Wherein we have assorted biology geekery
Some days start out routine, but turn into very good, interesting days. Such was my yesterday.
I worked at the Academy of Sciences in the morning. (I volunteer in the Ornithology & Mammology Department, "preparing specimens for the collection." Which is a nice way of saying I am given a dead animal or a skull, then I remove all the non-bone parts to ready the skeleton for display or archiving.) Instead of the typical sea otter or California sea lion head we worked on a red fox. He was a juvenile male, found on Mussel Rock Beach in Daly City/Pacifica. Normally we get animals who have already been skinned and/or necropsied, but this guy was intact, which meant we got to determine the cause of death.
That determination was quite easy; the fox, who was just the size of a large housecat, had been attacked by either a coyote or medium- to large-sized dog. The poor fox's body was covered with bite marks and he had multiple bilateral broken ribs. I can only hope death came quickly for him.
While this sort of work is sad, it is also very interesting. I've read several books on forensic anthropology and pathology which I found fascinating, and working on this fox gave me a chance to see things like ante-mortem trauma for myself. (It looks completely different than post-mortem trauma.) Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've had to do forensic investigation on animals. Recently I worked on an adult female sea lion who had been shot and I had to search for bullets, and just last week I had a yearling female sea lion in whose body I found shotgun pellets. It's bad enough the animals are killing each other out of spite; why do the people need to as well?
After that I had a good dive in the Coral Reef tank, then attended a fascinating lecture by one of our Marine Mammal Center vets on Aquatic Animal Anesthesia. I'm such a geek when it comes to that sort of stuff and I soak up whatever information I can. It makes me miss being in school. If I had the time I'd enroll in classes again. Someday...
I worked at the Academy of Sciences in the morning. (I volunteer in the Ornithology & Mammology Department, "preparing specimens for the collection." Which is a nice way of saying I am given a dead animal or a skull, then I remove all the non-bone parts to ready the skeleton for display or archiving.) Instead of the typical sea otter or California sea lion head we worked on a red fox. He was a juvenile male, found on Mussel Rock Beach in Daly City/Pacifica. Normally we get animals who have already been skinned and/or necropsied, but this guy was intact, which meant we got to determine the cause of death.
That determination was quite easy; the fox, who was just the size of a large housecat, had been attacked by either a coyote or medium- to large-sized dog. The poor fox's body was covered with bite marks and he had multiple bilateral broken ribs. I can only hope death came quickly for him.
While this sort of work is sad, it is also very interesting. I've read several books on forensic anthropology and pathology which I found fascinating, and working on this fox gave me a chance to see things like ante-mortem trauma for myself. (It looks completely different than post-mortem trauma.) Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've had to do forensic investigation on animals. Recently I worked on an adult female sea lion who had been shot and I had to search for bullets, and just last week I had a yearling female sea lion in whose body I found shotgun pellets. It's bad enough the animals are killing each other out of spite; why do the people need to as well?
After that I had a good dive in the Coral Reef tank, then attended a fascinating lecture by one of our Marine Mammal Center vets on Aquatic Animal Anesthesia. I'm such a geek when it comes to that sort of stuff and I soak up whatever information I can. It makes me miss being in school. If I had the time I'd enroll in classes again. Someday...