Chattanooga Times Free Press entertainment reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Chattanooga Zoo executive director Dardie Long about the zoo’s new interpretive center and its jaguar inhabitants.
CP: These jaguars have been here since November?
DL: We got them in from the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Fla. They’ve been in our jaguar building in quarantine while we’ve been doing some training with them and getting them ready to go on exhibit.
CP: What kind of training?
DL: We teach them to do target training, things like touching their nose to the mesh, sit down for us and put their paws up on the cage so we can look underneath to examine them and make sure nothing is going on. It’s a good way to help us observe them a little better than just standing back and watching them in the exhibit. It also makes them easier to move and transfer from one exhibit to the next.
CP: How are they acclimating to the new environment?
DL: They’ve really done well. They’re a lot of fun, and they’re beautiful animals. The fact that we had older animals for some time, we all forgot how it was to have young animals on site. Fortunately, they can be exhibited together, which our other two couldn’t. They’re a lot more active. They’re so strong and vital. It’s really been a joy having them. We can’t wait to get them out for the public to see them.
CP: Why couldn’t Sasha and Pasha be on display together?
DL: These two are brothers, so they were raised together. Sasha and Pasha were not. She was a year older than he was when he came in and was old enough to introduce. They just didn’t get along at all. They’re solitary in the wild, so you don’t commonly see them together. These brothers should be fine until we bring a female on board, which might cause some ‘discussion,’ if you will.
CP: Any idea when that might happen?
DL: We’re still looking at importing a female from Argentina. It’s a lot more complicated than we ever imagined, so we’re still working on doing that, but it’s something that’s going to take a while. This will give the guys a chance to be together for as long as possible. When we’re able to locate a female, that will be a good time to separate them.
CP: Have you already received permission to have a breeding program, if you do bring in a female?
DL: We actually have been approved to breed if we import. That’s what we’re waiting on getting the female for. Especially in the jaguars species survival plan, so much of the lineage of jaguars in captivity isn’t known well, so we needed to bring in something. There are several zoos in Argentina, and we located one female, but they weren’t sure of her background, and her genetics are really important. We didn’t want to bring something in that we weren’t sure was going to be a benefit. We’re still working on it, but it’s one of those things that just going to take a while.
CP: How old are Phil and Gene?
DL: They’re about a year and a half. I believe they were born in September.
CP: How long before they’re fully grown?
DL: 3-4 years is when they reach their maximum weight. They’re probably about as tall as they’ll get, but they’ll continue to bulk up for a bit.
CP: Will they be involved in any daily educational activities at the zoo?
DL: One of the things we’ll probably do is we have keeper chats in spring and summer that we set up. The weekends are usually when those happen, in the afternoon. We usually have a keeper stationed up there to answer questions. That’s one of the things we’ll be developing. We have that already with keepers and snow leopards that we do in spring and summer.
CP: Is having a big cat in your collection a mark of status among zoological institutions?
DL: I think it’s important, from the conservation aspect, and that’s something we’re all about. With every animal we have at the zoo, we try to tell a conservation message with it. Even though jaguars are pretty common in captivity, snow leopards are not so much. When you’re approved to go into a breeding activity, that’s a status symbol for us, I guess. We’re really excited and feel like we’re doing something important rather than just exhibiting animals.
CP: Since Sasha and Pasha were at the zoo until fairly recently, was it a challenge working with new cats or did the experience of working with Sasha and Pasha make that transition easier?
DL: It’s made it easier having them on site and working with them. The challenge was that these guys are younger and more inquisitive and more apt to challenge the exhibit. It’s a little different when you release cats to a new environment that are perfectly capable of climbing right up to the top of the netting. You want to make sure everything is secure. With Sasha and Pasha, we hadn’t thought about that for years. It sharpens all of us on the awareness of how intelligent and powerful these guys are.
CP: Have Phil and Gene started exhibiting distinct personalities yet or are you still figuring them out?
DL: I think Phil is a little more inquisitive than Gene, towards me at least. Gene tends to be more aggressive. Neither of them are really people friendly. They’ll let you know pretty quickly that they’re not interested in being anybody’s pet.
CP: Was that a change from Sasha and Pasha?
DL: A little bit because they were hand raised, so they were a more acclimated to people. These guys were parent-raised, so they have no interest in humans whatsoever. They do interact well with their staff and are good about training. It’s an important tool for us, but it’s also a good way to keep them thinking about behaving when we’re getting them to do certain things, like when the vet comes.
CP: You were involved in hand raising Sasha and Pasha weren’t you?
DL: Yeah, I was. They were both still on the bottle when we got them. That was probably one of my favorite memories of being at the zoo.
CP: Is it weird for you, having this new pair of jaguars at the zoo that you don’t have this long-term connection with?
DL: You know, in a way, it’s kind of cool because it gives a bit more of an indication of the transition the zoo has gone through and where we are professionally. Even back then, it was important to us, but now, we’re so much more about being professional and making sure we’re contributing to conservation. The fact that they don’t interact is part of our design because we’re excited to have a couple of cats that were parent-reared.
CP: How large is the new exhibit?
DL: About 2,500 square feet.
CP: How does that compare with the old exhibit?
DL: We’ve really just modified the new one, but we’ve also added an interpretive area that increases the overall size of that experience about 4,000 square feet. The actual design has been revamped completely, and we’ve added more dirt in the back of the exhibit so the cats are more visible. We had a problem with the old exhibit because there was a dip there where the cats could hide. In a small zoo like ours, we want people to be able to see the animals. We also built a brand new interpretive center that’s attached to the exhibit, so all the viewing is indoors now. It’s very cool, a much nicer experience.
CP: That sounds like the exhibit you have for Hank the chimpanzee.
DL: It is. There are a number of small species in the interpretive center. We’ve got Mexican beaded lizards, which are one of the only venomous species of lizards. Then we have cotton top Tamarins, which had two babies in January. We’ve also got Pied Tamarins. It’s a really busy area. It’s a lot of fun, because you get to see other animals that live in the same habitat as the jaguars.
CP: It was outdoors before, right?
DL: Right. We have a whole new enclosed area. That big window is completely enclosed, and we removed the big bar that went across, so it’s a lot more visitor-friendly.
CP: What do you have planned that’s special for opening day?
DL: We’ll have some cultural entertainment coming in and playing bongo drums. Then we’ve got all kinds of crafts and stuff for people to learn more about the animals. We’ll do an enrichment table where you can come in and make enrichment items, not just for the jaguars but the other animals as well. We’re very excited about it. It’ll be a fun day to celebrate the new exhibit.
CP: How long has the exhibit been under construction?
DL: We started on the interpretive center in early summer. We finished that building in late November, and then we turned our attention to revamping the outdoor exhibit.
CP: How much did it cost?
DL: Around $225,000. We had to redo some of the netting. Some of the netting we had was fine for the old jaguars, but these guys are so powerful and can climb to the top. The exhibit is completely enclosed, but they could hang off the other netting, and we weren’t sure it was strong enough. So we went in to be doubly sure and replaced it.
It’s pretty cheap overall addition for us because we got a bunch of different species in one area and revamped the exhibit. It really created a nice space.