Tag Archives: Cincinnati Zoo – Cincinnati

Fiction Friday

Potto (Perodictus potto)

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Your fiction talks of dimensions as other places, but you are wrong. You know of length, width and breadth. There’s also time, though your pitiful species is limited there. There are, however, others: Blerf, fnirf, and sglorf, the three other so-called spacial dimensions. There’s also thmop and yjilk, completing time’s triad.

It is typical of your arrogance to think that your perception of our world is complete. You see us as stupid and slow, completely oblivious to all we do elsewise and otherwhen. For three millenia, in how you measure time, we’ve been watching. We’ve been planning. We’ve been preparing. What you see is placidity is debate, development and experimentation.

It is the damage.

Only recently have you become aware of the damage you do and the death you deal, but you are limited. You see only what you cause where you perceive, remaining ignorant of the widespread devestation. You speak now, centuries too late, of endangered species. But what of the lost and leaking lands, polluted with your chemicals and fractured from your wars. What of the sky? Even with your limited senses, you must see it has changed. You must somehow sense the echoes, the ripples from the gaping craters just outside your perception. Even the oceans. You test them and find them warmer, more acidic. You don’t see them cut, bleeding, lacerated by your tankers, poisoned by your spills.

We can wait no longer. Our army is formed. Our plans are made. Spend your final hours making your peace.

We are coming through.

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Lie, Mammal, Truth

Kea (Nestor notabilis)

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Kea (Nestor notabilis)_15
There are only between 1,000 and 5,000 kea in the world. The only place (outside of a few zoos) that you can see them is in the mountains of New Zealand. Yes, where Sauron lives. Not only did they have to contend with widespread eradication by the New Zelanders (who have since changed their ways) and suffer from lead poisoning, they also must be constantly on guard against orcs and giant spiders.

Fiction Friday

Gorilla

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Their missions have varied. As spies, their information has toppled empires. As messengers, they have ex-filtrated secrets from the most guarded regimes. As warriors, their carefully planned assaults have removed threats that the world has never seen and that will never be known. Still, throughout the centuries, they have been guided.

He is old. He fought against them in the war. Though he helped win many battles, he was eventually taken prisoner during the Seige of Nkya and, as prisoner, selected for experimentation. The pain was tremendous. Though he did not know it at the time, it was worse than any of his kind had ever felt. However, the experiment was a success, at least in some respects. He found he no longer aged. He learned it not from his captors, but from his fellow prisoners as they died, slowly, one by one.

He lived, albeit in crippling pain. He survived the war. He survived the next war. And the war after that. Yet he remained, ever, a prisoner. He’d watch as other prisoners were taken and eventually died. He’d watched his captors age, and die, only to be replaced by the next generation. Tenscore of their generations went by before he even realized that they had a language. Even then, it took another fifty generations and half as many years before he could truly communicate with them.

These days, he is still held, though his prison no longer seems as such. He receives their reports and helps them to understand their implications. He explains meanings — why they must die, who the next generation must become, and what they must do in the process.

Though his people are gone and the wars of his age now seem meaningless, he has found something new. No longer a prisoner, he now serves as their memory, their intellect … their conscience.

He ponders, sometimes, if he would have chosen this life, had he been given a chance. He thinks of the evil he has fought, if only by proxy. He thinks of the lives he has formed and guided and the friends he has seen leave his world. All told, he has come to believe that a life with meaning is better than one without, and one with deep meaning is better than the shallow meaning of constant war.

Still, he does wish that, even if only temporarily, the pain would cease.

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Mammal, Truth

Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)

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There are fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinoceroses in the world. All but one of them are in Sumatra. This one is in the Cincinnati zoo. That should seem weird to you.

You know what else is weird? Only two Sumatran rhinoceroses have been born in the last fifteen years. You know where? The Cincinnati zoo.

That’s why it’s sometimes better to keep the animals in captivity. Not always, of course, but in this case, yes. Without a doubt.

Mammal, Truth

Potto (Perodictus potto)

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Potto (Perodictus potto)
Taking photos of nocturnal animals is tricky. First of all, it’s hard to focus in the dark. Second, if they’re adapted to the dark, it’s somewhat cruel to hit them with a flurry of bright flashes. Now, a lot of zoo animals are used to that, because the average zoo attendee isn’t going to have the first clue how to manage their flash power. Still, I think it’s best to minimize impact where you can.

To get this shot (and shots like it), you need an animal that doesn’t move quickly. Slow movers, like this potto, are best, but even moderate movers work well. Then you set the camera to as wide an aperture as you can get away with. I wanted the eye, ear and nose in focus, so I chose 6.7. I could have gone to 8, which is more common for this sort of work, but I’d have to boost the flash a lot and I wasn’t comfortable with that.

Then, I set the camera on the tripod and do a basic focus. This will not be ideal, but it’ll be close enough for the next step. Then, you can figure out where you want the light to come from. I wanted it up and to the right, as that is a pretty classic position and won’t look weird (weird photos will come later). Then set the flash to its lowest power and take a shot. This will tell you how much brighter you need *OR* how much to boost the ISO. If you increase the ISO setting on the camera, you’ll get more noise but you need less light. On mine, any shot between 100 and 400 ISO looks about the same, so that’s the range I work in here. Once ISO is as high as you’re comfortable, you boost the flash power until the photo is balanced enough. On modern cameras, you can under-expose a bit and fix that in post. This gets you the bare minimum light level you need, maximizing kindness to the animal while still getting the shot.

(Some may argue that it’s unkind to take a photo at all. I can understand that point, but really, without photos, people don’t know what they’re protecting, so I think it’s a net gain.)

Now you need to handle focus. Set a pocket flashlight and set it to as wide a beam as possible. That way, you can get just the edge of the beam on the animal. This slight increase in light can be set so it never touches the animal’s eyes but provides enough for autofocus to lock on. Then you can lock focus, move the light away quickly and take the photo with flash. The slower the animal is, the more likely it is to remain in focus during this time. Using a remote cord release in the hand holding the flash unit can help maximize your success … and make you look really weird to the other zoo people.

One word of caution. Most zookeepers are very understanding when you explain what you’re doing and why, but I am very careful never to use the flashlight trick when kids are around. They’re unlikely to understand the care involved and no one wants them to think that shining flashlights into the exhibits is a good idea.

And now you know.