Assinboine Park Zoo - Prairie Dogs, Squirrel, Bison, Camels

[guppiecat]

Concluding the Assinboine set.




Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) - "Toothsome grin. I has one."


Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) - Longtooth the prairie dog is tolerated for his amazing balancing ability.


Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) - Prairie dogs will bite!


Eurasian Red Squirrel (Sciuridae) - Pretty and knows it.


Plains Buffalo (Bison bison bison) - Yes, they tagged their ONLY white bison. *shakes head*


Plains Buffalo (Bison bison bison) - White privilege is exhausting.


Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactrianus) - In the loose and shifting sands of the desert, it is recommended to slightly deflate your camel to gain traction.


Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactrianus) - You will notice, however, that these camels are not in the desert, so the keepers should really patch the one that is leaking.


Dromedary (Camelus dromedarius) - NEVER let your camel deflate all the way.

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

What is with the camel whose humps are deflated?

And, do prairie dogs always have such teeth?!

[guppiecat]

Camel humps store fat. As the fat is depleted, the humps stop being quite so rigid. It's actually pretty normal for camels to fluctuate hump rigidity. (That is likely the only time that sentence has been written.)

The odd tooth on the prairie dog is a malocclusion. It's somewhat rare, but not unheard of in rodents. Since the teeth are continuously growing, an abnormal wear pattern can prevent the tooth from wearing down, resulting in the growth shown in the photos. Were it a wild prairie dog, I would likely have tried to capture it (and then gotten rabies and plague shots), as it would likely starve to death. Since it's a zoo animal, I'm not very worried. I suspect that the keepers are just waiting until it gets a bit older and will then pull the tooth.

[madtruk.livejournal.com]

I'm reasonably certain the terms "hump," "rigidity," and "fluctuate" have found their way into the vernacular in common before though...

I'm glad I don't drink a lot of milk at work, or I would have snorted it out my nose.

[guppiecat]

You should drink more milk at work.

You should also have a web cam at your workstation. :)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining about the hump. I am now disabused of the notion that they are water tanks! This is the first I've heard of fluctuating hump rigidity. (I like camels a lot, but I clearly haven't spent enough time reading about them.)

I noticed that the maloccluded prairie dog tooth had the point broken off. What a job, being a prairie dog dentist!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Did you change the format?

[guppiecat]

Yes. The green background matched my site, but made it a tad too obvious that I was reading LJ at work.

This one is cleaner.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Okay, just wondered if LJ was falling apart again.

I originally had mine like Mary Kay's but you can't see the names on some of the purple stripes so I went plain.