Zoos provide special care to aging animals

Selkie the gray seal rips a silvery hunk of butterfish in half, gulps it down and looks to her keeper for more. Allie Killam, who cares for Selkie and other animals on the American Trail exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, drops a slippery squid into the seal’s open mouth.

Her teeth are worn with age. Cataracts cloud her eyes. She can’t see, but Selkie, 43, slurps the slimy stuff with ease. When she hears Killam tap the empty metal bucket against the edge of the pool, the seal knows chow time is over. She slips back into her pool with hardly a splash.

Maintaining Selkie’s ample weight and communicating through sound and touch are two ways that keepers care for the zoo’s eldest seal. She also gets dietary supplements and regular medical care. To make life easy, her exhibit includes ramps and steps so she can “haul out” of her pool without overexerting herself.

Zoos all over the world provide special care for elderly residents, such as an elderly gorilla at a zoo in Illinois whose keepers provide human medicine to ease aching joints. Like Selkie, these animals are cherished ambassadors who educate the public about their species.

Rob Vernon, a spokesman for the Association of Zoos & Aquariums in Silver Spring, Md., says that through years of work, zoos have found ways to change habitats and nutrition and veterinary health programs to benefit older animals.

“Professional caretakers, like zookeepers and veterinarians, at AZA-accredited zoos are passionate and compassionate about the animals they care for,” he said in an email.

In the wild, life for an animal such as Selkie would be much different. And, on average, much shorter. A gray seal in the wild might live to be 20 or 25 years old. It would have to hunt for food and dodge predators such as sharks and orcas.

In captivity, some elderly animals are helping to save their species, such as a 58-year-old Cuban crocodile named Dorothy, who lives in the National Zoo’s Reptile Discovery Center. There may be fewer than 3,000 Cuban crocodiles left in the wild today. Every egg Dorothy lays could turn into an important, healthy hatchling. In 2012, Dorothy hatched two Cuban croc babies. Last year, she hatched five. She may lay eggs again next month.

To keep this species-saving mom in top condition, keeper Lauren Augustine hides calcium supplements in the whole rabbits, chickens and fish carcasses that Dorothy eats.