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An education coordinator at Taronga Zoo in Australia has taken on the role of surrogate dad to an orphaned Swamp Wallaby joey, whose mother was struck by a car near Sydney. About 6 months old, the joey has been named ‘Alkira’, which means ‘sunshine’. 

Matt Dea has been hand-raising the female joey for the past two weeks, carrying a makeshift pouch and waking up at 2 am for one of five daily bottle feedings. 

“Caring for such a young joey is very involved and she hasn’t left my side. She comes home with me, she comes to the shops and she sleeps beside my desk at work each day,” said Dea. 

Photo credit: Taronga Zoo

See and read more after the fold.

Alkira was brought to Taronga Wildlife Hospital on September 15 after its mother was struck and killed by a car. Fortunately, a Taronga Zoo keeper spotted the wallaby beside the road on her way to work and discovered the joey still alive inside the pouch.

“She was a bit stunned, but otherwise healthy with no injuries from the car accident. We were really lucky,” said Dea.

For now the joey's diet is restricted to a special milk mixture and the occasional nibble of grass, but she’ll gradually be introduced to solid foods such as carrot and sweet potato.

Dea said Alkira’s story should serve as a reminder for motorists to watch out for wildlife on the roads. 

In celebration of World Animal Day this year, Wildlife Reserves Singapore announced the arrival of some of the world’s rarest babies, and among them, a critically endangered Sunda Pangolin. 

Photo Credits: Wildlife Reserves Singapore

The new baby, ‘Radin’, was born July 13^th to his protective mother, ‘Nita’. The birth of the critically endangered Sunda Pangolin, in the Night Safari, is one of the most iconic births for WRS. The species is native to Singapore and is the logo for the Wildlife Reserves Singapore Conservation Fund. 

Night Safari is the world’s first zoological institution to house the elusive, solitary, and nocturnal creature. In recent years, the endangered Sunda Pangolin has been driven closer to extinction by illegal trafficking, habitat loss and being hunted for their meat and scales at an unsustainable level. According to the IUCN Red List, there have been suspected population declines of around 80% over the past 21 years, and there is a projected future decline of greater that 80% during the next several decades.

Accredited zoos and reserves, like Wildlife Reserves Singapore, are crucial to the future survival of the species. This is the third successful birth of a Sunda Pangolin in WRS since 2011.

Recently, a keeper from Cotswold Wildlife Park, in the UK, became foster parent to an abandoned Clouded Leopard Cub. 

Photo Credits: Cotswold Wildlife Park

 

The young female cub was found, at one-day-old, shivering and close to death. Jamie Craig, a zookeeper at Cotswold Wildlife Park, decided to care for the orphan at his home. With the help of his young children, Mr. Craig diligently tended to the cub, named Nimbus. 

In order to avoid any interruption from his family dogs, he decided the safest place for Nimbus was in an upstairs bathroom. "We wanted to keep her warm and somewhere secure, and the bathroom was as good a place as any," he said. "She could be messy with the milk and what comes out the other end, so we thought something with a wipe-clean floor was definitely needed."

After six weeks of care and nurturing at Mr. Craig’s house, Nimbus is now back at the park, in her own area. She is currently too young and small to be placed with older leopards, but, when the time is right, keepers anticipate she will be living with other Clouded Leopards in the park.

According to the Clouded Leopard Project, a conservation and research organization, females are often poor mothers in zoo settings and may abandon their cubs shortly after giving birth. Unfortunately, in some cases, the mother may show aggression toward the cubs and harm them. Some zoos make the decision to hand-rear Clouded Leopard cubs, in an effort to protect the newborns from any potential harm.

The Clouded Leopard is native to the Himalayan foothills through mainland Southeast Asia into China.  They are currently classified as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List. One of the main threats they face, in the wild, is being hunted for illegal wildlife trade. Currently, there is an indigenous market for their skins, bones, meat, and live animal pet trade. The Clouded Leopard is also threatened by habitat loss. They prefer forested areas, and many parts of Southeast Asia are undergoing rapid deforestation. 

Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo has recently experienced a Nigerian Dwarf Goat baby boom! Six goat babies were born: three on Friday, October 10^th and three on Sunday, October 12^th! 

Photo Credits: Shannon Calvert

‘Peaches’, who is four and a half years old, gave birth to one male and two female kids. ‘Cupcake’, also four and a half years old, gave birth to one female and two male kids. ‘Rodney’, at two and a half years old, is the proud father of all six. The ‘kids’ are all healthy, happy and welcome additions to the goat yard. This is the third set of kids for both moms.

"These kids are high energy and were bouncing around the farmyard within hours of their birth. Visitors coming this month will enjoy seeing them play and jump around having fun," explained Gregg Dancho, Beardsley Zoo Director.

The yet-to-be-named kids will begin to nibble on hay and grains later this week and spend the next few months nursing.

Visitors can enjoy a visit to the Farmyard, at the zoo, to see the newest arrivals.

The Nigerian Dwarf Goat is a miniature dairy goat breed of West African ancestry. Originally brought to the United States, on ships, as food for large cats such as lions, the survivors originally lived in zoos. Nigerian Dwarf Goats are popular as pets and family milkers due to their easy maintenance and small stature. Nigerian Dwarf goats are gentle and easily trainable. This, along with their small size and colorful appearance, makes them popular as pets. They are popular in petting zoos, and their small size and gentle nature make them excellent visitor animals for nursing homes and hospitals.

Canada Lynx kitten, ‘Jasper’, was out enjoying the fall atmosphere, recently, at Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington. The six-month-old was helping the zoo promote their upcoming annual event, “Zoo Boo”, a special fall themed weekend that will be held October 18^th and 19^th.

Photo Credits: Point Defiance Zoo

Jasper was a feature on ZooBorns in July of this year and it is exciting to see him working toward fulfilling his duties as an ambassador for his species, as part of the Species Survival Plan. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums developed the Species Survival Plan (SSP) in 1981, in an effort to help ensure the survival of selected species. SSP programs focus on animals that are in danger of extinction in the wild, when zoo conservationists believe captive breeding programs may be their only chance to survive. 

AZA accredited zoos that are involved in SSP programs engage in cooperative population management and conservation efforts that include research, public education, reintroduction, and field conservation projects. Animal Ambassadors, like Jasper, are an important part of the education provided by SSP programs. By being able to more intimately interact with the animal ambassadors, zoo visitors can gain an understanding about the impact each species can have on the world.

The Canada Lynx is native to North America, and it ranges across Canada, into Alaska and in some parts of the northern Continental United States. Although currently classified as “Least Concern” on the IUCN Red List, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the Canada Lynx as a “Threatened Species” in the lower 48 states.  The species is trapped for its fur and has declined in many areas due to habitat loss.

More great photos below the fold!

The Abilene Zoo, in Texas, has a new baby Ocelot! Born Sept. 9^th, to proud Ocelot parents ‘Hotrod’ and ‘Ellie’, little ‘Lucy’ is now old enough to be out on exhibit with her mother.

Photo Credits: Abilene Zoo

The father, Hotrod, is 15 years old, and mother, Ellie, is fourteen. Lucy is their third litter together. Ocelot litters tend to range from one to three offspring.

The baby’s care has been shared by the zoo keepers and the Ocelot mother, a new experience for Ellie and the zoo. In the past, Ellie’s babies have been exclusively hand-raised, to help ensure their survival. Lucy is thriving from the extra care and attention.

“We’re lucky that the mother is allowing us to assist in rearing this baby,” said Abilene Zoo Mammal Keeper, Denise Ibarra. “It’s been successful with large cats, but this is rare in the zoo world for smaller cats to share hand-raising with parental care.”

The Abilene Zoo’s Ocelot breeding program is part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan (SSP), which strives to educate the public about these threatened animals while helping to repopulate the species.

Ocelots, also called dwarf leopards, are small wild cats that live in Central America, South America, Mexico, and far South Texas. They were once killed for their beautiful spotted fur, but the species has rebounded to between 800,000 and 1.5 million worldwide. They are, however, endangered in Texas. Only about an estimated 80 to 120 wild ocelots are found in two isolated populations in southeast Texas.

More great photos below the fold!

ZSL London Zoo has welcomed an adorable Kinkajou, named “Forrest”!

Photo Credits: ZSL London Zoo

Arriving from Scotland, Forrest is only 6-months-old and was hand-reared by his previous keepers. At the moment, the little guy is feeling a little shy around his new home, but keepers have been giving him lots of attention to help him settle, including lots of his favorite figs and peaches.

Kinkajous originate from Central and South America, living in tropical rainforests. They’re omnivores, meaning they eat both meat and plants, so Forrest is happy eating anything from small mammals, to tasty bits of fruit.

In the wild, Kinkajous also enjoy sipping at nectar, which they get with their long tongues. These tongues aren’t their only useful appendage. Kinkajous possess amazing tails that measure out longer than their head and body. These tails are also prehensile, meaning they can be used to hang upside down from branches of trees.

Keepers have already started encouraging this natural behavior as a form of enrichment. It’s hoped that when Forrest overcomes his stage fright, he’ll be able to show off this amazing behavior in the zoo’s Animals in Action demonstrations. However, for now, Forrest is quite happy using his cute little face to get more figs and peaches.

ZSL Whipsnade Zoo’s new Asian Elephant made a grand entrance into the world and arrived just a few days ahead of the zoo’s ‘Elephantastic Weekend’. 

Photo Credits: Natasha Jefferies (1); Jenny Soppet Smith (2); ZSL Whipsnade Zoo (3,4,5,6,7)

The brand new male calf was born September 16th to fourth-time mother, Azizah, in one of the zoo’s large grassy paddocks. Other members of the herd of ten Asian Elephants were nearby, showing their support for Azizah as her labor progressed, including the new calf’s siblings. Under the elephant breeding program, nine elephants have been born at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.

Assistant Curator of Elephants, Lee Sambrook said, “It was wonderful to be able to witness a herd birth at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. We have a great track record with the elephant breeding program here, but seeing a baby born with all his aunties and uncles around in such a natural environment was an incredible privilege. Elephants are such social animals and you could see that the rest of the herd’s presence was just what Azizah needed to stay calm and do what she needed to do. The team of vets and keepers were standing by and monitoring her development, but it was so fantastic that the birth happened naturally, and with the herd’s help, rather than ours."

ZSL Whipsnade Zoo’s ‘Elephantastic Weekend’ was held September 20^th and 21^st.  It was planned to coincide with the world-wide Elephant Appreciation Day, and helps to raise money for elephant conservation and research projects, through fun family activities, fascinating talks, and unforgettable elephant encounters.

The Asian Elephant is native to Southeast Asia from India in the west to Borneo in the east. They are currently classified as “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List.  In the wild, the pre-eminent threats to Asian Elephants are: loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat, and poaching for ivory, meat and leather.

More amazing photos below the fold!

First, the plain language tells us that this statute is not a criminal law, or an obligation that the State of California imposes on any person directly.  It is, rather, a change to what California requires of colleges to be eligible for state financial aid.  So it doesn’t apply to any college that already forgoes aid for any reason, for example.  It has no impact of people who are not in college and not employed by a college, except in the sense that it may change the cultural conversation.  If you’re in high school, or not in school and working, or not in school and not working, or in the service, or in any other walk of life except attending college in California, this has no legal effect on you.

Second, all it requires is adoption of a policy that the school is required by federal law to have, and that that policy contain certain elements unique to this statute.

One of the unique elements, the Affirmative Consent standard, is set forth here, and it isn’t what some people seem to be assuming.  The common rhetorical device is that affirmative consent requires some particular form of communication — notarized contract, filled out in triplicate, raised seal, etc.  Far be it from  me to criticize anyone whose kink is to have a bunch of suit-wearing functionaries watch their sexual encounters.  De gustibus non disputandum est, which I think is Latin for “your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay.”  However, the idea that that’s what the statute requires is just bullshit.  It’s not in there.

Here’s the heart of it: ” “Affirmative consent” means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of each person involved in the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the affirmative consent of the other or others to engage in the sexual activity.”  (Emphasis supplied.)  It doesn’t say what form it has to take, or how one has to ascertain it.  It doesn’t say anything about filling out a form, using an app, signing a waiver.  It doesn’t even say you have to say any particular word.  It doesn’t even require the word “Yes”!  It just says that the absence of “no” isn’t necessarily yes, and it’s your responsibility, if you’re a student in a college in California, to make sure you have a yes.  You can do that any way you like; it’s up to you how to see if you  have a yes.

There are lots of ways to ask for a yes.  If you lean in to kiss someone and they lean in to kiss you back, that’s yes.  If you ask someone if they want your cock and they say, “I want your cock,” that’s yes, and if they put their mouth on it, that’s yes, too.  If you’re fucking someone and holding them down and you’re both sweating and maybe bruised and you lean in and your hand is on their throat and you say, “can you still say no?” and they say, “yes,” that’s yes.  We’re not kids here, right?  We’ve all been there, and we know that people say yes, mean yes, shout yes and do yes in sex all the time.  Those of us who don’t want to force anyone to do anything they are not into, don’t want or need sexual encounters where people are not doing yes as hard as they can.

The rest of (a)(1) is pretty straightforward — it simply lists myths that won’t fly.  Consent to sex with someone one time isn’t consent to sex with that person every time.  Shouldn’t be controversial.  The absence of no isn’t yes.  Since people who are passed out can’t say no or yes, this should be obvious, and  is impossible to intelligently argue against.  I know CeeLo Green said otherwise, but that’s because CeeLo is a very bad person (and now, a convicted felon). Good vocalist, bad person, sorry to break it to you. Consent can be revoked at any time.  Again, impossible to intelligently argue with.  People are free at any time to decide the sexual encounter is not working for them, put on their c lothes and go get a slice of pizza.  This is not up for debate.

Another element in section (a) is the standard in the disciplinary process in (a)(2).  It’s not a defense to say you believed  someone consented:

(1) because you were too drunk or too reckless to know whether they were consenting or not.  Good rule, right?  If I’m so fucked up that I may rape someone, that’s kind of like being so fucked up that I shouldn’t drive home because I might crash.  It was an adjustment for a lot of people when we began actually enforcing drunk driving laws in this country!  People said, “but how am I supposed to get home from the bar!”  And we all decided that not having drunks kill and maim people was important enough to make them take responsibility for how they get their drink on, and we did, and the republic did not fall.

(2) because you didn’t bother to find out if you had a yes.  This is the teeth that makes (a)(1) work.  If you know you have a yes, you’re good to go.  If you don’t know you have a yes, it’s on you to find out.  If you don’t, and this is important, if you acted reasonably to find out, you’re still okay.  Reasonably under the circumstances is a hard standard to argue against.  The only ways to argue against it are either (a) I want to act unreasonably and it should be okay, or (b) what I think is reasonable is not what the people enforcing this think is reasonable.

The nightmare scenario that rape apologists trot out is the one that Katie Roiphe made up (because she lives her life to piss on everything her mother stands for), the “morning after regret.”  I think it is impossible to find a case where someone was convicted of rape because one of their consenting partners later claimed nonconsent — in all the terrible history of black men being falsely accused of rape, almost always there was no actual sexual contact at all, and the rape was simply a socially convenient fabrication from whole cloth.  See the Central Park Jogger case, where the teens convicted and imprisoned had no contact at all with the victim — who was hit over the head and raped by an entirely different person, who was a serial rapist and died in prison.   In instances of political hoaxes like Brawley, likewise the events never transpired, and in the Duke Lacrosse case one of the accused was demonstrably not on the premises.  Amanda Marcotte has repeatedly thrown down the gauntlet (see comments, she’s said this before) for someone to identify an instance of false conviction arising from an actual sexual encounter between the accuser and the convicted defendant.  Nobody seems to have one.

This law protects against that scenario, fanciful as it might be.  If you act reasonably under to circumstances to see if you have a yes, you’re okay.

That phrase, “reasonable steps, in the circumstances known … at the time” is, not incidentally, the weakness of this bill.  Law doesn’t interpret or execute itself, and this will  be interpreted by conduct counsels and deans in colleges, and “reasonable” will be what they think it means.  I’m not worried that someone who says  “hey, are you still into this” and gets “yeah” will be held to have acted unreasonably.  Sure, the perpetual whinge machine of MRA outrage will declare that “reasonable” will mean mind reading or seeing the future or having a notarized contract or some such nonsense.  But that’s like Christian extremists who complain that they are being discriminated against because they can’t bully gay kids in school — they have a persecution complex which has no relationship to objective reality.  Given colleges’ infamous disinclination to hold rapists accountable or adjudicate them liable, there is no reason to suspect that the interpretation of “reasonable” with be anything other than a mainstream-friendly view of “reasonable.”

I am worried that some asshole’s approach to consent will be, “hey, she was into fucking me, and then I took the condom off and stuck it in her ass before she knew what I was doing, and I didn’t know she wasn’t okay with that,” and that will be held to be reasonable, because people who should know better make excuses for people they like.  See generally Julian Assange and his defenders.  “Reasonable” inherently imports norms that may not work for people in their own lives.  If someone is trans or genderqueer and says, for example, “don’t touch my front hole,” I think that’s totally reasonable.  But someone who has a cis and heteronormative and penetrocentric framework for sex may decide that “reasonable” is the same as what they think “normal” is.  These are macro problems with how law operates; I offer no easy solution.

But it’s not just people whose gender or sexuality fall outside the mainstream who could find that the concept of “reasonable” fails them.  If a school were to decide that, “I asked if she wanted to come back to my room and she said yes” is reasonable inquiry and constituted a basis to assume consent to anything that happened thereafter, that would be a very bad standard.  Someone who wanted to exonerate every rapist who fit a certain socially comfortable paradigm probably could, just by applying the term “reasonable steps” to some action the rapist took or claimed to have taken.

That’s also the weakness of the ridiculous app that turned up in the news recently.  It makes no provision for withdrawal of consent (how could it?) and it makes little or no provision that I can see for sex to be something other than, “we do it in the way it looks in the movies.” So it’s useless for its intended purpose, and whatever its creator’s intent,  its actual function — I’ll go farther than Marcotte here —  is to create a defense that rapists can use later, after their targets realized that what was going to be done to them wasn’t what they were good with.

Subsection (a)(3) imposes a “preponderance” standard, which is already the standard for civil liability in almost all areas, and the standard colleges have to use under the current Department of Education guidance federally, so that doesn’t change anything.

Subsection (a)(4) says that there are three circumstances where, if you know this thing is true, you know the other person can’t consent: (a) unconscious; (b) too drunk or high to understand the “fact, nature or extent” of sexual activity; and (c) unable to communicate.  (a) and (c) don’t merit any discussion.  Unconscious people can’t consent, and if people are unable to communicate, you don’t know if they consent.  (b) is only slightly more elastic.  It imposes a standard for how drunk is too drunk to fuck.  Too drunk to know the fact of sexual activity is obviously too drunk to consent.  Too drunk to know the nature or extent of sexual activity requires some actual interpretation, as “nature” and “extent” don’t define themselves, but if someone is so messed up that they don’t know for example which hole a cock is in, they shouldn’t be having sex, and I think that’s the most obvious interpretation of what that means.

So that’s what it says.  It’s not a revolution in practice.  There are no heads in tumbrels and nobody is being carted to a reeducation camp.  From the howling, you might have surmised that this bill requires all Californians to get the late Andrea Dworkin’s permission to have sex, gently, while lying side by side, and only half way in.  That’s bullshit.  Under this standard, California’s college students are free to get their sex on any way they see fit, and communicate about consent any way that works for them.  It just clarifies that they can’t assume it, they have a responsibility to find a way to communicate about it.  That’s radical in theory, but pretty pedestrian in practice.

This is an evolution in concept.  It’s a very non-radical bill, imposing in a very careful and mainstream-friendly way what is a gradual and evolutionary paradigm shift.  But the evolution in paradigm is more important than the operation of the policies under this bill (in at most a few hundred conduct counsel proceedings) ever will be.  Just the cultural conversation about the bill has made Yes Means Yes, the idea of affirmative consent and sex as process, part of the mainstream national conversation.  The best defense of the old, Commodity Model, women as gatekeepers, paradigm was not to discuss it at all — but just to assume it.  It doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny.  It’s being dragged into the sunlight now, and in sunlight it withers because, quoting Brandeis, “sunlight is … the best of disinfectants.”

That’s why I don’t mind the people arguing against this bill.  By arguing, they are keeping the conversation going, and by doing that, they are losing.  If they were smart, which they are not, they’d ignore it and let the media die down, and push quietly for interpretations of the standard that don’t change anything.  But they’re not.  Like Todd Akin, they want to spew their extremism, their poorly informed and ideologically driven beliefs, their persecution complex and feverswamp paranoia.  So they’ll keep arguing, and if they keep arguing, the keep losing.

 Looking West into the future from here with the right kind of eyes I can see the arc bend.