Life at the Zoo

by Phillip T. Robinson

  When the animal tranquilizing agent xylazine came on the market, zoo veterinarians immediately set about the task of sizing up its potential applications with their patients. This drug was rumored to be a good sedative in horses. We used it for the first time to sedate and surgically repair an umbilical hernia in an antelope, and we found ourselves spending the next eighteen hours combating hypothermia and depression in that patient. It also turned out to be a poor analgesic in most animals, which limited its use to that of a tranquilizer, for which it is quite effective in elephants and several other species. At that time no reversing chemical was available to counter its effects. Before long, after it was more widely available as a veterinary drug, I received a desperate phone call from a wild animal dealer whose local equine veterinarian had given this drug to two valuable oryx antelope in order to collect blood samples for some mandatory government blood tests. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since both oryxes had been drugged, and they were still flat out on the ground like limp dishrags. Other than supportive care, I was unable to offer any suggestions to revive these animals, and it would be some years before drugs were available to counteract this drug when overdosed. The veterinarian, who worked mostly with horses, gave the equine dose of this drug to the oryxes. It turns out cattle and antelope are ten times more sensitive to it than horses, and the animals never did get up. It was depressing to learn of this huge dosing error with this drug, and I empathized with both the owner and the veterinarian in their hopeless plight. Several drugs are now available to reverse the sedative effects of xylazine.

  Before we used xylazine on elephants at the zoo, we waited for other veterinarians to go first before we jumped into a procedure of our own. Often, a conversation with a colleague would go something like this: “Have you used that drug on any big animals yet? “No, have you?” “No, not yet.” “Well, give me a call when you have an idea how it works.” It was often a waiting game to see who went first. Xylazine turned out be excellent for producing standing sedation in elephants. Because of a difference in species sensitivity, a full-grown elephant can be sedated (standing) with less than the amount required for the average horse.

  One day I received a panic call from the Ringling Brothers Circus about one of its Asian elephants, which had had an accident in a performance in Phoenix, Arizona. A large cow elephant named Iki had gradually developed a large, cantaloupe-sized tumor, which hung from the abdomen in front of her rear legs. The circus manager was concerned because she had snagged this dangling mass in another elephant’s armpit during that day’s performance during a gymnastic maneuver, tearing it slightly at the base of its attachment. Worried by a pulsating artery they felt in the tumor, they envisioned a gory scene in which it might be ripped loose in front of thousands of spectators. The tumor had to be removed, and I was asked to examine her during the circus’s next stop, the San Diego Sports Arena.

  Ringling’s Axel Gautier and the author with Iki’s tumor in 1978; years later Axel was killed by a circus elephant

  After examining Iki’s appendage, we set a surgical time for the following day. Word had gotten out among the circus cast that Iki’s surgery was going to take place, and a procession of jugglers, trapeze artists, midgets, and clowns strolled by the back lot, offering their skeptical best wishes. The night before the surgery, I began to worry about how to control the bleeding, and I fashioned a tourniquet clamp out of a split section of a broom handle and two stainless steel radiator hose clamps. I sterilized the lot and packed up the other surgical instruments for my project.

  Restrained fore and aft by leg ropes, Iki swayed precariously while her trainer, Axel Gautier, reassured her. After an intravenous injection of a tranquilizer into an ear vein she began to show its effects. Her gentle swaying ebbed and the probing motions of her trunk subsided. When she was fully affected, her trunk dangled like a limp hose, giving the appearance that it had grown substantially longer. Iki was off in peanut land. She seemed to glide in and out of a sleeplike trance, shifting her weight from one leg to another. I had the insecure sensation of working under a large dump truck with a wobbly support jack, expecting that she might flop down without any warning. After a generous injection of local anesthetic into the surgical site, and with the tourniquet in place above the tumor, I went to work separating her from the mass and tied off the veins and arteries. Soon, the eight-pound tumor, which turned out to be a benign growth, was free from Iki and was being passed between the trainers like a newborn baby. A cheer of approval came from the small crowd of onlookers, but the final sighs of relief came only after the tourniquet was released and a hemorrhagic catastrophe failed to materialize. In a matter of minutes following an injection of the sedative antidote, Iki was back to her old self and eating peanuts from her trainer’s hand as reward for her cooperation. Our sideshow was over, and the unusual little audience drifted away to prepare for the afternoon’s matinee show.

  If I thought circuses were strange enough in the United States, I shouldn’t have been surprised that they take on additional twists in Mexico. The Tijuana Humane Society asked for help in examining several circus animals that had been brought to its attention in our sister border city. When I arrived on their lot, I felt a clear air of hostility from the general manager of the circus, who grudgingly walked me to the side of the big top where the menagerie animals were displayed. Circuses like Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, had animal menageries as part of their traveling shows and exhibited such “oddities” as giraffes, hippos, and even gorillas. I had been asked to come down to look at a tiger with a toothache, but first the Humane Society representative led me directly to a half-grown rhinoceros that was tethered by a hind leg chain. Exhausted and underweight, this sad creature stood passively as the sideshow patrons filed by; most were viewing a live rhinoceros for the first time in their lives. A cadaverous odor came from the infection in the rhino’s leg where a chain was fastened. It disappeared completely into the flesh. The chain had been placed there at a younger age, and the leg was now growing into this unyielding tourniquet.

  The Humane Society officer translated my conversation with the manager—not word-for-word, however, as they were obviously having a tense disagreement about being compelled to tend to the leg problem. He finally agreed to have the chain removed, a task that required general sedation. I discussed my plan to sedate the rhino, and the manager winced at the suggestion as if he were being forced to sign the animal’s death warrant. Because of the creature’s deteriorating condition, I used a low sedative dose of the narcotic immobilizing drug called etorphine. The chain was painstakingly sawed free as the rhino lay on its side and, and a new soft cotton rope was placed on the opposite leg. The manager looked around as if deciding where to dig the hole for the rhino, while several children daringly crept up to touch the recumbent beast. Laid out flat on his side, to them it had the appearance of drawing its last breath. When I injected the antidote intravenously, I didn’t tell everyone what I expected would happen next, but patted the rhino on its horn. Then, as if a miracle was happening, it rolled its eyes, lifted its head, and stumbled onto its feet. The children scattered, and the manager grinned in bewilderment as though he had witnessed a resurrection. Speechless, he rushed off to the main tent, and in a few minutes he was back, insisting that I join him and the owner as his guest by the main arena.

  There in the center ring was the pride and joy of their show—the tiger with the toothache. Now treating me like a VIP instead of the grim reaper, the circus owner introduced himself in clear English, smiled gratefully, and thanked me repeatedly for not killing his rhino. As the spotlights focused and the music came up in a fanfare, a large horse, outfitted with blinders and a stout leather back pad cantered around the ring with a tiger on its back. The tiger jumped through flaming hoops and back onto the horse in perfect cadence. The audience cheered—it was an awesome spectacle. I asked the owner, “How do you get the tiger to do such a stunt?” He responded, “Well, doctor, it is not the tiger th
at’s the problem, but the horse. . . . You see, this is the third one we’ve gone through this year.” “And what about the tiger’s toothache?” I inquired. “I’d recommend a root canal on the broken tooth.” “Oh, Doctor,” he sighed, “we would be pleased if you could look at that next year—one miracle is all my heart can take just now.”

  Several very potent synthetic narcotics proved useful for sedating most of the hoofed animals in zoos; first and most notable was etorphine, which is reported to be thousands of times more potent as morphine. Etorphine was first synthesized in the early 1960s by Edinburgh professor Kenneth Bentley while he was searching for a new nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. This drug virtually revolutionized the practice of zoo medicine with elephants, rhinos, and most hoofed animals. One drop of it can be fatal to a human, however, and great caution is required in handling it, including eye protection and rubber gloves. The Washington Times reported that etorphine or fentanyl, another potent synthetic narcotic used in zoo work, was likely to be the drug that Russian police commandos placed in the ventilation ducts in the opera house hostage crisis in Moscow in 2002, which resulted in scores of fatalities. Its potency was further noted when it caused several fatalities in Africa after people ate the flesh of animals that had been drugged with it. A British equine veterinarian who used this drug on a horse died when he accidentally stuck himself with a wet needle contaminated with etorphine that he had just used to inject a horse. The fallout from this death was its removal from the British veterinary market as a drug too dangerous for general practice. Less than a teaspoon can render a rhinoceros immobile, yet the injection of the antidote, called “M50–50” (diprenorphine), brings it back to consciousness within a matter of minutes. Never before had such a dramatic form of animal restraint and reversal been possible with zoo animals. Its potency placed it in the highest security level of controlled substances in the United States and strictly limited its sale to zoo and wildlife veterinarians. Carfentanyl, another synthetic narcotic, and several even more potent, reversible drugs, have been added to the drug armamentarium of zoo veterinarians since the advent of M99.

  In response to a request from a Mexican veterinary friend, I made another odd house call, this time to the old Tijuana bullring to examine a fighting bull in need of first aid. This toro bravo, or indulto, as spared fighting bulls are called, had been saved from the typical coup de grace of this sad “sport”—a sword inserted between the shoulder blades and into the heart—because he had exhibited superior traits of “honesty” and “bravery,” qualities the bullfighting industry strives to preserve in breeding stock. This can only be known from the actual arena performance of a bull against a matador, and amounts to the sparing of fewer than one in a hundred fighting bulls. Neither the matador nor the spectators play any official role in deciding the fate of the bull, but crowds often let their sentiments be known about the bull and the fighter. It is entirely up to the judge to decide on the performance of each. The bullfighters are divided into professionals (matadors) and novices; the pros face bulls that are over four years old, while the amateurs get the younger ones. Depending on their performance with a bull, a fighter may be awarded nothing, one ear, two ears, or two ears and a tail. For the bull it is an all-or-nothing proposition with few survivors.

  The culture of bullfighting has some of the same shady elements as professional boxing, and it seems that all blood sports attract unsavory characters. Long after the demise of Roman gladiators, bullfighting is one of the few human vs. animal mortal-combat events that has managed to survive man’s slowly evolving enlightenment. Ironically, true to our human system of pecking orders in sports, bullfight aficionados probably would look down upon the Afghan sport of buzkashi (“goat-grabbing”) as primitive—this a cross between polo and rugby, played on horseback by two teams that use the decapitated carcass of goat as a “ball.” Unlike bullfighting, cockfighting, and dogfighting, at least the goat is dead before the game begins.

  Loading a white rhinoceros at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in 1974. Following the animal’s immobilization with M99, a crate is positioned in front of the animal. A reversal drug (M50-50) is then given, and the animal is directed into the crate with a heavy rope tether.

  The hot, dusty bullring in Tijuana felt desolate when we arrived after the crowd had departed for the day. The only lingering signs of animal life were two black bovine tails that dangled from a corral fence and several feral cats that skittered away at our approach. Charcoal embers still warmed a small hibachi behind the spectator stands, where token remains of the losers had been roasted after the entertainment was over. The rest of the day’s sacrifices had long since been dragged off to local butcher shops.

  As we made our way to the bull corrals, our eyes met a surprisingly small, muscle-bound, jet-black bull, who was still fighting mad. My Mexican colleague referred to him as a half ton of angry carne asada. Pound per pound, he looked tougher than any zoo animal I had yet encountered. He had ample reasons for his rage, inasmuch as his entire upper neck and shoulder region had been brutalized by the picadors, the padded horsemen who incessantly prod the bull with spike-tipped poles. Swinging from the top of his neck was a cluster of banderillas, metal-barbed sticks adorned with colorful crepe paper streamers, which are jabbed into the bull’s neck and shoulders by the matador as the animal sweeps past the cape. The damage to the bull begins just as he is released into the arena when a short, barbed shaft the size of an ice pick and decorated with the colors of the bull’s home ranch, is plunged to the hilt into his shoulder with the apparent object of vexing him.

  During a bullfight, “cowardly” bulls, as distinct from those considered bravo, retreat from the picadors and often try to run or climb the arena walls to escape. This indulto, however, pawed up a cloud of dust with a front hoof and charged across the corral toward us, determined to seek revenge on the next living thing that dared to come near him. If glares could kill, we would have been dead, and the wooden corral now seemed pathetically flimsy. My heart rate jumped as the cloud of dust from his sudden halt blinded us as he swept past.

  The single human in attendance, a toothless gaucho, led us to a better vantage point at one side of the pen for a shot with the dart rifle. We drugged the raging bull with a well-placed dart in the rump, and he went down within fifteen minutes. After removing the harpoons from his neck, and about ten pounds of macerated muscle, we partially closed the gaping wounds and primed the bull with generous doses of penicillin and fly repellent; this animal was sure to heal with little intervention from man. Within just a few minutes of giving him an intravenous injection of the drug antidote, he was back up, glaring and stamping his feet, and two days later he was on an airplane to reproductive retirement in Monterrey, Mexico.

  I have never attended a bullfight, but soon after this experience I saw one broadcast from a Tijuana television station. The spectacle was one of the most troubling episodes I could ever expect to witness, causing me to regret having been even remotely connected to the perpetuation of this pathetic version of entertainment. Just as the Roman gladiator spectacles came to an end, bullfighting will not last forever, but, like the bulls, it will die a slow death in both Spain and Mexico, where this tradition is sustained by machismo-ridden subcultures that are loath to neuter their dogs.

  There are no true miracle restraint drugs, in the sense of safety, for animals or for people. As modern chemical restraint has become more routine in zoos, there has been a sense of complacency that has developed about its proper use. It is inappropriate to use chemical restraint as a substitute for developing safe animal-handling facilities and techniques. Veterinarians are sometimes overly relied upon to compensate for shortfalls in the proper design of animals pens and buildings. Perhaps our success has bred some excess. The practice of anesthesia is a little like flying an airplane: it looks safe and easy as long as the weather is good and there are no mechanical surprises, but it’s hell on a bad day when the black clouds roll in. As with aviation, you need to be
prepared to cancel your flight plans if a storm suddenly changes the conditions.

  Today we can do dental surgery on an elephant, repair a broken leg on a Mongolian wild horse, perform ultrasound on a rhinoceros’s ovaries, or artificially inseminate a panda—a far cry from the times when anesthesia was so risky that it was considered a last-ditch option.

  He never even said he was sick.

  10. FINDING THE SICK IN THE ZOO

  Seeking Out Disease and Discomfort

  Wild animals experience a full range of risks from disease and injury, although there is a lingering notion that they are excused from most health problems because of their natural lifestyles. In fact, the seriously ill drop rapidly into nature’s recycle bin and are seldom observed by humans. Early medical practitioners of all schools had to master the powers of observation to determine the causes of illness. Lacking today’s diagnostic equipment and laboratory resources, observation was the most powerful tool they had, and its importance is still vastly underestimated in all aspects of clinical practice. Other senses were also used—even taste for detecting sweetness in a patient’s urine to diagnose sugar diabetes.