Just before 9 a.m., at the new Painted Dog Preserve Ribbon Cutting, the zoo is peaceful. The crowds are low, and the sun streaming down onto the River’s Edge pathway isn’t too hot. Soon, the crowd will be the first of the public to view the zoo’s three new exhibits, each holding a different endangered species—the painted dogs, Andean bears and Malayan sun bears.
After a few quick words thanking Purina for its $1.2 million contribution toward the Painted Dog exhibit, the dogs are released in their new homes. The crowd immediately magnetizes to the glass enclosure to see the new addition to the park. Only about 3,000 painted dogs exist today, down from the hundreds of thousands of their ancestors.
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The painted dogs, or African wild dogs, are a collage of dappled colors, ranging from rich caramel to night black to alabaster white. Their pointed, shrewd faces suggest they could hold their own in the wild. They leap, chase and caper freely in their new home, shooting back and forth in a game that the captive audience doesn’t understand. “You can watch National Geographic all you want, but until you get to see, smell and experience the animals in real life, you’re missing out,” says Jack Grisham, vice president of animal collections.
“Dog! Dog!” Liam Shannon, age 2, exclaims, his pointer finger excitedly stretched toward the animals.
Like Liam, the three dogs—Maize, Betty and Sienna—are only around two years old. The two puppies are just four months old. Steve Bircher, curator of mammals and carnivores at the zoo, says that their youth is probably what made them so easily adapt to their new environment.
One of Bircher’s tasks with the new exhibit was to make the animals adjust as comfortably as possible. Typically, he says, animals new to the zoo will take their time, testing new boundaries over days, weeks, even months in order to fully utilize their entire habitat. “We build these beautiful habitats for these animals, and they’re so aesthetically pleasing to us that it’s easy to forget that these are whole new places that they have to adjust to, no matter how pretty,” Bircher says.
The painted dogs only took about three days to start sleeping in the termite pile, much to Bircher’s amazement. “We were all happy with it,” Bircher says. “I kept thinking, ‘Man, they must really love this place.’”
Grisham says they made sure these new exhibits had the environments that would make each species the happiest and most at ease. For the painted dogs, that means lots of shade, dens and caves. For the Andean bears, plenty of access to water for splashing around. For the sun bears, trees on which to climb. These two species of bears are even more endangered than the giant panda. The sun bear is actually the smallest bear species in the world. Although the two bear species are just being relocated to the new exhibits from their previous homes within the zoo, the painted dogs are brand new to the park.
“Yeah, I would definitely take those dogs home with me,” says Logan Baker, grandson of zoo member Dotty Bauer. “I just need to get a bigger house for them to live in.”
Saint Louis Zoo, 1 Government Drive, 314-781-0900, stlzoo.org. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and admission is free.
