Animal Instincts

Alum Champions Conservation Through Work at National Zoo
by Karen Shih ’09 | Photo by Tim Flach/Peter Bailey Productions Each morning, before the curious foreign tourists, jaded local joggers or screaming school groups pour into the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Bao Bao the panda starts her day by crunching soy protein biscuits and sucking on a bottle of honey water. It’s not just a leisurely breakfast. Zookeepers toss the little red biscuits to catch the attention of the 2-year-old as she ambles through a series of metal enclosures that take her from the indoor sleeping quarters to the outdoor habitat. She stuffs them into the corner of her mouth to chew like bamboo, stopping every so often so the keepers can weigh her, simulate drawing blood and have her practice lying down for future ultrasounds. Bao Bao isn’t just an adorable member of the zoo community. Like the twin cubs born there Aug. 22, she’s part of a global effort to save the endangered species. And the odds were stacked against her being here today. Just ask Brandie Smith Ph.D. ’10. A year before Bao Bao was born, her mother, Mei Xiang, suddenly abandoned a week-old cub, which turned out to have had unseen developmental issues. Smith, then the curator of giant pandas, had to make the devastating call to have the cub declared dead after veterinarians were unable to revive it. Even today, with a happy, healthy Bao Bao, Smith still wells up thinking about it. “It’s scary to work with these animals and have zero margin for error,” she says. When they’re born, “it’s exciting but terrifying because you know nothing can go wrong. Everything has to be 100 percent perfect all the time.” Now, as the associate director for animal care sciences, she’s responsible not only for the care and management of a wide variety of animals, from elephants and great apes to birds and reptiles, but also for research to ensure these species thrive in both captivity and their natural habitats. “These animals are ambassadors for their wild counterparts,” she says. “We have groups of the best scientists in the world who are working to save these species in the wild.” [caption id="attachment_9516" align="alignnone" width="620"] From left: Smith examines 2-month-old Bao Bao; 8-month-old Bao Bao plays with Mei Xiang in the outdoor enclosure. Photos by Courtney Janney and Abby Wood of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.[/caption] DREAMS VS. REALITY “Most people grow out of their childish dreams,” Smith says. “I didn’t.” As a kid, she was fascinated by big cats, particularly jaguars, and unusual Australian wildlife like the Tasmanian devil. Her family lived in western Pennsylvania, within driving distance of the National Zoo in D.C., SeaWorld Ohio and the Pittsburgh Zoo, which they visited often. She studied biology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, then zoology at Clemson University, thinking that would get her into a zoo. “I had a master’s degree, two internships, and I couldn’t get a job,” she says. “I was living in my sister’s basement in Boston, volunteering at the zoo there and working as a waitress to earn money.” Then came a job offer: keeper of cheetahs and rhinos at the Dallas Zoo. The catch? It was a temporary position paying minimum wage—in a city she’d never visited and where she knew no one. Of course, she took it. “Most zoo people have a story like that,” she says. “There are more people who want to work in zoos than there are jobs. Once you prove you can work in the freezing cold and raging heat and don’t mind shoveling poop, you’re in.” She still has a picture of Indy, a black rhino in Dallas, on her wall today. “I remember being amazed at how an animal so big and potentially dangerous could be so gentle,” she says. “He used to love to come up to the bars, lean in, and have the side of his face rubbed or his back scratched. The side of his face was soft, like velvet.” After a year in the blazing Texas sun, she found an opportunity with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in Maryland as a conservation biologist, where she could work on a larger scope. Over the next decade, she visited almost every zoo in the country and others worldwide, and was promoted several times. Then she started feeling an itch: “I kept thinking, ‘I want to go back to a zoo.’ I wanted to be back on the ground, working with animals.” ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE To work with pandas, your personality has to mirror a panda’s: calm, thoughtful and deliberate. But beneath the panda team’s mellow exterior hides the collective determination that brought Bao Bao into the world. Just 1,600 of these endangered animals are left in the wild because of hunting and deforestation—pandas need to eat 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo each day—so studying the 300 or so in captivity is important for maintaining and growing the population. Even with human support, however, pandas reproduce slowly: Females are sexually mature from around 4 to 20 years old, but they usually only have one cub at a time, and there’s at least a two-year gap between each cub (they must be weaned first).



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