(upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music builds) (engine roars) (upbeat rock) (elephant trumpets) (monkeys shriek) (lion roars) (keyboard taps) (mouse clicks) (playful music) - [Sarah] Aashish's personality.

I mean-- - Like a giant dog?

- Yeah, he's for sure a big dog and once he's comfortable, he's just super chill.

(playful music) So he was three years old when he got here and now he is nine.

So when he got here, we actually moved him in through here, right behind the chute, and into the building and we couldn't see his back over the walls in the barn.

So now it's pretty cool to be, I mean he's a couple feet over the wall now, so that's neat.

So right now he's right around 4,000 pounds and just over five feet tall.

He probably won't get much taller but he could get up to 5,000 pounds, so he could get wider.

So he is an Indian rhino or a greater one horned rhino.

They're typically are found in, like, wetter, grassier regions, so he has a prehensile lip so it can grab the long grasses.

Also, his species very much likes water.

So if you are here at the zoo, if it's hot out, nine times out 10, he's gonna be in his pool.

Like, and people walk by and don't even see him, but he is right there just chilling in the water with only, like, his little nose out.

(piano music) - Sarah's opening this door and Aashish is gonna come into our chute here.

He knows when it's time.

Hi, buddy.

(door thuds) That's a good boy.

Come here!

I know, what is all this stuff?

Come here, sweetheart.

Good boy!

Good, good boy!

Keep coming.

I got snacks.

(laid-back music) - [Sarah] And this is his chute training.

I'm just gonna shut the back door.

You ready, Dana?

- [Dana] Yep.

- [Sarah] Closing your door, dude.

Good boy!

- [Dana] Good job, honey!

- [Sarah] On, hey bud, I'm back here.

All right, so when we close the back door, that helps us get all the way around him without having to share space.

So we do weekly foot care on Aashish.

- Back.

- Because he had some cracks in his nails.

I've trained him to present his foot, good, and then we're able to trim his nails and anything on his foot pad.

- Good boy!

(pleasant music) (water running) (nail scrapping) - [Sarah] This is all voluntary.

This is treat-based, so all positive reinforcement.

We kinda just shape this behavior with his own body movement.

And then, as you can see, he lets me, like, move his foot to anywhere I need to be.

- [Dana] Good boy!

- Yeah, so I mean it's been really fun.

We've just trained him like we trained the elephants and he has been really receptive.

It's a lot easier for us because we just have the one rhino.

I think other facilities-- - Good job.

- That have more than one-- - Steady.

- [Sarah] It might be a little more time-consuming.

- [Dana] Steady.

- [Sarah] Hey buddy.

When we first got him, he was super skittish at everything, but just spending time with him.

He really likes the tactile, so the touching, the petting.

He's one of the only animals, actually, in the zoo that I've worked with that likes that.

Most of the other animals are like, "Don't touch me."

But he thrives off of it and he really likes, so he has the the harder skin, but under the flaps.

- [Sarah] Hey bub!

- [Dana] Steady!

Come here, bud.

- [Sarah] All his skin folds are really soft.

Hi!

- Come here, it's Sarah.

Come on.

Shish, foot!

- [Sarah] I don't think he's back far enough, Dana.

- [Dana] Okay, back.

Other foot.

All right.

- [Sarah] Not this one, bud.

- Good boy!

So based upon my body position, so when I'm on this side, it's the opposite rear foot.

- Good boy.

- And when I said all right, he knew to put his other foot that we didn't want back down.

Kinda like moving a wagon around.

- [Sarah] I'm good, Dana.

- [Dana] All right.

- [Sarah] So not only does the rhino have to listen, the two people working him have to be able to communicate 'cause she can't see me.

Dana doesn't know what's going on back here, so I have to, you know-- - Aashish, back.

- [Sarah] Be able to tell her, like-- - Back!

- He's good, he's, you know, or he needs to move up.

So this is just a foot pad.

So they have extra padding that they walk on.

So when he gets these little flaps, we just trim 'em off so that he's not getting it caught.

This doesn't hurt at all.

- [Dana] It's like if you were to trim a callus on your own foot, or a hangnail.

Good.

- [Sarah] Yeah, everything I'm cutting off is not actually attached to his pad anymore, it's just a flap.

- [Dana] Good boy!

- So I'm gonna show you today how I brush Aashish's teeth.

They have molar teeth farther back in their mouth that they chew with, they have incisor teeth right in the front here, and he doesn't chew with those teeth.

He's trained to just hold his mouth open.

I do quick brushes on each incisor tooth, just to help them stay clean and healthy.

The bottom ones grow long.

The males will actually bite each other, so they're very territorial.

And so, to ward off another male from their territory or breeding rights with a female, their go-to mechanism is biting each other.

And then the top ones stay shorter, though.

Those do not grow long and those are just kinda to protect his gum line from the bottom ones that get long and pointy.

(upbeat music) I use warm water and then I spritz in a little bit of mouthwash.

(upbeat music) Good, brush!

Good job, buddy!

(upbeat music) Good.

(upbeat music) Good, mouth, good, brush!

Good boy!

(upbeat music) We just want it to be a positive experience anytime he's in here.

(upbeat music fades) - So we've got our baby king cobras here today and we're gonna actually take a closer look at one of the babies that we just recently produced here.

And these guys are actually still just as lethal as adults.

(keyboard typing) (mouse click) (pleasant music) (crowd murmuring) So we are down here right now in the basement of the ProMedica Museum of Natural History, which houses a lot of our venomous snake collection and we are predominantly in one of our venomous snake holding rooms.

This is off exhibit to the public and this is one of our rooms that we use for a lot of different reasons.

But a lot of people ask why we have so many species off exhibit that the public may not get to enjoy.

Well, there's a lot of different reasons for this.

One is we always wanna make sure to have animals available to put on exhibit.

'Cause when you guys come to the zoo, you wanna see the animals.

The other big thing is we actually do a lot of long-term sustainability breeding for not only our near future but our long-term success.

Some of these species are not really being bred in a lot of other zoos and we've actually dedicated a lot of space and resources to keeping and holding and working on breeding a lot of different species, some unique to this area, some unique to our zoo, and some that are a little bit more common.

One of our big focus right now is our Arizona rattlesnake species.

And while a lot of these aren't necessarily endangered or such, there's not been a large effort in breeding these animals for the long-term sustainability in zoos.

So what we've done is we've actually taken on getting good genetically diverse animals and pairing them up for future breeding success.

So, in 10 years we hopefully will be able to continue to exhibit these species in different naturalistic displays where the public does get to see.

(playful music) So this is an Arizona black rattlesnake, one of the rarer species.

This is one of our females.

(snake rattles) Obviously we have to label the container as part of our protocol, so that nobody accidentally opens it, thinking that they're gonna stick their hand into an empty barrel.

It lets the any of the staff know what species is in there and that if it's venomous or not.

So on all those feed cards we actually have them labeled with venomous and then also with their antivenom code and then the first aid measure we would use for 'em.

(snake rattles) And then anytime we're shutting and opening closures, you'll see me do it mostly with hooks.

This is because even though the screens keep the animals from getting out, they can actually strike up into the screen and potentially could envenomation somebody if they really wanted to if they had their hand on top of it.

So anytime we do tours and stuff, we always make sure to reiterate, don't set your hand on anything 'cause you might end up getting bit.

(rhythmic music) So we've got our baby king cobras here today and we're gonna actually take a closer look at one of the babies that we just recently produced here.

We were successful in producing 13 baby king cobras, so we're gonna take a little bit closer look at this first one.

These were born about three weeks ago and these guys are actually still just as lethal as adults, but we use kind of safe protocols to make sure we're handling them at any given time.

Now this is a big success for Toledo Zoo as we historically were a institution that produced a lot of king cobras for different zoos around the US.

But it's been over 10 years since we actually produced king cobras last, so this is a really exciting thing for our department and the zoo, again, to be producing a viable baby offspring.

And what we'll do is we'll work on trying to get these guys up to a little bit bigger of a size and then eventual to either the point where they can go off to other zoos or that they'll actually stay here and go towards elongating our kind of long-term sustainability program for this species.

King cobras are a bit difficult to produce in captivity because, in nature, they actually are a snake eating species.

So when you're pairing up a male and a female, sometimes you may have actual aggression instead of a breeding response and this can lead to one animal trying to actually eat the other instead of breeding, which can be problematic.

Luckily we spent about a year and a half to two years planning and making sure that all of the cycling was appropriate for our adult animals and then we were actually able to put them get together and saw successful reproduction.

It only happened once and then we separated the animals again as they're naturally a solitary species but, after about 60 days, our female actually laid 16 good eggs.

She did have some other ones in her that she didn't pass properly.

But of those 16 eggs, 13 of them hatched without any problem from our artificial incubation.

And now we have cute, tiny, baby king cobras.

Part of our keeper training is you don't just start off and start working with king cobras right off the bat.

We have a series of levels that you have to go through and train and be checked off to get to the point where you can actually work some of the most toxic species.

So anytime we're working any of our venomous species, we have the appropriate backup.

So we have another keeper in here in case the animal were to get away or potentially try and envenomation me.

We have first protocols put in place for all the different species that we work with here.

Biggest thing is just giving them the space and really working with the animal to the point where it doesn't feel threatened and wants to bite.

So you can see this animal is pretty much calm right now.

It's not hooding up, showing any defensive behaviors, and it's pretty much just content sitting there.

We always use different tools like these snake hooks, tongs, pilstroms.

We also use appropriate locking buckets.

And then any individual enclosure is always able to be latched or locked shut.

(gentle music) So these guys will take quite some time to grow up to a size where they would actually be put on exhibit.

We're talking a few years, as they do grow relatively quickly, but they are very good at trying to get through little cracks and seals.

So we always wanna make sure that we're being mindful of that.

And a lot of our exhibits are quite large, so putting a baby animal on exhibit not always is best for being able to view it at any given time.

Now these guys are a bit difficult in the fact that when they are babies, they do prefer to eat snakes, just like their wild-caught parents.

So one of the challenges of this species is actually getting them to start feeding on really anything that we can, whether it's snakes, lizards, rodents, birds.

We've had to get a little bit creative with what we try to feed them.

And then we work on switching them over to rodents that we feed most of our other collection.

They can be a bit challenging because they do have a pretty high metabolism, so if you don't get them eating pretty quickly, they can go downhill quite quick.

But, with that said, we actually have already started having some success with getting these, some of these offspring to eat, which is a great sign that they have a good chance for survivorship.

(gentle music) - So in addition to all of the incubation and the hand rearing stuff that we do in this building, I also take care of all of the off-exhibit breeding adult birds.

(playful music) (keyboard typing) (mouse click) (playful music continues) (birds chirping) On a typical day I will come in, I will wash my hands, I will check the machines to make sure they're all functioning properly, and then I will candle eggs, and then make notes, and then update any records that I have.

So first we're gonna look at the flamingo egg and then after that, we're gonna look at three white-headed duck eggs.

These are incubators and this is how we artificially incubate our eggs.

So each one is set at a certain temperature and a certain humidity and, depending on the egg, depending on what the egg is doing, it changes the parameters.

And at any given time, we'll have six of these running at once with all sorts of different eggs in them.

So right now, we're gonna be candling the flamingo egg.

And what I wanna get is determine if there's any veins or embryo developing and also check the weight of the egg to make sure that the egg is not losing too much weight during its incubation process.

This flamingo egg is on its third day of incubation.

Each egg is assigned a number so that way we know which parents this egg goes to.

So on the 20th of May, this egg was the first egg laid, so it's 5-21.

All right, so I'll just put it up to my candler and we can see the air cell, which is the part of the egg where there isn't anything developing.

And that's where the chick, if this egg is fertile, we'll eventually hatch out from.

This is a very high powered light, so it does get a little warm, so we never want to leave the egg on the candler for too long because it'll start to get really hot on the egg.

So after I've done my initial candling, we'll take a weight of the egg.

This egg started out at 181.49 grams and now it is 178.48 grams.

The egg is dirty because the parents, when they lay it, they lay it on their mounds, which are made of mud.

We don't necessarily want to rub off any of that dirt because we could potentially damage the egg.

Also, the flamingo eggs have a kind of, like, a chalky coating on them and it's thought that that prevents a lot of extra mud buildup on their eggs when they lay their eggs naturally.

The reason why we pull the eggs from the enclosure is because we want to hatch out as many chicks that we can.

The exhibit space is not really conducive to raising chicks.

And also we found out that, in the past, when we have raised flamingos, they can go back out into the flock and be integrated into the flock relatively easily and they can go on and live a normal bird life.

(upbeat music) Typically, it depends on the size, I can fit about five or six flamingo eggs in one incubator and then I can do maybe 12, 10 to 12 duck eggs.

This is a duck egg.

So every, we want every egg to lose between 13 to 15% of their weight overall during the whole incubation.

(lights clicking) This egg's a little smaller, so we have these apertures to change the diameter of the light.

And this is egg number 5-10-1 So it was laid on the 10th of May and it was the first egg of the day.

So as you can see, you can see the air cell much, much better now on this egg and then lots of little veins and movement.

So, I'm not making that move, that's all moving on its own.

And lots of movement, so I'm very happy with the way that looks.

So in addition to all of the incubation and the hand-rearing stuff that we do in this building, I also take care of all of the off-exhibit breeding adult birds.

So, you know, I'm pretty good at raising chicks, but sometimes the parents, you know, they might be better at it.

So there are certain species where we want the parents to rear their own offspring.

So we're getting ready to feed our baby flamingos.

So before we start we'll get a before weight and then after we feed them, we'll get an after weight so we know how much they're eating.

(birds squawking) So the food is made up of capelin, shrimp, baby rice cereal, water, and hard-boiled egg yolk.

So we feed the youngest bird five times per day and the oldest bird we're feeding three times per day.

(birds chirping) Some of them are a little more picky about how they eat.

(birds chirping) They're just little babies, so they don't know what they're doing yet.

Yeah.

(birds chirping) I'm gonna make a big mess.

Where's the towel?

(birds chirping) 130.9, please.

(birds chirping) All right, so now he's done.

So we just put him back.

(birds chirping) And in here, they have a thermometer, a water dish, and then his own little mound that he will sit on and fall asleep on.

So he's all done.

(laid-back music) On this guy you'll be able to kinda see his crop filling up.

The crop is this portion right down here.

And when he gets done, it'll be really full-looking.

It'll, like, stick out like a basketball on his neck.

(bird squawking) And this guy is on four feeds per day and he gets about 20 milliliters at a time.

(bird squawking) So this guy is huge.

So this is our oldest bird.

He's over, he's, like, 35 days old today.

So he's over a month old, so he's about halfway there.

He gets three feeds per day and is getting about 100 milliliters per feed.

So this is how we do this.

We literally wrap them like a burrito.

(birds chirping) But yeah, that's pretty much it.

We do this all day long.

So our whole goal is just to get them moving, walking around, getting them out in the sunshine, when there is some.

It's good for flamingos to get exercise and strengthen their legs from a young age.

Aw, so cute!

(upbeat music) (upbeat rock music)