Amphibian
conservation:
Today, we had a speaker come from a non-profit, Save
the Frogs. He and his two friends were all young, vibrant Californians, and the
talk was really compelling. I found out that 2000 of the 7000 amphibian species
in the world are threatened with extinction. One of the main threats to these
species is the chytrid fungus that spreads like wildfire among amphibians.
Speaking of extinct species, he mentioned a really cool type of frog that went
extinct in the 1980s. It was known as the Gastric brooding frog, because it
gave birth in a very special way. Once the female laid her eggs, she would
swallow them, and her intestinal tract would proceed to shut down (quit
respiration/metabolism), so that the babies could be raised in her stomach.
Once the babies grew old enough to be tadpoles, then coughed them up into a
stream, her stomach went back to normal, and all was unique and happy. This
frog was the only type of animal in the world who did something like this, and
now it is gone forever.
Frogs
are incredible bio-indicators. As many people know, pesticides are harmful, but
it is amazing how frogs can display the harmful effects of them. When frogs are
exposed to pesticides, it damages their DNA, and we say photos of frogs with
3-6 extra limbs sticking at odd angles from the hind-end, because of the damage
of the pesticides in the water. A chemical pesticide named Atrazine will
actually chemically castrate male frogs, turning them into females. The studies
of this phenomenon are hushed up to promote the selling of the chemical, but
this stuff is in our drinking water! It is certainly something to consider.
People
are often keen on saving what we call “charismatic megafauna.” These are the
species that are beautiful, large, like us—cats, elephants, primates, giraffes,
etc. However, the animals as small as frogs all have an impact on those
charismatic megafauna. The speaker gave an example of a frog population wiped
out by chytrid fungus in Panama. Once the frogs were gone, the birds that ate
those frogs left. Once the insects didn’t have frogs eating them to cut down on
population numbers, they drastically increased in numbers, destroying many
plants for food. The tadpoles of the frogs had once fed on the algae of the
river, and when they were not there anymore, a once-clear stream was green and
stagnant. The loss of one frog species essentially created a forest dead zone.
This point re-iterates the fact that we are all connected and even a small
squish of a bug can lead to drastic changes for everything living.
Check out http://www.savethefrogs.com/
to learn more!
I’d like to throw in a
tiny disclaimer about protecting habitat of animals to save the places they
live in and keep that circle of life strong. Consider your use of plastic. A
plastic bottle takes 450 years to degrade. One plastic bottle! And when I say
degrade, I do not mean BIOdegrade. Its remains are not helpful to plant or
animal life. This is an alarming and terrible statistic, and I would beg you to
avoid plastic as much as possible, and recycle when you must use it.
Another short mention
while it is on my mind—I am making the most wonderful connections while I am
down here. Incredibly, I was in the veterinarian’s office looking at books
today, and I came across a book I had just read a few weeks before—Tales of an
African Vet. I had really enjoyed the read and felt very inspired by the
stories of the author. I opened the front cover just to look at the book, and
noticed a personal note to “Dearest Isabelle.” I asked her about it, and
apparently she had worked with him in Ghana a while back. My professor here has
a personal relationship with a guy whose book totally inspired me?! Wow, I can’t
believe all the wonderful people I’m starting to meet in my life. Don’t think I
like her just for her connections, though! She is a beautiful, wonderful human
with much to teach and give to the earth, but I was just amazed at how small
the world can be when you just step outside and look.
Baby
monkeys!!!
Okay, this was
potentially one of the best days ever. We were expecting one baby monkey to
come into the clinic for a re-check, but we didn’t know we would be receiving two!
I find it hard to say it’s ‘exciting’ when a sick patient comes in, but I was
eager for the learning experience, and very eager to see baby monkeys up close.
The monkeys were coming from a rescue where they are being rehabilitated to eventually
return to the wild. They were found as babies or confiscated from the pet trade
and are being raised by humans. The humans have to have constant contact with
the juveniles, because baby monkeys are much like human babies in their needs
of contact comfort. These monkeys were not ‘pets’ of the people who brought
them in, but would eventually be trained to live amongst their own kind and
then one day, go back into the wild where they belong.
We
knew about Izzie and what we would be doing with her. Izzie is the baby spider
monkey who had been shot several times and had to have her arm bone plated. She
was coming in for more x-rays to determine if the arm, tail, and hand injuries
were healing well. However, we did not know what was going on with the other
monkey, except that it was limping.
In
a situation like this, the staff must prepare absolutely everything in advance.
Organization and preemptive thinking are key with wildlife medicine, because
you absolutely must do everything efficiently as not to disturb the animal too
much. Before the monkeys entrance, we had a short lecture on capture myopathy.
Capture myopathy is a condition that animals get when they are well…captured.
The stress of being restrained or confined causes severe muscle cramping, pain,
and necrosis. Essentially, the muscles just waste away at an incredibly quick
rate. Animals with capture myopathy will show neurological symptoms such as
limping and holding the head in an unnatural manner. This disease can only be
treated by reducing the stress and giving Vitamin E and Selenium injections
(which act as antioxidants).
So,
after this important lecture and a briefing on possible conditions that we
could see with the monkey, we got tons of supplies together. We did drug dosage
calculations, prepared the drugs, syringes, bandage supplies, anesthesia,
x-ray, emergency drugs (lest something bad happen under anesthesia, like with
the pelican), and surgical tools. The leg could be broken, it could be an
injury, it could be a displaced hip, it could be a neurological problem arising
from infection or trauma, etc, etc.
After
setting the scene, we began to anxiously twiddle our thumbs until we heard the
truck pull up outside. All students except those keeping medical records were
urged outside while Izzie, our first patient, was ushered in. I was kept
outside at this point, while the vet and helpers immobilized her with drugs and
took xray images of her body. We got to come in when they were finished and she
was getting ready to get off gas anesthesia and wake up, just to give her a
quick checkup ourselves and touch a darling baby monkey. I held her little hand
in mine and heard her rapid heartbeat. I felt her soft, dark fur between my
fingers, her tiny belly and thin, long arms. She was soon ushered into a dark
room with her caretaker to wake up, while she unconsciously clung to the shirt
of her ‘mother’ in the most dear fashion it brought tears to my eyes. Her x-rays
showed that the bones were healing excellently, even the ones in the hand that
were of most concern to the vets. You could hardly tell that her tail had even
been broken.
The scar from her bone-plating surgery
Under anesthesia
Excitingly,
I was one of the record keepers for the second monkey, who turned out to be a
juvenile howler monkey male named Jaz. The veterinarian looked him over and
observed his hurt leg as best she could before we made the decision to put him
under anesthesia. When she moved his hurt limb, he aggressively showed his
teeth and hissed at her in a most threatening way, but it turns out howler
monkeys are much gentler than many other monkey species to humans as well as to
their own kind. So, it was apparent by this gesture that Jaz was in quite a bit
of pain. The drugs were injected and Jaz quickly went to sleep in his
caretakers arms.
We
took x-rays of his legs and felt range of movement between the two. No external
lesions or problems were detected, and though there was no ‘crepitation’
(scraping of bones), there seemed to be a popping in the knee joint. This popping
would indicate tendon or ligament damage. We looked at the x-rays and found no
signs of fracture anywhere, so the tendon/ligament diagnosis was accepted.
For
treatment of this monkey, it was advised that pain medications would be
continued for a week and movement would be restricted. Close monitoring of his
progress would be necessary. Otherwise, there was not much we could do for him
but let time to her healing.
While
we waited for Jaz to wake up, a classmate and I were taking his respiration and
heart rate. After several minutes of not waking from the anesthesia and a
general trend of heart rate going down, the vet decided to give him an
injection that would reverse the effects of the sedative drugs. We whipped out stethoscopes
and watches every minute or so, and listened to the rising of his heart rate.
What a relief! The little guy did wake up several minutes later, though he was
still pretty groggy from the medication and kept reaching to hold his injured
leg.
Watching him and Izzie hold to
their caretakers with all the look of need in their eyes reminded me what a
help we can be to animals. The work they are doing to rehabilitate these
monkeys is unselfish and very much needed. It can be so hard, as possessive
humans, to not want to keep the entire world’s beauty to ourselves, but these
people are somehow managing to balance getting to work with amazing, humanlike
creatures, but also allowing them to be the monkeys they are.
Jaz
Izzie
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