Author Archives: Loren Lassiter

About Loren Lassiter

Loren Lassiter, class of 2022, is an editor for the WildLIFE blog. She graduated with a B.S. in Biology and minors in English and Ethics from Northeastern University.  She is interested in zoo, exotic, and wildlife medicine and hopes to one day contribute to the conservation of endangered species as a zoo or wildlife veterinarian.

Going Batty: A New Perspective

  By Loren Lassiter • January 26, 2020 Uncategorized

A Big brown bat with her wing wrapped to stabilize a wing injury

When the average person thinks of a bat, many thoughts may cross their mind, most of them negative. These thoughts and feelings include fear, disgust, and more. People often think of them as “flying rats”, worry that all bats will drink their blood, or try to attack them. In fact, out of over 1,300 bat species, there are only three species of vampire bats that drink blood, while the vast majority of other species are insectivores or frugivores, meaning they eat insects or fruit and nectar. Bats are responsible for an incredible amount of insect control, improving public health by keeping the numbers of disease-carrying bugs, like mosquitoes, down. They also protect crops from insects, eliminating the need for massive amounts of pesticides. Frugivorous bats are important pollinators and seed dispensers, keeping plants and forests healthy. Other people have a fear of rabid bats, and while this can be a concern, just like any other mammal that can be a rabies vector, the vast majority of bats are rabies-free. Like many wild animals, bats are usually more scared of humans than we are of them.

A Hoary bat hangs in its cage

 I’ve learned all of this and more volunteering at Wild Things Sanctuary in Ithaca, NY, working with a variety of local bat species. Some of these species include Little brown bats, Big brown bats, Eastern red bats, and Hoary bats. While I wasn’t one to be disgusted or afraid of bats, I was definitely a little wary the first time I had to grab one out of its cage at Wild Things. Victoria Campbell, the founder, was patient as she instructed me and other volunteers on handling techniques. The majority of the bats that come in are Big brown bats, and even the largest of these can still fit in the palm of your hand. It’s hard to interact so closely with them and not eventually fall in love.

In the outdoor flight cage at Wild Things, bats are able to fly around, catching insects that make their way in, or eating the mealworms provided until they are strong enough to be released. If you visit the flight cage around dusk, you can sometimes see bats flying across, swerving around your head as their echolocation guides them through the enclosure. Sometimes, we turn on the bat monitor to hear the clicks of their echolocation as the bats go about their lives.

The outdoor flight cage at Wild Things Sanctuary

When the weather turns and the harsh Ithaca cold sets in, any bats that are not able to be released at that time are brought inside to be overwintered until the spring or summer when it is warm enough for them again. Many of these bats may hibernate much of the winter away in a room that is kept cold enough to allow them to sleep, much like the caves that these bats would inhabit naturally in the winter. Other bats are kept in heated cages to allow them to heal from injuries or to maintain their metabolism if they require treatments like antibiotics or pain medication. Bats are brought to Wild Things from all over the state. Oftentimes, Victoria will rely on the help of volunteers or other rehabilitators to bring bats part or all the way from more distant locations. 

Victoria Campbell is solely responsible for the care of the bats, and with the help of the occasional volunteer like myself, can take in and rehabilitate over one hundred bats in a year. This number could be even higher if bats were less misunderstood and people were as willing to help them as they were a baby bird or an injured squirrel. 

More than learning about bat species, husbandry, or fun facts I can throw out at a cocktail party, the biggest lesson I have learned working with these animals is just how misunderstood they are. They are not the blood-sucking flying terrors that many make them out to be. They have different personalities and rich social interactions with each other. Sometimes while treating them, they can be very vocal or try to fly away, but you can tell how scared they are to be injured in some unknown environment being handled by a large creature for an unknown reason.

Bats in the Northeast are increasingly threatened by white-nose syndrome. White-nose is a fungus that can grow on hibernating bats in caves and lead to their deaths. It is thought to do this by irritating bats enough to wake them up during hibernation, leading to them burning through their fat stores faster so they are unable to survive through the winter. It can also damage their wings, making flight impossible. Entire populations of bats in some areas have been wiped out by the fungus. In a time when we are facing great threats to wildlife both at home and globally, there is no better time to show some compassion to bats and other equally “undesirable” species. In the end, it benefits both those animals and you!

A group of Big brown bats rests in a “bat house”, a wooden shelter built by Victoria Campbell

To learn more about Wild Things Sanctuary and the work they do, visit their website: http://www.wildthingssanctuary.org/

From Bees to Big Cats at the Special Species Symposium 2019

  By Loren Lassiter • April 11, 2019

A banner welcomes students to the Symposium

Conservation, exotics, and wildlife are increasingly popular fields within veterinary medicine and last week Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine hosted the Special Species Symposium to shine a light on various topics within these fields. The Special Species Symposium brought speakers from a variety of backgrounds as well as students from Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Montreal together to discuss zoo, exotic, and wildlife medicine.

Dr. Robin Radcliffe presents about bee health

Topics discussed ranged from utilizing pathology in conservation to antibiotic therapy in pocket pets to marine mammal rehabilitation. Students also had the opportunity to participate in a number of wet labs including invertebrate clinical skills, darting, turtle shell repair, and avian orthopedics. The symposium opened on Saturday with a lecture from Dr. Robin Radcliffe about honey bee health and the developing role of veterinarians in honey bee management. Dr. Radcliffe discussed the agricultural and economic value of bees and the new federal regulations that require veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics for bee colonies. For the rest of the symposium we got to choose which speakers we wanted to listen to. I listened to Dr. Karen Terio’s lecture, where she discussed the importance of pathology in conservation and how it contributes to species health. She finished by advising those aspiring to work in conservation to develop a skill and use that to market themselves.

Dr. Terio was followed by Dr. Peter DiGeronimo, who gave a lecture on marine mammal rehabilitation and how it affects ocean health. He described how rehabilitation can have conservation, scientific, and social benefits. Wildlife rehabilitators have the most contact with free-ranging wildlife, and can act as sentinels to monitor emerging diseases arising in wild populations. This is especially important in species with low population numbers because the individuals that are able to be returned to the wild have even greater impacts on the species as a whole. He emphasized the role that wildlife rehabilitation centers can play in providing data about various species that researchers may not be able to gather. Finally, he stressed the importance of researchers establishing good relationships with rehabilitators to break down the distrust that some have regarding the motives of researchers.

One of the last lectures on Saturday was on the care and conservation of large felids, given by Dr. Michael McEntire. He discussed various aspects of managing large felids in captivity such as the necessary housing requirements,  safety protocols, and restraint techniques. He emphasized the importance of behavioral restraint which involves training animals in certain ways to make them easier to handle and decrease the associated stress. For example, you can train them to present their tails for blood draws or their flanks for injections, and in this way avoid having to anesthetize them for what should be relatively simple procedures. Then Dr. McEntire transitioned to felid diseases such as vitamin A deficiency, myelopathy in cheetahs, and canine distemper virus in lions. Other lectures given on Saturday included an overview of amphibian diagnostics, a session of clinical updates from the Janet L. Swanson Wildlife Health Center, and an update on emerging infectious diseases in reptiles.

Demonstration of how to handle invertebrates, such as the tarantula pictured

During the Saturday afternoon lab sessions, I participated in the invertebrate clinical skills lab. The lab was split between arachnids and marine invertebrates. We learned proper handling techniques of arachnids and how to identify common health problems such as dehydration, or how to ensure the tarantula is able to molt appropriately. We also learned ways a clinician could correct these issues or advise an owner in correcting them. Additionally, we were taught proper anesthesia protocols for lobsters and learned some necessary anatomy for horseshoe crabs and various bivalves including oysters and clams.

Attending students from all schools pose after the first day of the symposium

The highlight of Saturday, and the symposium in general, was the keynote speaker Dr. Susan Bartlett. Dr. Bartlett is a veterinarian for the Wildlife Conservation Society and she discussed her path to getting that position. She explained how she dealt with various hurdles on her journey, such as having to reapply to veterinary school after not getting in the first time. She emphasized the importance of persistence and shared an anecdote of how she worked at a zoo scooping poop in order to gain elephant experience. Her determination eventually gave her the opportunity to accompany a research team and travel internationally to study elephants. Additionally, Dr. Bartlett discussed how the TV show, The Zoo, has helped to improve public perception of the Bronx Zoo as it sheds light on the amount of work and care zoo professionals dedicate to their animals.  

Dr. Noha Abou-Madi discusses EEHV

The next day of lectures and labs was just as interesting as the first. It opened with a talk by Katy Payne about whale and elephant communication. She discussed how novel it was to discover in the 1960’s that whales actually sing and the work she has done to analyze these songs. Male whales in the same area sing very similar songs that change every breeding season, and even throughout the season. It is theorized that female whales prefer inventiveness which drives the evolution of the songs over time. Dr. James Morrissey followed with a talk comparing GI stasis and obstruction in rabbits. He taught those in attendance how to identify one versus the other, and the best way to treat these differing conditions. Dr. Lauren Powers of Carolina Veterinary Specialists, went through how to effectively perform a neurological exam on avian patients. She played videos demonstrating different tests and explained what abnormal results might indicate. Finally, Dr. Noha Abou-Madi discussed the tragic occurrence of Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV) and how it manifested in zoos over 20 years ago. This virus can be devastating and has unfortunately killed a number of baby, mostly Asian, elephants. Dr. Abou-Madi detailed her role in researching and trying to culture EEHV. She also explained the current preemptive protocols in place that attempt to identify when an elephant calf contracts the virus, so treatment can begin before clinical signs emerge. She ended on a message of hope, because even though the virus is still unable to be cultured, there is increasing success in saving calves who contract the virus and research is ongoing to potentially develop a vaccine.

Students are shown the frames from a beekeeper’s hives

In the afternoon, I attended two labs. The first was a tour of the Cornell Bee Labs and the second was an avian orthopedics lab. The tour of the Bee Lab fit in nicely with Dr. Radcliffe’s Saturday lecture. We were able to see more in depth how beekeepers manage their hives and some of the problems that can occur. In the avian orthopedics lab, we learned how to place an intraosseus catheter, and how to set both a humeral and femoral fracture in birds.

Overall, the Special Species Symposium was an incredible opportunity to hear from top professionals in the fields of zoo, exotics, and wildlife medicine. It also provided a unique opportunity to network not just with Cornell students with similar interests, but also with students from other schools.

 

Cornell hosts the Special Species Symposium every 2 years.  For more information on the 2019 Special Species Symposium, visit the website here.