As mentioned, today was a very rainy day so my shoes/feet were instantly wet. The hellbender rooms are kept in the 50s, so I never really dried out.
This morning I learned how to take temperature/humidity readings in each room, which tanks have fish that need feeding, and how to clean out bleach buckets/mats for your feet when you enter/leave a room. It is very important when working with the hellbenders to be as sterile and conscience about contamination as possible. All of the adult hellbender are chytrid positive. This means that they are carriers of chytrid, a type of fungus that is especially harmful to amphibians. Chytrid is typically talked about in regards to frogs, since it is partially responsible for the large decline of frogs. Since hellbenders are amphibians they can also be infected by chytrid. Chytrid fungus interacts with the epidermis, interfering with the transport of nutrients and ions between the skin and water. When these vital transport chains are interrupted (resulting in unbalanced nutrient/ion concentrations), it could cause the heart to stop beating. The epidermis is also hurt from chytrid build-up. Since amphibians respire through cutaneous respiration (through their skin) they could also suffocate because of a thicker epidermis. (Amphibians do have lungs, but they are rudimentary and do not account for a large percentage of respiration). The hellbenders with chytrid also have tumors, which requires surgery to remove. The adult hellbender have other medical problems than just chytrid (skin cancer for example) so treatment for chytrid is not successful. For the younger ones, it has been found that they can be put through heat treatments of 90 degrees (which is hot enough to kill the chytrid fungus). Sanitation is so important because it would only take one drop of chytrid infested water in a clean tank to infect all the hellbenders who are healthy. As a result, we are constantly changing gloves throughout the day.
After the morning routine, I helped with more measuring and weighing of another tank of juveniles. I was actually able to pick out a hellbender from a hand-drawn diagram of spots for that individual! For all the identified ones I counted to make sure they had 4 fingers and 5 toes and then added spots to the diagram where I felt it was needed. After I was done they were then measured and weighed.
Lunch was fun because we (the hellbender keepers) were joined by a keeper of invertebrates (also his wife and adorable 2-3 year old daughter), a big cat country keeper, and bear keeper. Once again stories were exchanged from different parts of the zoo. One of the elephant keepers stopped by and it sounds like the baby elephant is doing well and should be on display to the public in a few weeks!
After lunch, we weighed/measured another tank of juvenile hellbenders. All the juveniles should be tagged and released back into the wild soon!
I also learned how to use a gravel vacuum (or some name to that effect) to clean the bottom of a fish tank. Yesterday a few of the hellbender tanks were fed a small type of shrimp, so we also had to go around to those tanks and pipet out all the uneaten shrimp. While doing this in one of the hatchery tanks (with the baby hellbenders) I had to pull out a hellbender that had died.
At the end of the day the veterinarian came back to check out three adult hellbenders who had recently had surgery to remove skin tumors. The vet applied this cream that is made from synthetic platelets that encourages cell growth and reproduction in order to quickly heal a wound. Two of them also received antibiotics. Once the vet was done it was 5pm and time to head home!
P.S. Did I mention that there are about 4,000 hellbenders at the zoo?? That accounts for about 20% of the zoo's animal population! And this is all out of the public eye and for reintroduction purposes!
This map shows the range of the two types of hellbenders.
Fun Fact: Missouri is the only state that has both types of hellbenders!
A juvenile hellbender- like the ones we had to identify from just their spot pattern
Interesting!
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