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Successful Breeding continued                       constant observation by animal care specialists.
                                                   (See the sidebar on page 21 for more on rhino
     Top: These red river hogs got to know          breeding.) As for big cats, lions are much easier
     each other through a “howdy door” and          to keep in prides because that’s how they live in
     successfully produced a litter.                the wild. Tigers, however, live a solitary lifestyle
     Right: For a hormone assay, a chemical is      and are much more skittish and shy. Those
     pipetted into a plate filled with a solution   are factors that we have to know when we
     derived from the feces of an animal (far       introduce animals here for breeding purposes.
     right). Postdoctoral researcher Katie Hall
     (right) places a plate in a shaker, one step      One tool we have is called, in zoo-speak, a
     in the process of determining the amount      “howdy door.” These doors are barriers, sometimes
     of hormones present.                           made of tightly woven mesh, that allow potential
                                                    mates to see, smell, and generally sense each
22 GATEWAYS | A PERFECT MATCH                       other—with a male often getting to detect a
                                                    female’s hormones—without physical contact.
                                                   Based on careful observations of the animals’
                                                    behaviors—and by having expert knowledge
                                                    of the species—the care staff recognize when
                                                    it’s time for introductions to occur. Some
                                                    animals display outward changes, such as
                                                   when a female cat vocalizes loudly to attract a
                                                    mate. These give us a strong indication when
                                                    it’s appropriate to start introducing them fully.

                                                       On the more high-tech side of things, our
                                                   Endocrinology Lab is equipped to perform
                                                    assays, which are analyses of the presence and
                                                    amount of the hormones related to reproductive
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