Page 18 - Gateways_Fall_2022_flip_Neat

Raising Josephine

In 2010, Josephine, a California sea lion pup, was abandoned by
her mom on Pier 39—a popular tourist attraction in San Francisco.
If she was to survive, human intervention was required. Brookfield
Zoo offered to give her a permanent home. A staff member flew
to California and spent a couple weeks there bottle-feeding the pup.
Josephine arrived at the zoo when she was three to four weeks old.
“The animal hospital doesn’t have a suite with a pool,” said
Rita Stacey, vice president of Animal Programs at Brookfield Zoo.
“So to make our marine mammals as comfortable as possible,
we usually quarantine pinnipeds, like sea lions, here.” For the next
eight months, Josephine and another orphaned sea lion pup were
hand-reared at PINNIPED POINT. In the wild, sea lion pups nurse
on their mother’s rich milk for five to six months, and sometimes
as long as a year.
“In the beginning, it was a 24-hour-a-day process; she had to
be fed every few hours,” said Stacey. To reduce the risk of Josephine
imprinting on humans, Stacey, then curator of Marine Mammals,
and her staff consulted with other sea lion experts to see how to
avoid it. They created an artificial sea lion “mom” from a dark-brown,
plastic basket with the bottles’ nipples protruding from holes cut
into the plastic. The staff member feeding Josephine stood behind
the mom and held the bottle. “At that point, animals associate
the feeding with the artificial mom and not with us who are hiding
behind it,” said Stacey.
Staff eventually introduced Josephine to a diet of fish. “It was
a long process to get her to eat fish on her own,” said Stacey. “Some-
times they just don’t catch on and you have to help them along by
doing assist-feeding; we put fish in their mouth and encourage them
to swallow it.”
Josephine has remained at Brookfield Zoo. In 2017 she gave birth
to her first pup, Lucy. “Being a hand-reared sea lion pup, we weren’t
sure if Josephine was going to be able to rear her own pup. She didn’t
have direct experience from her own mother. But all of her natural
instincts kicked in and she was a really great mom.” She successfully
nursed her baby the entire time. In 2019 she gave birth to a male pup,
Charger, sired by 16-year-old Tanner.
Since Josephine and Tanner were both born in the wild, they
and their offspring carry genes that will diversify the gene pool (From top): Josephine is examined by Dr. Jennifer Langan,
of the small population of sea lions in human care. Josephine and Lucy

Mom-Training Classes

Part of Josephine’s success as a mom was due to the maternal training she received from marine mammal care staff prior to giving birth.
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18 GATEWAYS | RAISING ZOO BABIES