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Acouchis and Anacondas
by Jake Farley
There is a tropical oasis nearby, even in mid-winter, where rainforest animals play among the Ficus and fishtail palms. King vultures gawk and howler monkeys squawk and swing in the New World Tropic Building at Beardsley Zooligal Gardens in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Here, everything is South American rainforest, from tall trees known as our common houseplants to endangered ocelots and the world’s smallest primate, the Pygmy Marmoset. The New World Tropics Building has a variety of small rainforest critters – some endangered, all different. Caiman live here with ibis, monkeys, rodents, snakes and fish. The exhibits are refreshed with plants, and the animals use them in many ways. On the way to the New World Tropic Building, two American Bald Eagles watch people walk by. They’re both 32-year-old males, rescued by the U.S. Department of the Interior and brought to Beardsley 25 years ago. They are on loan by Fish & Wildlife. They are rehab birds, both injured, one by a bullet and the other by DDT. If one looks like his head is on backwards, know that he is brain-damaged by DDT.
“Our real focus is to produce an environment suitable to the animals 24/7,” says Don Goff, director of animal programs. “We want to create: 1) a naturalistic exhibit and 2) enough natural environment that the animals are comfortable. Good animal management is stress management. When you take out the stress, they thrive. We utilize plants to help eliminate stress, plus for visitors, we want it to look nice. Through the 'enrichment' process we hope to fulfill some of their psychological needs.”
They use “enrichment,” best described as “things we do for the animals”– like using plants. “They roll on them, pee on them, chew on them and pull them out. It used to upset me at first, but it’s beneficial to them and worth it for us,” says Gary Jessop, zoo greenhouseman who lovingly grows the plants and watches the animals enjoy them. “We do it for the animals. It breaks their boredom. Instead of putting in expensive plants, we use Ficus and Yucca. We let them have their fun and it doesn’t break our budget. You go in with the idea that you know what the animal will do to the plants.”
The door of the New World Tropic Building opens to a jungle that hits the senses, reaching the kid in all of us. Visitors are greeted by two White-bellied Caique Parrots flying overhead. “They are the clowns of our New World Tropic Building,” says Gregg Dancho, zoo director.
The slatted roof drips with philodendron roots of the houseplant kind – but bigger – jungle sized. The vine grows out of the soil in the yellow anacondas’ space, looking like the heart-leafed P. scandens at first. It climbs and weaves through slats over the walkway, then slides down into the Caiman Swamp now with huge leaves. Jessop says that the leaves have been known to eventually split, like P. monstera. Sometimes the serpents slither up the philodendron, their sheer weight pulling it down. It was planted for them – this is “enrichment,” plants providing support for the animals.
A huge, arching fiddle leaf fig, Ficus lyrata, shades the large pool where pacu swim. This South American food fish is almost three feet long. Tall soft bamboo and screw pine, Pandanas sp., with straight, razor-sharp blades grow like wild trees around a waterfall. Pandanas roots reach into the water where two six-foot female broad-snouted caiman lay. They came from the Central Park Zoo. Only rarely they’ve climbed up into the jungley hillock on the rocks above, and scooped leaves and soil into mounds to nest in.
“The zoo tries to duplicate the environment of the animals first,” says Goff. “The comfort of both plants and people come second, although the zoo makes every effort to please its visitors. We’re more limited from a plant standpoint, but we can keep it warm and humid enough to keep a poison dart frog.”
Indeed, over 20 neon-like bright blue, and green, yellow and red speckled amphibians seem content hiding among the grape ivy, Cissus rhombifolia, in their habitat-on-display. It was replanted a month ago. “When they get fed, it’s very active in there,” explains Jessop. Their dinner – fruit flies and pin head crickets – hop among the leaves.
Poison dart frogs are not inherently poisonous, although all frogs have toxins in their skin to some degree. In the wild, they acquire toxins by bio-accumulation – eating ants and termites that eat alkaloid-laden tropical plants, such as diffenbachia. Recent studies show that poison dart frogs born in captivity are losing their toxicity, says Gregg Dancho, zoo director.
In South America, the frogs were used in two ways. One was to boil them up and skim off the rendered fat where the poison was. Natives poured it in a pouch and dipped their arrows and blow-gun darts into it. But some frogs were more toxic than others, and those were placed in a basket, alive, and carried on hunts in the rainforest. The native grabbed a frog with a large leaf, then rolled the tip of his dart over the frog’s skin, covering it in poison.
Fancy plants like orchids and bromeliads once enhanced the rainforest feel, but now the old standbys, like Ficus, Philodendron and bamboo are used. Given the right light, temperature and soil moisture, these plants are hard to kill. No pesticides are used at Beardsley, for good animal health is paramount. “Commercial fertilizer is used, but never manure,” says Jeanne Yuckienuz, associate curator.
Jessop cleans out the tree canopy every year “to protect the structural integrity of the building’s glass ceiling,” he says. In some areas, spindly Ficus grow up through the screen that’s just below the ceiling, and which covers each animal’s section. Although most home gardeners would prune them back to make them re-sprout lower and bushier, Jessop prefers to let the twiggy growth grab the screen so the highly used plant remains stable. In the free-flight aviary, parrots eat the leaves below the screen and ibis perch on limbs. The twigs above the screen serve as an anchor.
A pair of acouchis offer other challenges to the trees that enrich their lives. They scatter nuts, including around the roots, and later dig them up. They also like to gnaw on trunks. DO try this at home! Beardsley banana plants are chopped down to three feet tall after fruiting. This leaves enough nutrition in the mother plant for the sprouting pups to grow. In just one year, they’ll produce a bract of about 50 bananas. “Once we started to see the top bananas blush, it was only a matter of days till they were ripe,” says Jessop. They like heavy top light, humidity and warmth. Their shallow root systems rot easily, so let the soil dry out between waterings.
The Keel-billed Toucan is a nester, who once had a snag to live in, but the dead tree was unstable and had to be removed. Now the colorful bird sits in Ficus and fishtail palm.
The King Vulture exhibit “is a tough one,” says Jessop. The birds are heavy when perching. Once they had a beautiful red hibiscus. They sat in it and broke it. To make matters worse, they collected its twigs to build a nest. “If the birds can’t find what they need, they’ll break twigs from the trees. So now we bring in straw.”
The endangered Golden Lion Tamarin lives with a Red-foot tortoise who likes to eat the snake plants. Jessop used to put bromeliads in slabs of bark high on a bamboo fence, but the Tamarins climbed the trees, jumped to the fence and pulled the bromeliads out. Red flowers stimulate the animals, says Jessop.
With the endangered Pygmy Marmosets, plant longevity depends on whether or not the critters like the plant. These Peruvian rainforest natives are “gumivores,” who chew divets into tree bark to cause the sap to run. When it congeals, they eat it. “We did it (their exhibit) up with bromeliads and orchids and within three days it was totally trashed,” says Jessop. “I was heart-broken but the keeper said they had a good time with it.”
Other plant problems are reduced humidity and small planting pockets that dry out in winter. Plantings are refreshed two or three times a year, with sprucing up as needed. Nurseries donate plants to help replenish their supply.
The greenhouse was constructed in 1898. It was part of Beardsley Park, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Legend says that the nearby PT Barnum Circus employees walked the animals through the city streets of Beardsley Park. Because people gathered to watch, the city established Beardsley Park Zoo in 1922 with donations of animals from individuals and Barnum’s retired circus animals.
The greenhouse had its own budget and grew plants for the city and to supplement the park's rose gardens and dahlia beds. During a crunch in the ‘80s, the city eliminated greenhouse staff and closed it down. “We went out to the garden clubs like the Bridgeport Men’s Garden Club to water and keep it green,” says Dancho. They donated time and plants for the greenhouse. Gary Jessop was one of those volunteers until eight years ago, when he was hired as zoo staff. “Very little was alive in here and we started on donations of houseplants just to get some plants in here. It stayed that way for 15 years. We had no staff – just volunteers and garden clubs. The common houseplants were in here by the thousands – pepperomia, Sansaveria, pothos,” he said. In 1997, the Connecticut Zoological Society bought the zoo.
Older sections house rainforest species and succulents. The center house grows beneficials, like agave, grown for fabric, soap and tequila, and foods such as banana, key lime, ponderosa lemon, and ginger. The new $300,000 greenhouse has two purposes: display, education and rentals, and a propagation area where kids come to learn. Their Century plant bloomed last year at 80, giving birth to a thousand babies.
“The mission of Beardsley Zoo is to educate adults and children about animals, conservation, the world we live in and how all these things are connected,” says Dancho. “The sub-mission is recreation. Our admission is the price of a movie ticket. We want to keep it available to the majority of the public.”
Why not take a day’s tropical vacation? The animals playing in plants at the Beardsley Zoo will intrigue you.
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published February 05, 2004
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