Hi again!
Tonight I ran persistence trials with Gorilla, the bat that we have in
the BCI flight cage. Basically, she was trained to respond to the
call of Bufo marinus, the cane toad, poisonous and hated the world over
as it has been introduced stupidly to Australia and Hawaii and is
destroying the local fauna. However, it actually belongs here,
but, nonetheless, is not something trachops would normally eat.
We also train them to not respond to their normal cue, the Tungara
frog. Don't worry, we train them back, and anyways, they've
learned to associate the call with a little piece of fish, not the big
ugly thing that the cane toad is, and a Trachops woud be very hard
pressed to attemp to eat the real thing!
We then do nothing but feed them for 5 days, giving no auditory cues at
all. On day 5 we test the two calls, and they have usually
remembered to fly to Bufo and not Trachops. Today was day 10, and
she still remembered!
While I was packing up the equipment, Gorilla started going berserk and
flying all around. I heard a chirping noise and assumed it was an
insect that she wanted to eat. Quickly I realized I was hearing
her echolocation chirps. She kept flying back and forth for
approximately 5 minutes, she was certainly very upset! She did
calm down, and I fed her a bunch of fish. As I was getting ready
to leave, I looked up and saw on the side of the flight cage a snake
entangled in some loose duct tape. Obviously Gorillas panic was
due to the snake! I kind of panicked too, he was really really
stuck, I was worried he was going to eat her, bite me, have his skin
torn, or die in that duct tape!
Forgetting the zookeeper and vet-to-be that I am, I went running back
to the lab for help. I was able to enlist both Sergio, fix-it-er
and naturalist galore, and Christian, photographer and naturalist
galore, the same guys from my previous email. I said I thought it
was a baby boa, which made Christian very excited as he'd been looking
that exactly to photograph. Anyways, upon arrival, he confirmed
my identification, and fearlessly pulled the completely immobilized
snake from the wall. We ended up taking him back to the lab, and
Christian and hig girlfriend spent the next 45 minutes and lots of
olive oil extracting the poor little thing. She's totally fine
now, they're hanging on to her for a few days to try to feed her and
help her recover before release! She would either be a boa
constrictor or, more likely, a tree boa (
http://www.corallus.com/annulatus/photos.html).
She was tiny thought! Maybe only 10 inches long and the width of
a pinky finger.
It makes me a little distressed to think that if I hadn't noticed her
she would have starved to death or some other horrible thing.
Hopefully her arrival really did coincide with Gorillas panic, and
therefore she wasn't there for very long. Smart thinking
Gorilla! Definitely a threat!
This is a remarkable place! Have I mentioned that there are a few
pairs of Amazon parrots (probably red-lored, but it is hard to tell...)
and at least one toucan around the lab that I've seen but mostly
heard.... And blue morpho butterflies fluttering by!!!
:)