alive,” she queried. “Yes,” came the replies. “Are these rocks alive,” she continued, this time picking up some shiny rocks and holding them in her palm. “They don’t breathe do they,” she asked, as she placed her ear to the rocks, pretending to listen for signs of respiratory function.
On the board at the front of the classroom, Emily had written out the words “living” and “non-living,” with above them in parentheses, the words “alive” and “not alive.” The children read the words aloud, then spelled them, shouting out each letter as Emily pointed to it.
Determining the characteristics that all living things have in common came next. In most of the classes the children readily agreed to that all living things grow, breathe, eat, drink, move, have babies, and need shelter of some sort. In two classes, however, sharp little youngsters added that all living things need rest, something that we didn’t’ think about as part of the lesson.
“What do you do when you are thirsty,” Emily asked one group of children, to get them to come up with the drinking characteristic, and a boy replied, “I go to the kitchen, I open the refrigerator, I get the juice and a cup, and I drink the juice.” I’m glad he explained how that’s done! I wasn’t sure. Silly me! LOL!
When Emily asked another group what all living things have in common, one boy responded that “they eat food, and spaghetti.” I guess we know what food is his favorite!
Early in each lesson, Emily passed out laminated photographs for the children to stick up on the board under the appropriate category of living or non-living. Included were pictures of various animals, a very popular bee they all referred to as a bumble bee (I guess that alliteration makes it more fun to say than just a simple “bee”), a bedroom, a desk, a curtain-festooned window, a cactus in bloom, and a toy robot.
In about half of the cases, the children put their pictures in the right places, but making a decision about the cactus was a bit thorny for a few of the children, who placed it in the wrong place. The cactus, Emily noted, may look like it just sits there like a rock, but actually it grows—hence moves--and needs water, nutrients, and so forth. The toy robot, also confused some of the children, who thought it was a living thing because it can move. After reiterating the characteristics that all living things have in common, the children always ultimately agreed that the robot is not alive.
Likewise, determining whether other types of plants are alive was a bit problematic as well, with the children pondering more than anything about whether they reproduce. “Do you ever see flowers, fruit, seeds? The seeds make new plants,” Emily explained.
“Are we all alive,” Emily asked, always eliciting giggles from the little ones. It’s cute how the kids in every class thought this was a humorous question.
At one point, Emily told the children that they were going to be scientists, so they should don their scientist hats. We all pretended to put on hats, and one boy got into the fantasy so much so that he made sure he put on a very large-brimmed hat. It was so cute to watch. Kids love to pretend at this age!
Emily explained a new word—hypothesis—to the children, then had them repeat it after her as they read it from the board, after which they spelled it aloud. She then extended her arm out horizontally, a stuffed penguin in her hand, and asked the scientists to give her their hypotheses of what would happen if she were to let go. All agreed that the penguin would fall, which of course it did, and they smiled collectively, proud to have come up with the right answer.
The scientists next were to determine, by asking questions, whether books, plants, and bunny rabbits are alive or non-living things. The questions, of course, were asking whether each of these is able to breathe, eat, grow, drink, move, and have babies, in which case, of course, it is alive.
The hit of the day was Seesaw, an 8-year-old brown bunny that its owner, one of the kindergarten teachers, has owned since it was really young, when she fed it with a little baby bottle.
The children loved Seesaw, and all agreed that the she had all of the characteristics of a living thing. Much as with the bunny, figuring out that the book was not living was a pretty straightforward exercise for all the children.
Despite the previous discussion about plants when the children put their photos on the board, all the students had some difficulty determining whether the plant was a living thing. After a lot of thinking about each question, the children in each class finally determined that plants, too, are alive.
By the end of the class session, while I won’t say that all the children fully grasped the difference between things alive and not alive—so many at this age are still deep into pretending--most of them seemed to get it.
We’ll see. Maybe it will come up in next month’s science lesson, which actually is next week, when we’ll be learning about body parts (How many arms do we have?). I’ll be there, provided that all things go as planned.
Happy March to you all! May the ides be good to you!