Alabama's STEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred.

Holle, Champions of servant leadership, science, technology, engineering, math, all coming up right now on Alabama STEM Explorers.

Hi.

Welcome to Alabama State Explorers.

I'm Mitch, and I'm here today at the Montgomery Zoo with my friend Michelle.

Hi.

How's it going?

Good.

So tell me about what these animals, the lions behind us.

Yeah.

So welcome to the Montgomery Zoo.

I have two amazing residents here at the Montgomery Zoo.

Buddy and Dash, these are two male African lions.

They are actually brothers.

And they came from the same litter, and they came to us from a lion habitat range.

That's.

That's amazing.

So, like, they look, like, pretty big.

Like, how long how much do you what do they weigh yet?

So Buddy is a little bit smaller than Dash.

Dashes are a little bit larger.

He weighs in at just under 300 lbs where dash or sorry buddy is about 275.

Okay.

Wow.

So there's there's some big Yep yep.

And they are 12 and a half years old.

So tell me more about just like lions in general.

Like.

All right.

So these guys, like I said, are African lions.

They come to us from Africa and they were born in captivity.

So they are not brought to us from the wild and they are born in litters two to 3 to 4 is usually a common litter size.

They had I believe it was five, so they had another brother and two sisters.

And like I said, they are 12 and a half.

We've had them since they were about two years old, so they've spent a majority of their life with us at the Montgomery.

They're like, How long do they live?

Yes, they their lifespan is going to depend on wild verses in captivity.

And so in the wild they might reach early teens.

And males typically don't live as long as the females in their native habitat.

They're competing for territory.

They're competing for females.

And then they also have predation when they're cubs in captivity and human care, and they can actually live up into their early twenties.

Okay.

That's that's they can live pretty long.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And that's a lot to do with the health care that they get in captivity.

Tell me how to how you guys take care of them.

It seems pretty hard.

Yeah.

So they're actually considered a more dangerous species.

They're considered a category one species.

They are something that we have to urge, species that we have to really take care of when we are shifting in and out.

We want to make sure that we have proper barriers.

If you notice their fences a little bit taller than some of the other habitats.

Same goes for a lot of the felines that we have here at the zoo.

At nighttime, we shift them inside and they have this whole night house.

They each have their own stalls, they have beds, and then we feed them when they come off display.

So some of our other animals, we actually give them food on their habitat.

We'll ship them out in the mornings and then they have enrichment items on display and then we'll ship them inside.

JJ is one of our keeper ones and she's going to do a training session.

Dash is actually up at the fence right now, so she's going to go through some of the behaviors that we work with them on, everything that we do with them when it comes to training it so that we can better take care of them.

We're looking at their body condition.

We're getting a good 360 of their body, checking out their fur, their feet, their mouths, all of that.

But it gives us a good look to make sure that there's nothing going on.

Some of the other behaviors actually allow us to do things such as injections.

So volunteering injections with needles in their hips, we can actually work on pulling their tail out from the fence so that we can do blood draws.

So everything that we do is not necessarily for entertainment, but so much as for a medical making sure that they stay healthy.

So a few minutes ago you were talking about they're a category one.

What what what makes an animal like get a category, I guess.

Yeah.

I'm so here at the zoo, we have three different categories.

We have one, two and three are more dangerous.

Animals are all categorized in a category once, and then it kind of slowly tapers down from there.

And it really just depends on the facility, but also the individual.

Our carnivores, our big cats, our elephants, our bears, those are going to be more dangerous animals.

So if their, heaven forbid, something got out, those are animals that you would not want to go towards.

You would want to just keep a safe distance.

They're the ones that would be like our chimpanzees, very intelligent.

So as you get lower in that or I guess go 2 to 3, they're not as dangerous.

So like JJ is training the lion right now.

So like, what kind of things?

Like, would you like what kind of food would you put like to train them or just to feed them in general?

Yeah.

So these are considered carnivores.

Majority of their diet is going to be meat.

Every once in a while you'll see just like your dogs or cats, they're going to be eating grass.

That's usually because they have a upset stomach.

Thankfully, we don't see that too often, but they do get raw meat.

It's a special t feline exotic feline diet that we bring in from a company called Nebraska, and it's mainly horse meat.

If you think about what lions are going to be eating in their native habitat, it's going to be leaner animals.

So gazelles, antelope.

So the horse meat actually kind of resembles that more than like a beef would.

But it's a combination of horse and beef.

So back to the training session that just doing like I said, everything that we do is for medical purpose.

So as she's going through these behaviors, you can see she's looking at different body parts to encourage them to come up.

She's got a belly on a stick, so just a pull bootie that she is putting up to the fence and she'll ask them to target.

They come in, they put their nose on that target, and that lets us know that they're ready and willing to participate in the training session.

So everything is voluntary.

They're not going to participate if they don't want to.

We're not going to force them.

But she'll go through things such as open, so they're going to open their mouth so you can see their teeth, check out their tongue.

She'll have them move in different locations with that booty.

And that's going to allow us to see different sides of their body.

She also will have them stand up on their back legs to present their front paws to us and get a good look at that belly.

And that's actually what she's doing right now.

Wow.

So that's a really impressive one right there.

If you notice, she's touching her ears paws to kind of just get a good look at those.

She'll ask him to lay down so you can see his back and his tail.

And then she'll also ask him to line up so that why that behavior is actually going to allow us to eventually get voluntary injections in that back hips and also allow us to pull that tail through if we wanted to do a voluntary blood draw.

That's that's that's also amazing.

I just seeing him stand up a minute ago, that's yeah, very impressive.

What are the necessary requirements for like a closure for two male lions, for example?

Yeah.

So overall, all of our species, we have to consider what their considered basic needs are.

So you always want to have a source for water.

We want to make sure that they are getting the proper nutrition that they need daily.

And so that's taking into consideration.

So some animals get fat twice a day, some animals get fed just once a day.

Just depends.

And when we look at their enclosure, we want to make sure that they have shelter.

So you see the umbrella over behind us that allows them to get out of the element.

So if it's raining and they can sit underneath that, if it gets super cold, we actually will access them to their night house so that they have that heater in just in case it just gets to chilly.

And then we also want to make sure that they have plenty of space.

Some animals, you want to have more height to their enclosure, some animals you want to have more horizontal space versus their vertical.

So we've got some rocks out there.

We put logs out there.

And sometimes even the the furniture, what we call their furniture of their habitat, can be taken from other displays.

So like our elephants have big logs and so we can bring those over here for enrichment.

So I see some like bones on the ground.

Tell me about.

Yeah.

So here, I'm going to have you hold these.

Okay?

You can just pull in out.

All right.

So this is the top part of a lion skull.

And this is one of our older males.

He actually passed away in his early twenties.

But this we have a keeper who helps us clean up some of the bones to use for educational uses.

So if you notice, he's got these sharp teeth.

And like I said, he is a carnivore and these teeth are going to help him pull that meat off of the bones.

And then if you think about comparing a carnivore to an herbivore, the teeth are going to be sharper, like I said, to pull the meat off.

But he doesn't have as many molars.

They're not flat like an herbivore would be.

They don't have the bottom half of the jaw right now, but they have very strong muscles that attach from their jaws to allow them to clamp down to catch their prey.

Yes, I sure wouldn't want to mess up.

You know, they're pretty intimidating.

And then you actually are holding a lion claw.

So this was a same male, if you notice, it's curved.

So they have retractable claws.

So that means that they can put the claws out and then they can bring them back in.

But they're actually very sharp.

So when they're catching their prey, they use their jaw to hold, and then they use the claws also as a means of holding their prey.

So is this claw with this club and retractable?

Yes, this is a retractable clasp.

So he would have been able to have his claws, paws like this, and then his claws would kind of come out like this and then he could pull them back in.

Interesting.

Yes.

It's pretty cool.

And if you think so, here at the zoo, we have cheetahs that are right next door.

Our cheetahs do not have retractable closet.

They're more like your dog claws, where you think of dogs and cats.

Cats have a retractable closet and then your dog claws are just going to stay.

So, like, if they jump on a fence, they might get their claws stuck versus the cat who can even themselves.

So I have one more question.

They're both adult male lions.

Like how do they interact with each other?

Yeah.

So we thankfully ended up with these two boys before they became sexually mature.

They've never been around a female, so we have the opportunity to house them together.

A lot of times when you put males together who are sexually immature, if they have, especially if they have been around females, but they don't do too well in captivity together.

But they do really well.

They've never been around a female.

They do have their spats just like other like human siblings would.

So every once in a while you'll hear them getting a little bit grouchy with one another.

But for the most part, they say pretty cool.

They'll play around, they can roughhouse, and that's another thing that we consider when we're talking about our different categories for animals.

So we never go in with our animal of the lions specifically.

Yeah, we always have some kind of protective contact situation.

So here, you know this JJ, she's not putting her hands in with the lions.

She's not going in there with them.

She has that barrier between her and them.

Yeah, they may not necessarily try to be aggressive with us, but even if they were trying to play with us, they could interact with how strong their muscles are or their jaw muscles are in their claws.

One more artifact that I have, and this is actually one fur.

Oh my God, it's all part of the body.

It's just side.

Okay, so we will take pelts from our animals that leave us, and we'll clean them up and we'll use them for education programs and stuff.

And so this is one of the items that we take.

Yeah, it's a lot more cautious than you would think it would be.

You'd think, Oh, he's so fluffy and soft, but it is more coarse than than you would think.

Awesome.

That's just been also incredible.

I've learned so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

So I actually have a treat for you and my coworker Danielle is going to talk to you a little bit about snakes next.

So I'm going to take you over there.

I'm super excited.

It sounds great.

Thanks for.

Well, my parents tell me that I was born wanting to be a vet.

Since the earliest memory that I have, I've always wanted to work with animals.

My most favorite part of my job is how every single day is different.

I'm very fortunate in this particular facility where I can be doing a medical procedure one day.

The next day I'm helping out animal care.

There's always something new and exciting to be involved in training, behavior, nutrition and the list goes on in my every day life.

Here at the zoo, we absolutely use a variety of different sciences, technologies and engineering, mathematics, and it depends on the day how it's being used.

So science every single day, I'm always seeking out more knowledge and figuring out what is the scientific background behind what's occurring here.

And from there we use so many different technologies and mathematics in order to do the daily job that I have, whether it's calculating drug dosages, determining what the dietary needs are of an animal, the various medical equipment that we use, whether it's ultrasound radiography, the list goes on.

Hi, Mitch.

I'm Danielle, and it's so great to have you here at the Montgomery Zoo today.

It's awesome to be here.

I already saw these lions and it was just so amazing to look at all of them.

Great.

I'm so glad that Michelle was able to show you the lions.

We were able to see a training session.

But how do you feel about snakes?

I like them.

I think they're fun.

Yeah.

Have you ever seen a snake eat?

I don't believe I have.

Okay, well, let's do a little a little game first, and let's see if you have the capability to eat like a snake.

You want to?

Okay, Sure.

Okay, So on the table, you've got some fudge stripe cookies and a pumpkin, right?

Okay.

All right, so this is what I need you to do.

I need you to eat those cookies.

Okay.

But you can't use your hands.

Okay, so, like, I hold the plate.

No, bend down.

You have to pretend as if you have no hands and eat those cookies.

So let's see.

How do I do this?

I'm a squat down.

I can't do it too flat.

It's pretty flat.

Yes.

Let me give it another try.

Yes.

Okay, so you got one.

And they're pretty good cookies.

Yeah, they're pretty good.

Now, here's the question for you, though.

Go ahead.

Eat the pumpkin.

Can you do it?

I don't think I can.

You sure you can't get that pumpkin in your mouth?

I think that would be pretty hard.

Okay.

All right, so here's the thing, though.

Snakes are able to eat 2 to 3 times the size of their mouth.

That's.

That's about as crazy as pumpkins about that, right?

Yeah, it's about 2 to 3 times the size of your mouth.

That's.

Yeah.

But a snake could swallow something that big if they were as big as you or me.

How would they do that?

Great question.

And I'm glad you asked me.

So here's the thing.

It's all about the adaptations of the mouth that help them to be able to do that.

So we have this cool skeleton here, and you can take a look at the skeleton and you can see that this skeleton has an upper and a lower jaw, just like you and me.

Yes.

And it looks like it's together right now.

So but what happens with the snake when they get ready to eat is they do this movement with their mouth where they move their bottom jaw back and forth like this.

And then when they get ready to actually open the door to swallow, they take this jaw and they unhinge it from this jaw and it pops down.

So really and you and I are like this when we eat, right?

A snake, though, does this.

So it's crazy.

So they're able to eat a lot larger food source.

But that's not it.

Okay.

All right.

How many bones do you have right here?

One.

One.

Yeah, right.

Snakes have two.

Oh, wow.

And they're two or so put together by a ligament.

That's right here.

Okay.

The ligament is the piece that holds the bone.

The bone.

And it stretches like a rubber band.

And so when the snake eats, it doesn't just do this, but it also does this.

And so they're able to pull larger food in.

Yeah, they can.

You can definitely get pretty big stuff.

Yeah.

All right.

So I brought my friend Desi out today.

Okay, So what is Desi?

Desi is a desert Kingsnake.

So let me grab her and show you.

Desi.

Okay.

Now, it probably looks kind of silly.

I have my snake in a pillowcase.

But snakes, they're pretty easy to get a lot of openings, right?

Yes.

So I can't really put her in a carrier to take her somewhere like you would a dog or a cat.

Yeah.

So we put them inside of a pillowcase because it's nice, and then they can still breathe through it.

But they're still contained.

Well.

Yeah.

So.

All right, so Desi's down inside this pillowcase.

There she is.

That is a beautiful snake.

And so Desi is a desert kingsnake.

And these guys are found in the western part of the United States, like New Mexico, Arizona, that kind of area.

You can pet her if you want.

All right.

So look at Desi's mouth, okay?

You can see the size of her mouth there right now.

We're going to feed Desi.

Okay.

Because she hasn't had her food yet this week and she's hungry.

So we're going to put her down inside of here.

And the reason snakes eat.

So that's a great question.

So in the wild, snakes might go months without eating because, you know, there's not always a food source available.

Yeah.

Here at the zoo with our snakes, we feed them once a week.

And we do that.

Or let me say, we offer food once a week.

They don't always eat it.

They're not always hungry.

But that makes sure that we have happy snakes that are not going to want to bite us every time we get them out, to take them to show them to people.

Yes.

So and the reason why I put her in here and I don't feed her in her regular enclosure is because I don't want her to associate my hand going into her enclosure with food because I don't want her to strike at me and try to bite me whenever I go in.

Yes.

So we put her in a separate place.

Okay.

Now, here at the zoo, we do not feed live animals.

And the reason for that is because if an animal is not ready to eat, then there's a potential that the animal that was the prey might do what any animal does to get away and bite.

And we don't want an injury to happen.

Yeah.

So we get these rats and chicks and rabbits and guinea pigs that we feed out, sent to us already dead or frozen.

And then I've thought these and gotten them ready for desert for today.

Okay.

All right, so let's see, what does he does?

All right.

Yeah.

That rat is definitely bigger than girl.

Is her mouth right?

Definitely bigger than her head.

Right.

But do you see how she is maneuvering back and forth to be able to move that mouse down?

But at the same time, she's open to that and she'll really why that is that he looks like she looks like Pac-Man.

It's like really wide.

Absolutely.

It looks a lot like Pacman.

And so what she's going to do is she's going to work this down.

And then she usually would eat a larger than that.

But I grabbed a small one today just to show you guys.

Okay.

So, like, she would get one one mouse a week.

Is that what it was?

Yes.

So she gets a large mouse or a small rat once a week.

Okay, cool.

So in the wild, like this species of snake.

Like what word?

Where does he live?

And what would she eat?

Great.

So this guy is the desert king of snakes, right?

So it's right there in the name?

Yeah.

We find him in the desert of North America.

So we see them in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, even down into Mexico.

And they are king snakes, which have this really amazing ability to they are immune to snake venom.

So part of their diet is venomous snakes.

Oh, okay.

So that.

Yeah, that's interesting.

So they eat everything from venomous snakes and lizards if they're really hungry to small mammals and birds just to make sure that they're getting something to eat.

So like, like in, like throughout the the times, the king snakes of lives have like venomous snakes kind of learn not to mess with king snakes.

You know, that's a great question.

And I don't know that they have.

I definitely still see even here in Alabama, but there are some king snakes that we have the speckled king snake, which actually looks a lot like this guy.

And they still cohabitate in the same area as was the animals snakes.

So I don't know that there's been that evolutionary chain train of thought that's changed.

Interesting.

Interesting.

So like the the species that lives here in Alabama, what where do they live?

And we find them all throughout Alabama.

As a matter of fact, you can see them in a neighborhood.

You can see them if you're out on a hike in the woods, If you see somebody that looks like this, it's one that you want to have around, though, because they're eating those baby venomous snakes that might be potentially dangerous to you.

Yeah.

Okay.

So like this this king snake, what is like her habitat consists of here at the zoo.

Great question.

So Desi actually has a terrarium.

A lot Like what this looks like, but it's much larger.

And she is has hides that we've created for her and a water source in that area.

And then she gets out a lot.

Desi actually is one of our ambassadors.

And so she goes out to schools and churches and community functions and sees people on a regular basis.

And so she gets a lot of out of the enclosure time.

That's that's really interesting.

So are these do they have any like are they, like, endangered in any way or they are not?

There are what we call at least concern.

So their numbers are stable and the output in nature.

Good.

So like in the wild.

So they would eat like other snakes, lizards, mice.

And is that.

That's right.

And even birds sometimes.

So what would it was there anything that would eat them?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

There are some birds of prey that eat these guys.

You might find that if they're really hungry, some mammals that are large, like coyotes might go after these guys.

Yeah, I can almost see the mouse going.

I know you can.

Definitely.

There's a buldge right?

And that bowls is moving its way down the esophagus into the stomach.

Okay, so, like, where is the stomach?

Like, in.

So the stomach is going to be right about here on Desi.

Okay.

So it's gonna make its way down to that spot and then kind of stop.

Okay.

And then where?

Where?

Like the area that he poops it out be.

It is all the way down here.

So we call it a vent or Yeah.

Okay.

And snakes have that close to the tail.

Okay, cool.

Well, thank you so much for showing me about this wonderful, awesome, cool snake.

And, yeah, I've learned so much today.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks for coming.

I hope to have you back to the link and resume soon.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'll see you next week on our STEM explorers.

Thanks for watching.

Alabama STEM Explorers, If you missed anything or you want to watch something again, you can check out our website at Frame of Minds dot org.

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We'll be back next week.

Alabama STEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holle, champions of servant leadership.