And I'm Madeline Walden and this is Aquarium of the Podcific, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Podcific Southern California's largest aquarium. Join
us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation and more.
Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific I'm Madeline Walden, the aquariums digital content and community manager and I'm joined as always by my co host, Erin
Lundy. I am the manager of conservation initiatives here at the Aquarium of
the Pacific and today we're going to talk about sea lions with Aaron Bell finally, just I do feel
like that was one of our most requested animals I mean ceilings. We had to save them we had we
had to save them for not last but but for second season to to keep you around to keep people coming. What I love about this episode and last week's episode, we're on a theme so we had Alex and Alex last week. This week we have Aaron and Aaron It's
pretty cool. It's a it's I'm always here are we gonna hire someone else named Madeline? No. Are they gonna go live or mad align and then it'll be two different. A Madeline. Madeline is not. Alright, that's fair. But Erin Bill has been one of our monologist here at the Aquarium for quite some time. She has been working with our sea lions for a few years now. And she has a pretty great relationship with each of our boys. So it's fun to hear her stories and hear her talk about them. Yeah, I
don't have the favorite animal. But if I did, it might be our sea lion and which one is it? Harpo? Was my all time favorite. Really good boy. We'll talk a little bit about Harpo in this episode. But all of them really, I think they're just so waterbodies is the right answer. Keep your answer to yourself. No, but I'm really excited about this episode, we learned so much with Aaron. And something exciting happening this summer is that our sea lion encounters seal and sea lion encounters are coming back.
Yes, if you book a pet encounter on our website, you will meet either a seal or a sea lion. And it's a surprise. And all of our animals have actually been working very hard on encounters and being ready for meeting people again this summer. And I love doing encounters, which I know it's not everyone's favorite thing to do in the world. But sometimes you just get a guest that just loves what's going on. And is so intuitive and learn so much and takes away so much. And really the public and all the people that come to the aquarium are what makes the place run and make it great. So thank you for coming. Please sign up for puppet encounters, you'll meet Aaron or Erin or
other people and one of the many errands. Now I think it must be a cool reminder of how cool your job is because it is your job. You're here, you know, a significant amount of time. And it's just your day to day is feeding the sea lions and then you have someone who is so excited to come into the habitat to get close to these animals. And it's a good reminder like, oh, yeah, this is really amazing kind of
refreshes your passion when you're like, Oh, I do have a cool job. Because day to day you're like, Yeah, I smell real bad. I like fish at all times. And I'm tired. And you know, like, there's a lot of physics or job. Yeah, and we never smell good. And I feel bad every time I'm like introducing myself to the encounter guests. And I'm like, Hey, I'm sorry. Like, I'm covered and my hand is wet for some reason. And it's not that I just washed it. Like I don't really know what's going on. But yeah, I think I won't shake your hand if you don't want me to. And I'm gross. Some
people are really all about touching the fish. And people just aren't because you usually offer that. And during Yeah, we have gloves that people can wear as well. So there's a lot of different ways wash your hands after you know, yes, it can't. Can't wash whenever. Now, the life of apologists,
I've been really thrilled with the idea of our encounters coming back. And I think it'll be cool. And you know whether or not you get to meet a sea lion, or if you meet a seal, the animals are super engaging and fun. And really, you get to learn about all of the species that we have here. And you have a captive audience of monologist, who can answer all of your fun marine mammal questions as well. Great.
And we'll talk about seals specifically on an upcoming podcast but today we're going to focus mostly on sea lion kind of seals harbors the ones we have oh, okay, that makes more sense. We can focus on one seal just trust right there's not a lot to see methadone it.
He does make it he can make himself into a doughnut. I would love to try on the budget. I
think we need more animals might be more Orla did Michael the fish,
Michael a fish on the buckets? I think that's a good idea. But anyway, anyway, if you would like to visit the aquarium and sign up for penumpang counter you will be able to very soon actually it starts mid June, which I think is now I believe right now
and come to your new frog exhibit talks a little bit about that a couple weeks ago, but there's a lot of stuff going on with the aquarium. Yeah,
that's a that's a reasonable suggestion. Cool.
Let's get into today's episode.
Today we're joined by Aaron Bell, who's one of our meme ologists here at the Aquarium to talk about sea lions. Aaron, how have our sea lions been today?
Pretty good. Pretty good day. Good most of the time in general, but We've worked on some more difficult stuff, we've all been very cooperative and very hungry.
It's been cool to see a lot of the behavioral progression that our animals have made in the last few years since you've worked here. And I know that you've been working on some really cool behaviors with our sea lions, so maybe we can touch on that later on. But you are a marine mammal trainer, that is most kids dream job. But how did you get into being a marine mammal trainer.
So I studied environmental science in zoology when I was in university. And that led me to continue my passion for the ocean that I've had since I was a little kid coming to the aquarium, the Pacific where I learned all the things that made me want to be a part of this field. And then from there, I got really lucky and got an internship at the Marine Mammal Care Center here in Southern California, learning about seal and sea lion rehabilitation and how amazing they are as animals, and then was able to move on into the training sphere. And now here at the Aquarium, I get to do a little bit of both, I get to work with our animals that are permanent residents here at our aquarium, and also contribute to different conservation rehabilitation efforts through the aquarium.
That's awesome. It's cool to see that although we have a population of pinnipeds, that sort of lives here more permanently, and we can touch on who those guys are later. We do do a lot to sort of help out with other rehabilitation efforts and conservation efforts with marine mammals around California. It's also cool to know that you grew up coming to this aquarium and now you work here so
fast. What's your favorite part of your job?
Um, I think it's relationship building with the animals. I started at the aquarium just a little over a year ago now. And in that time, seeing the animals response to me specifically, change go from you know, I'm walking in the tunnel, and they like, look at me and whatever, like, that's a person and navy blue and khaki to them specifically working to interact with me, they know who I am, I can work on some more challenging behaviors with the animals because I've built that trust with them. I think that's my favorite part of seeing those relationships grow. And then watching them, the guests come and they have those really important experiences that I had when I was little of kind of realizing how magical the ocean can be. And just how incredible these animals are when you get to see them up close.
Who do you think you have the best relationship with and the worst relationship with and why?
Oh, that's a good question. Um, I think I have the Well, it depends on what we're doing. I think sometimes the best relationship with one of our California sea lions Kane, I've worked with him a lot. He was one of the ones I worked with, pretty early on and me working here and I am assigned some of his really important husbandry behaviors, teaching him how to go into some of our different areas of the exhibit that he might be a little bit more tentative going to, which means that I get the fun task of just having him go in one spot and feeding him just all the fish I have in my bucket, which is a sea lions favorite thing in the world. But that also means that sometimes he sees me and he's like, are we gonna do that somewhat scarier. But we have pretty resilient boys. They're really great. They're really smart. So I think Kane I have a pretty good relationship with and then I think it's actually pretty even honestly, among all of them. I think it's more about what we're doing more so than me specifically.
So Kane best and then everyone else. Everyone else pretty good. Pretty cute. He's the best boy.
He's a pretty good boy.
I know that's your favorite. Yeah, it's
a spoiler. It's Kane is the favorite of all the errands
anyone named Aaron Cain is. I don't know what it is, but something about the name. Well, we wanted to learn a little bit more about California sea lion specifically, although in our opinion, pet habitat, we do have both California sea lions and harbor seals. The main question we get is sort of what are the differences between seals and sea lions? So could you briefly elaborate on sort of how you can tell the difference short, so
they are both part of the same group. They're both pinnipeds. Which means I've heard some people say fin footed or feather footed. If you look at that shape of those really nice flippers they have on him, that's where that comes from. So they are two different groups within pinnipeds. We have our eared seals, which are sea lions or California sea lions or stellar sea lions, southern sea lions, first seals weirdly enough also, with all those sea lions, and then we have our true seals, which are our harbor seals or our leopard seals. And there are a few pretty distinct differences between them. I think the easiest visually is you noticed that one of them is called eared seals, and that is because they have external ear structures. If you come to the aquarium and take a look at our sea lion collection, you'll see those little ears on the outside that kind of look like weird little Tootsie Rolls. They're very cute. So yeah, but if you look at our seals, they just have your holes, they don't have that external your structure. So that's one of the main differences. But there are quite a few. The other easy one, if you're ever far away is if they're on land, how are they moving? A sea lion can rotate their hips underneath themselves and they can effectively run or walk when they're on land whereas our seals, their hips are few straight out they cannot move them and they ended up doing that kind of very cute, wiggly worm movement where they Just kind of flop around like a little caterpillar. It's very cute. And it the scientific name for it is actually called galumphing, which I think is very charming. Yeah.
And it's from the poem the Jabberwocky, and with his head he went galumphing back. That's they diverge, like Yeah, that sounds like how,
and if you watch it, that is what it looks like. It looks like galumphing
I laughed because I imagined a seal running. And the way that they move when they do it fast is so it
is it's really good. And like depending on the size of the seal, their front flippers may or may not be able to touch the ground. Yeah. My favorite thing is some of our seals like Troy, if he wants to move a little bit quicker or is just a little tired or whatever he his go to is just a roll. So sometimes you'll ask him back into the water. He's like this probably easier and you just rolled his way.
You just don't think so.
Okay, enough about seals do not distract. This is a sea line. Be serious. We have three sea lions here at the Aquarium. We'll get into that in a second. But they all look distinctly different. Can you talk about the differences between male sea lions mature male sea lions and females?
Yeah, absolutely. Their babies. Yeah. So all three of our California sea lions here at the Aquarium are all male. But if you come and look at them, they don't all look like a classic bull male sea lion. And we only really have Parker, who is that very typical male sea lion. And that's because the other two are neutered. And so the size of a male sea lion along with that really cool bump that they have on their head, that's called a sagittal crest all comes as they come into maturity as they come into sexual maturity for a few different reasons. One is that large size helps them be very competitive when it's breeding season or sea lion ret, which is happening around the summertime, that big bump actually allows for additional muscle attachments on their head. So Parker can actually not only is bigger than our other boys, but can bite harder. It's very impressive. His bark matches his bite it does. And so the main differences between a male and a female are really that size. And the fact that the males do develop that crest on top of their heads. So if you look at our other two sea lions, Cain and chase who are neutered, they effectively look like large female sea lions, they're still bigger than a female California sea lion would get. But the body shape wise is pretty much what they look like, Have we ever had female sea
lions at the aquarium we
have in the past the long distant past and we haven't in quite some time. Sometimes having female sea lions with an intact male sea lion can encourage breeding behaviors and some competition between animals that might not necessarily be so good for them socially. I'm sure there are groups out there that are managed appropriately with MC sex sea lions. And we just I don't think had the capacity for that. But I think it's anything's game in the future. We don't really know. But we've opted to have three boys and neuter two of them. So that that limits sort of that competition to because to testosterone filled dudes in the same habitat. It's just a recipe for them just getting into buffle. Yeah,
out in the wild males and females will be around each other. But they do tend to hang out in social groupings that are more generally male or generally female other than breeding season. So this is a pretty natural grouping of animals.
Yeah, Parker is huge right now. Right now it is the end of mono. It's June. Oh, my goodness, it is June. And how big is Parker approximately right now he is
about 800 pounds. So that is a gain over the last few months from around 600 all the way up to about 800 pounds, I believe the biggest he has gotten while living with us was about 850. Last year was about 815. And that's because like I said, we're going into sea lion rat. This is the lion breeding season. And his main job as an intact male is to be huge. And defend his territory out in the wild, he would be going up on a beach and he would be protecting a harem of females to make sure that he was the only one that got to breed with them and pass on his genetics as the big competitive male. So they put on all this weight so that while they're defending their territory, they don't have to eat. They will spend weeks just barking and yelling and fighting. And they have all those incredible stories of blubber to help get them through that time. What
does Parker do, given that he has no access to females for the duration of the summer, Cherie,
so he still gets a little defensive of his territory. He will still do the posturing he'll still bark and he will definitely communicate to the other boys if he feels like they are infringing on his rights as the big bold male in that exhibit. But we work really hard to work with him on that. So we give him his space we get let him spend his time as he prefers. Sometimes he still wants to come and work with us. He still wants to come to session. He still wants to do all those mentally enriching training programs. And sometimes he just wants to swim in a circle. And so we really are able to work with him one on one. Yeah. Which is nice, but he is a very, very good boy and he makes managing this hormonal time. I'm for a sea lion. Pretty easy compared to what it could be with some other animals.
He is such a good boy he is really good. I think people typically think of like a dominant male as being like aggressive or in your face and Parker's like, hey, just don't come over here right now and it's very mellow straight now I just
call it
he does a good job have strong boundaries with the other animals and they respect them. But then at the end of the day, this they're cuddling. Oh, yeah, they all still nap together.
The boundaries are for when we're awake. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to snuggle,
just snuggle time? What about what do they eat? What do they eat in the wild versus what they eat here at the Aquarium. In the wild,
they'll eat small schooling fish. So here at the Aquarium, we feed them herring, Caitlin and squid primarily, they'll also get some other types for enrichment just to keep things fresh and interesting. The other day, they got some nights mountain some Silversides which are quite small. Like the average Caitlin is probably like, four to five inches, maybe three to four inches, whereas the silverside is like maybe two inches. So it was a very fun session of just seeing how they responded to their their snacks being a little bit smaller.
I think it's funny that a lot of times the typical thinking is like oh, a new animal or an animal is going to love a new food type when like a huge fish like a salmon or something that's massive. And some of our animals prefer the really tiny we do especially a really really big for first the smallest fish at
Parker Parker. He is not more reinforced by a large herring than he is by one small Caitlin. It's his favorite thing.
So good. Yeah. Concentrated snack later
in life. Yeah,
he likes. He knows what he
likes. Yeah. Precious. What about their lifecycle and their lifespan? How long do they live for what is the what is the average life cycle of a state of California sea lion under
human care. California sea lions tend to live into their mid 20s is pretty average for them under human care. Obviously, their lifestyle differs quite a bit when they are under human care than it does out in the wild. Out in the wild, they do tend to live less time. Usually mid to high teens is pretty normal for them out in the wild, Parker would no longer be a large competitive male like he is in our collection, he would have been out competed by the younger, more energetic sea lions out in the wild at this point. So under human care, they can live for a pretty long time. But out in the wild, they do have some other things that they have to contend with going
on out there.
How old is Parker Parker is currently 21 years old might be 22. By the time this podcast comes out at the end of June is his birthday. Yeah,
that's crazy. I think I've known Parker for 10 years. And so he was a teenager when I knew Ben was a competitive male. Very much me he's massive. He's
still our most competitive male
that we have. But as they age and sort of what sort of Geriatric effects do we see on our animals. So a lot
of my job as a monologist is not just training them to do anything, but it's training them to do things that improve their welfare. So specifically for a geriatric animal that's making sure that we can do quality vet exams on them, especially with an animal's largest Parker, if Parker does not feel like participating in something that's all up to him. I cannot ask an 800 pound animal to do something it doesn't want to do. So with Parker as he becomes more geriatric, the things we're looking at specifically are, how are his joints doing 800 pounds is a lot of weight on an animal shoulders, or on their hips. How is he still eating normally is pretty much are we able to do all the diagnostics that we might want to? So Parker, again, we've said how many times he's a very good boy, but he really is the best. So currently, I'm working on his X ray behaviors, we can do voluntary X rays on him, which is fun, because he's actually so big that it's really hard to get a clear image on an x ray, because he is that's just all of his blubber. That's just all his lover. We had detected arthritis in him a few years ago. And he's been on Costa clan, which is, which helps with his arthritis. So we've been adjusting some of the ways we train him. We've been retraining his ultrasound behavior, which he's had for a long time, and he's really good at but now we're able to try and do it in the water where he's putting less pressure on his body. So a lot of our job as mammalogists is to watch those changes and make sure that we are ahead of them, and we are able to work with him as he needs to be worked with as he gets a little bit older.
That's so great. I also know a little bit about sealing and teeth thanks to Erin Lundy, who's made a ton of very popular tic TOCs with me, and I know that their teeth can sometime in the wild can sometimes lead to a lot of issues for them. And so here at the Aquarium we're able to extend their lifespan that might be part of it right is by the dental care that they receive. It's definitely yeah, it's
definitely different. It's with pinnipeds is interesting because their teeth aren't there like ours are there for chewing. They don't actually chew their food no matter how big that hearing is. If you throw it to well, maybe not Parker's not there refer to Ghana Chase, They'll swallow it down completely whole. If a sea lion needs us fish smaller, usually those kinds of thrash their heads around till it breaks into pieces. But their teeth are really critical for catching that fish. It's critical for them to be able to get the food that they need to eat. And it's also really important for them to be able to defend themselves, their teeth is what they have to do that so out in the wild. As they get older, just like with anyone, the quality of those teeth are going to deteriorate. But here we do have to do checks on them every morning. So I can actually ask them to open up their mouth, I can look at their gum health, I can look at their teeth. But see lions are really interesting in that. Unlike seals or humans, they don't have enamel on their teeth that protects their teeth. Instead, they have this really beautiful black bacteria. So their teeth look, they look really dirty and dark sometimes. But that is what healthy sea lion teeth look like. It has that nice covering of bacteria to keep them safe. Bacteria, it's great.
We also had a sea lion here for a very long time. And for people who are maybe less familiar with the aquarium or have known of Harpo, Harpo unfortunately passed away last year. It was a little bit unexpected for us. But I bring up Harpo because as a yearling sea lion, I think he was only one year old, he developed a tooth and bone infection. And they were able to remove his teeth and they were able to rectify that infection. But for the duration of the period that he had that infection he wouldn't eat because it's so painful. I mean, I have a toothache and I can't even drink water, you know. And it's so painful that it sort of overrides their desire to eat. They're so like averse to it. And so I remember a couple of our volunteers who are wonderful. And I've worked with Harpo since he was young, described that they had to like sliver, the cablin into like paper, thin sheets and just kind of like slip it down his throat and he would allow it because he was hungry. He just didn't want to use his teeth at all. And he recovered. And the funniest thing about Harpo is as he grew, his jaw didn't quite grow, right. So his tongue just kind of always stuck out of his mouth. He was just the absolute best boy, but that dental care goes so far. And that issue, if that was a wild animal would have never been rectified. And he probably would have starved because that is so painful that that is just not something they can overcome.
I think it's just it just speaks so much to the love you guys have for the animals and the quality of care here at the Aquarium that the staff then are just slavery as thin as possible. I just make these very gourmet sushi like That's an expensive kind of fish.
Let alone cut properly for like hours and hours. And sea lions do not eat a small amount of food. They eat a lot of food especially growing boys. They eat a lot of food so I'm sure that was time intensive. But
I just brought up Harpo, he's such a good boy,
it was it was worth it. Yeah,
it was worth it. Well, let's get into Sealine conservation, speaking of kind of things that affect them in the wild. Last summer, we had an event that happened here off of our coast here in Long Beach, and all up and down. And event. It was not positive is a bad. A bad one.
I think they describe it as a ume which is an unusual mortality event for California sea lions and also other types of pinnipeds. But can you speak a little bit as to what happened and how frequently.
So this is not an unprecedented event. It is when we ended up with higher levels of domoic acid out in our wild environment along our coast here. My understanding of domoic acid is it comes from algae blooms, so depending on how much upwelling we've had from the nutrient rich sea floor, and how much how warm the water is, that affects how much the algae blooms, and then the fish eat that algae. And then marine mammals eat that fish and it can build up in their systems. domoic acid, unfortunately, can cause seizures, it can cause like neurological, just different neurological problems, that depending on the amount never actually go away. And so these are animals that have been doing a really good job eating, and they have built up enough of that toxin in their bodies, that then they have those neurological issues and are no longer able to care for themselves. And they end up putting themselves up on the beach. It's really interesting working with a marine mammal that has domoic acid poisoning, because you can tell like you you look at them in the eye, and you're like no one's home, like this is not a normal animal, something's off. And it's very sad about that we are very lucky that we have a lot of incredible marine mammal rescues in our area, specifically closest to the grand Pacific is the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro. And I'm really proud to work facility that has actually and works to send people like me like on our team that have experience with marine mammals or a specific rehabilitation experience to go help out at those facilities during these events where they have well over 100 animals more And then they might normally have at that time of year, who all need individual care and need to be given the best chance to survive. And luckily, there are animals that recover well enough to go back out into the wild. And there are also some that when they don't fully recover, are able to go be ambassadors for their species, like our boys here at other facilities around the country, it's cool to
see sort of that whole process from start to finish. As devastating as it is, it's amazing to see people from different organizations and institutions come together and really become aware of this. And we had people who weren't directly working at the rehab center, going out and walking the beaches and helping to report strandings that they were seeing so that the appropriate parties could come out and collect those animals and deliver them to the Marine Mammal Center for help. So it was a multifaceted response, as of last year was big. Yeah, it
was a big team effort. And just for anyone listening, if you ever are out on one of our beaches, and you see an animal that you think might be in distress, the best thing you can do is to start by keeping your distance you don't want an animal that might be sick, for you to approach it and then they get scared and then they put themselves back in the water where they had already worked so hard to get themselves out and just call one of the local rescues. Honestly, if you Google the number
it's gonna come up put it in the show notes you people can you can add it in your phone just perfect Animal Rescue
and they will know how to work with that animal they will be able to come out inspect that animal see if it's one that meets the criteria for coming into one of those rescues for a little
bit. I laugh because I've a handful of times just seen an elephant seal hold out on the beach when I've been looking for them. And if you didn't know that that was normal for them. They look pretty yeah look pretty down that's very
true. Especially if you see a molting elephant seal they look rough
and they smell terrible you like Something's definitely wrong.
They are semi aquatic animals they are supposed to spend some time on land
but interesting way to start your career here at the Aquarium is to experience that an event like that and going back and forth that must have been a really interesting start to your summer
it definitely it was but it was also really nice going back because that's actually where I started so it was people I knew it was a facility I knew I knew how it all works it was really
nice it was really good. I want to hear again you're talking about multi animals do our sea lions multi sea lions multi at all
they do ya not in the same way an elephant seal molds an elephant seal has what we call a catastrophic molds where it molds all of it all at the same time. We skin the fur Yeah, they look they look rough during that time. Yeah, just awful. But our weapon seals for the record. Yes, they're their little stinky like,
they're like,
but if you if no one's ever seen an elephant seal pup, you should look it up because they are very cute. Really cute. You're huge.
Can you imitate the sound that they make?
I can't. But it does sound like a monkey. It's a very weird sound. There's really nothing like getting into the rescue at 5am Opening your car door and just hearing the yelling and like the smell hits you all at the same time. It's actually very nostalgic for me which is weird to me. It's
great work that we're doing but man there is a specific marine mammal stink especially around molting season.
It's true. Yeah, so our boys do get a little stinky during molting season. But there's it's not nearly as dramatic. They just pretty much for us. We just start finding small piles of fur along our desk furs or decks. Sorry desk delivery. And mostly just where the sea lions all sleep together. You just kind of find these piles of fur and oil. Oil is
something I didn't expect. Yeah,
the oil is impressive. Probably
what the smell comes from.
Oh yeah, it stains.
Honestly though even not during molting season. A dry marine mammal stinky is a little stinky. People who are so blonde there are very keen
on this thing. If you've ever been to San Francisco, and you've seen all the sea lions laying out on the pier, just get a good whiff of that that's what they smell like. It's intense like it is a muskie. You kind of like Oceana, you put stinky odor like
it's just interesting because our sea otters who are actual mustelids, who are muskie, staple animals, not stinky.
What role do sea lions play in the in the wild? What is their if something if sea lions aren't doing well, kind of what does that cause and effect?
So well, we're really lucky in that in general sea lions have been doing very well for a long time, especially our California sea lions ton of them. But they are one of the top predators and so they help control fish populations and make sure that those stay healthy. Anytime any population ends up too big, then their food source ends up being overused. And it's just kind of the cyclical problem of an ecosystem is really good at balancing itself. So anytime you remove any part of that, you're going to start seeing problems. So for sea lions, it would be specifically those schooling fish But luckily, they are a pretty healthy wild population. And I think a big part of that is they're very easy to love. And people tend to protect what they love. And so sea lions have had a lot of support for a long time, especially when it comes to places like the Marine Mammal rescues. So we're really happy to be able to showcase them and have people who love them, come see them, but also then potentially learn about some of the other animals we have at the aquarium that might need a little bit more help out in the wild.
I love that you protect what you love. So we try and get people here to love everything.
You start with the easy Yeah, cute, with
the cute and charismatic animals like the sea otters and the sea lion. And
then you just like throw a sea cucumber at him. And you're like, these are fun to care
about. What do you think my holes are otters and frogs. I'm like, Hey, sea otters also
look nice, too.
By the time this podcast episode comes out, too, I do think that we will have our pinup pet encounters back up and running. So if you ever want to meet or smell or touch or whatever, I pinnipeds. That's an opportunity you might get if you do a pet, a pet encounter. Yeah, so sign up through our website. If you'd like to meet Erin, or Erin or any of the people who work with our marine mammals, they
can also help you propose that's true post prom proposal marriage, we had a prompt whatever you want to puzzles and those are my favorite days. I love when I walk up and there's a proposal and I'm so worried I'm gonna blow it like just a couple of clicks. So today
just staring at them so oddly, like they're all encounters this conspicuous. But anyway, it's it's cool. And they're great ambassador animals for other species and people. It's there's nothing like it, you know, just meeting a ceiling. Like that's a thing I can do.
I forget when I bring people up for counters, you know, it's that realization like, oh, behind from the other side. They don't seem as massive or as big, but close when
people meet Parker, and they watch him walk up the steps to the area where we normally do encounters. They're like, that's a little scary to me. But he's such a sweet, sweet boy. And we're really lucky to be able to do these encounters because the ones out in the wild might not be such sweet boys. Barker has been taught since he was very little what safe interaction with people looks like? Because I certainly would not want an 800 pound animal who didn't know that I was fragile.
Now you definitely don't want to do sea laden coward encounters in the wild, just stick to
the Pacific. Think it's also illegal to approach marine mammals
definitely.
Cool. Well, let's get into our boys, Parker, Cain and chase are they rescue animals? Are they eligible for rerelease tell us a little bit about how we acquired them. So
all of our current population was all born under human care for our pinnipeds population in general, one of them Kaya, or one of our harbor seals was born right here on our exhibit.
I saw it.
It's crazy. It's a cool day.
I'm jealous. I wish I was there. And then the other ones were born and other facilities and then came to us. One of the really nice things about being part of ACA is we're able to work with other zoos and aquariums to make sure that all the animals born under human care have a good place for them to live where they can thrive. Because any animal that is actually born under here under human care is a non releasable animal. They are not eligible to go back out into that wild environment and for pretty good reason they don't have the skills that they would need to survive out there. Parker since he was really little has learned that the best way to get fish is to be polite and to hang out with people and kind of help create those relationships. Where as a sea lion out in the wild learns pretty early on it. The best way to get fish is to fight with other sea lions. very impolite. Yeah, it's not it's not nearly as chill. So these sea lions are all non releasable animals them they will be with us, or at another facility for the rest of their lives being ambassadors for their counterparts out in the wild. And we are very happy to have them Yeah, we have some really good boys.
So Parker Canaan Chase, we talked a lot about Parker already. But tell us a little bit about more. A little more about Canaan Chase. Sure.
They are very funny. So we talked about Parker's age he is about to be 22. Kanan Chase are about half that age. Chase Earlier in June turned 10, officially, so 10 year old boy. And then canes birthday is a little bit later and he's going to be 11. So they're both effectively middle aged boys, but I think of them as So Young as compared to Parker. But they are they're very similar in a lot of ways, but also pretty distinctly different animals. I think the reason Kane is the favorite of all of the Aaron's is because he's just he's a very He's a very smart animal. He really seems to he shows us that puzzles and thinking through problems is something that he finds reinforcing that he finds enriching and I find that very fun. That's also very reinforcing and enriching for me when work Hang with him. He's just always trying to figure out what you're going to ask next. And a lot of the times he's right. Sometimes he's super wrong, but that's also fun. He does. He does. He's fit. He's very certain he's right sometimes. But then once you show him that, like, maybe that wasn't what we were going for. He's like, Okay, nevermind, I'll try again. And then Chase. Chase similarly, also sometimes tries to figure out what we want him to do amidst commits real hard. Even once you've told him like, maybe there wasn't what we were going for. He's like, No, I'm pretty sure.
He's like, what if you want to Yes, yeah,
I think I could do it. Sometimes I describe chases like first thought best thought. That's a good description. Yeah. And he's just like, I'll keep doing it eventually. That's what you'll want. This is what I wanted. Yeah. But I think a lot of that also comes from he's also a very smart animal. He just He wants things to be the way he's decided they are. Yep. But we're able to work with and we make sure that we are very clear with what we are asking. And he is really fun. I know he's actually a lot of people's favorites. Just again yeah. Just his his personality is he's a very good communicator I think that's what I will describe chases
a rare because he's the most interactive in the tunnel, right? He
has four vocals That's how much he can communicate. No, it's true. And we can insert a clip of him making all the weird.
It turns out sea lions can make a wider array of noises than I've ever imagined. And most of that I learned from Chase making a very
early Chase. Yeah, make.
We did finally get the sound that sounds just like a typical sea lion,
which we did finally land on that three first
vocals, he learned sound nothing like maybe his big boy bark is kind of like an aggressive like Seelye biting bark. But they're all just on cue behaviors. And so he he can sing an opera. It's very important in gargle, and then he can bark and bake and bark small.
Big barks Hallmark. Yeah.
And you chase or no, sorry, Cain can do two of those. He can use a siren boy, heavily. Yeah,
from my perspective, just knowing kind of the dynamics of it, it seems like Cain has been a slightly more challenging animal to train. Do you think that's due to his intelligence? Or is that kind of the reason that he is a favorite to because he is such a challenge sometimes
think he used to be more of a challenge to work with, but I think it was because he was nervous. And I mean, honestly, same. But, you know, animals, especially intelligent animals that can perceive the environment around them and understand what's going on can there's so much stimulus and he was new to us. He came to us when he was about four years old. Yeah. And so you know, he went from one home that he understood and friends that he knew to a totally new place, and it took him a while to adjust as can, you know, when I started here, was brand new. And he would come to sessions by staying underwater with just his eyes under the surface of the water. He's like, I'm really trying to be here, but I don't understand what's going on. And you know, it was just every day, just loving on him and making sure he knew that, hey, what we're doing is totally safe. And it took some time to come out of his shell. Now, I would argue that Chase is more difficult to work with. But mostly because Kane has gained so much confidence in the last few years that he is just ready to go. He's doing encounters. He's meeting people. He's
sticking it on guy. Yeah, he's
not nervous about a seagull flying three miles away. Like I
wore a rain jacket with him. And he was like, I can come up on deck.
i That's probably safe. Chase on the other hand, rain jacket. Oh,
no. I know someone someone wore an x ray vest that led vests into the exhibit, like 20 feet away from him. And he's like tiny little bark like son. No, they're
coming for me for some reason that
he has, he has since allowed that to exist with his within his environment a little bit better. But that's why when we talk about Parker being a very good, sweet, brave boy, it's usually just in comparison to Cain and chase who are still figuring that out their work and workers got a good 10 years on him. Yeah, he's
way advanced and he's older. So he's chilled out a little bit. Whereas I think at when they were especially a little bit younger, it's everything that you're going to react to because I've never seen a seagull before. I've never seen this before.
Despite being neutered, do you see any changes in Cain and chase during the summertime? Yeah,
they definitely. I mean, I can't speak to the science of whether there's also hormonal changes happening and then now that they're neutered, but they're 100% reacting to the change in Parker. And so, when sometimes when Parker stops to eat like stops eating I'm Caitlin Chase are also like, I guess
he's our leader. So yeah, I
guess we do that is whereas the seals are just hanging out being like, no, it's fine. Don't want US Navy SEALs don't care at all about
what the ceilings are up to you. They
really don't. They're they're good neighbors. But yeah, they definitely do react to the changes in Parker. And I know at least for Chase, he seems like he was neutered a little bit older because you can see like the beginnings of a sagittal crest. See that? He is He is very distinct look. Yeah, he's bigger than Qeynos.
He's just neutered here at the Aquarium. Yeah, he was about for a while. So you've probably gone through a little bit of puberty before. So yeah, he kind of looks like a little egg head
makes so much sense. He looks so different than the other sea lions. And it's funny because the pictures that we're taking them chase before he like officially went on exhibit. I don't feel like that looks like it. And he looks so different now. And he looks so different underwater. Yeah. Underwater. He is like the biggest eyes. He's like, he's very cute.
He's a little suspicious. Yeah. In the tunnel, he's like this in my place. I get this. This is great. Speaking
of in the tunnel, Chase is very interactive. I know, during the pandemic in our closures, he was probably the animal that was looking for interaction, and we were all happy to give it
our our guests are incredible source of enrichment, sources of enrichment for all of our animals, particularly Chase, all of our guests are always doing something new and different and interesting. And all of our animals, especially our mammals are watching you guys. Yeah, through that window. And that's
thrilling for people to realize the animals can see us just as well as we can see them through the window for any of our guests who might be visiting the aquarium. How would they be able to tell Parker versus chain chain?
Together as their band name,
chain? Chain, but how could someone conceivably tell the difference between Parker and Cain and chase?
So Parker, definitely the easiest one.
You can't tell him apart.
Yeah, if there's one that's just like real big and really easy to tell apart. Really kind of nice, chocolatey brown color is a very handsome man. And then Kanan chase for the train die or actually look pretty differently from each other. I think it can be a little trickier for people like us who don't stare at sea lions all day every day. But Chase is a little bit bigger. He it a little bit longer. And he has kind of silvery blonde for kind of gray compared if you sat him next to came a warm tone. Yeah, exactly. It's a cool versus warm tones. Chase is also a little bit more of a blockhead. Like he's got a big ol head literally and figuratively. Yeah. And then cane is kind of pointy. He's a little bit of a pointy long boys. Yeah, yeah, I think the easiest way to tell the difference between Cain and Chase is really some behavioral things. But really one one just has a big ol face.
So cool. Okay, I want to hear more about their veterinary care here at the Aquarium. I know we have things that we do yearly, like an annual exam, you're doing blood draw on a potentially 800 pound animal, you're doing X rays, you're doing surgeries, you're doing all of these things. Can you talk a little bit about how they volunteer to participate in these things? And what the day to day of them is like? Absolutely,
because you've touched on my favorite part of my job I really enjoy husbandry, I think it's a really clear example of our relationship with these animals, you're asking them to do something that puts them in a somewhat vulnerable position a lot of the time. And you can see as you build a relationship with them, their willingness to be vulnerable changes, and it's always very exciting as you see them start to trust you. But are, the basic idea of our husbandry behaviors is so that our animals can voluntarily participate in their health care? Like we said, Parker, a very large boy, there's not much you can ask an animal that large to do if they don't want to. So the things we mainly focus on our them being willing to go into different areas of our exhibit, where if they were sick, we could ask them to go in there, they could get some individualized care. We work on some diagnostic things like we work on them doing voluntary X rays, where they'll lay on top of an x ray plate and we have this really cool portable X ray that actually brought into our exhibit to get X rays of these animals. We do voluntary eyedrops Parker's on an eye drop every single day. And he is better at them than any person I have encountered. Better
the Meet Yeah, wait, I have a tween I
dropped. I have an anecdote about doing eyedrops. So at one point, I had to give eyedrops to another human, and I had always in my career given I drops to marine mammals and when you are giving eyedrops to marine mammals, you sort of want to go really high with it just in case they sort of jerk their head or something unexpected happens. You want to poke their eye. And so, you know, I'm used to aiming and I dropped from like two feet in the air. And so my natural instinct when someone was like, Hey, can you help me with eye drops, I'm really bad at like receiving them, or like doing them myself. My arm just automatically like two feet over their eye and as they were lying down, and it hit their eye with such velocity, and they described it as being so cold. And I had never thought about the impact of that to you and the sea lions are used to it you know, like that's their normal, but humans just kind of like put it in because they're not going to jerk their head while they're doing and I dropped fairly but yeah, so don't give any
other What about to yourself. Do you find yourself like no,
it was the funniest moment I was like my natural insult like I'm happy to do I dropped open your eye and my arms two feet above your head.
It's just a fun skill we get is like that aim is pretty impressive. Yeah, every once in a while I miss though and just like hit some in the eyebrow. And I'm like I'm sorry.
That already wet doesn't matter. Yeah,
they're fine.
We had a video go viral of Parker getting his eyedrops and people are like, so what he loves underwater. His eyes are open all the time. And I'm like, Okay, well you try giving an 800 pound animal. eyedrops. It is very expressive. He's impressed. There's impressive that he stands up. It's The
Sweetest the sweetest little face you've ever seen in your whole life. And so much so much trust. He gets shrine he gets a little Mohawk.
Yeah, this is
no Hawks. Really? Yeah. ARCA is the only one with a mohawk. So if you ever see a receipt
on with them, that's really the most important.
Yeah, it's Parker. So
Parker, to my understanding is trained to do a voluntary blood draw. What does that look like for a COA to volunteer his blood to you? Yeah.
So there are multiple strategies that you can get voluntary blood samples from a sea lion. But the way we do it with Parker is we ask him to lay down on our deck and people will go behind him to his back flippers. And he does this very cute thing where he angles his head slightly to the side, he keeps it nice and down on the deck, but he's like, I want to look at you while you do that, you know, that's understandable. I would also want to look at the person messing with my feet. Yeah, he lays in that position. Well, we clean around his flipper. Well, the vet staff palpate his flipper to see where that vein is. Sometimes well, we put warm water on a warm compress on top of a slipper because sea lions will chunk their blood to their core so that they can stay warm enough meaning that they don't always have a lot in those flippers when they're cold. And we're able to do a voluntary stick. Honestly, I think the stick is not the hardest part of that behavior. It's that animal feel uncomfortable with the extended amount of time that they are laying in that position. While people mess around with their body. I think people usually anticipate the stick being the hard part. They don't notice they don't notice they don't mind. And then we're able to once the needles in, just fill up a bunch of blood draw like blood vials, which is really nice, because that only lead not not only allows us to do whatever current diagnostics we're looking for, but it allows us to bank blood so we know what's normal for this animal. And we have all these backups for knowing when things change as he gets older.
It's impressive to watch our veterinary team do blood draws on pinnipeds, which have the smallest vessels, you know, like they are not easy. And I've seen you know nurses and people who have taken my blood and I've certainly seen how difficult it can be with no fur on my
little he's still elbow pits.
Right there no hair in there, the veins very visible and it still is difficult. And so watching our veterinarians take it from this like for covered like various maybe
feel it but you can't see it.
And I think I knew that about them. What do you call shunting? There. That's so fascinating. So that just adds another layer. I wish I could do that.
Now your hands would be so cool. My
hands are already cool. I
know you're cold all the time. You can't show me your
direction I've already been shunting.
But that behavior and is also related to the reason why we don't sedate Parker or actually any pinnipeds very often that blood shunting is part of their dive response. And what is the dye response? And how does it impact sort of anesthetizing or sedating?
So there's the mammalian dive response. So it's actually something that you and I also have, you can shunt your blood. So if you what happens is when a mammals face goes into cold water, the body's automatic response is to have your heartbeat slow down and just kind of start to conserve resources, specifically, the oxygen within your blood. So for seals and sea lions, well, we technically have the same response there so it's a little bit more impressive. When I was in college, I did actually do an experiment where we put heart monitors on and then just literally literally into a bucket of cold water on our face. And watch the change and this is a side note but my lab partner and I did get caught by the, by the TA literally googling what happens when you put your face in a bucket. We were not paying a lot of attention. But I understand it now. Anyway, for seals and sea lions, that heart rate slows down significantly so that they can be as efficient as possible with the oxygen content of their blood. And they are obviously underwater, so they will stop breathing. And they will be able to die for really impressive amounts of time, sea lions can die for up to about 20 minutes holding their breath that entire time. And so when they are put under anesthesia, that causes their bodies to react in a similar way. So they will often stop breathing on their own. And we're able to breathe for them in that context. But then being able to signal to their body that it is now time to start again can be really tricky. Which is particularly why unless it is critical for an exam, which sometimes it is, we want to do everything voluntarily, we don't want to need to put them in that risk. Even though we do have a highly skilled vet team who can mitigate a lot of that risk. We would rather avoid it and do things voluntarily when we can especially like those x rays, those ultrasounds and blood drop those drugs. Yeah, yeah.
It's cool. It's weird to think about your body just be like, Yeah, I shouldn't breathe. I'm probably like, no, yeah, just out and about, but it's
crazy. That's part of the reason people sometimes forget animals like these are mammals that they actually can't breathe underwater. They're just really just
really affected that being underwater. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like part of it. They have like higher levels of hemoglobin, myoglobin, hemoglobin, whatever
makes their blood
Raizy. Right. Yeah, really bright rail red. Yeah. And so they're able to carry more oxygen in their blood. One of my favorite things is like so like, part of my job. And just part of what I do for fun is scuba diving. And one of the things that human divers have to think about is getting the bends as nitrogen builds up in your system. But one of the really cool things about pinnipeds is they actually don't end up with a lot of air pockets in their body. They're very compressible. So as they dive there isn't em anywhere for that nitrogen to build up in the same way down and shoot
up as their lungs collapse totally. So that oxygen gets dissolved in their blood. But it's very weird there, it
is very weird. What they do diving is their, like, their ribs are very flexible. And just adapt to
the very fast flying birds that have to come to a sudden stop. Like they're literally built to do that. Yeah. And here's another animal whose lungs can collapse. They're
built to spend a lot of time underwater, both hemo. And my Oh, because he was confident like my oh is for muscles. And so we have both and so they have a better capacity to soar oxygen in their blood and their muscles. And so they're way better at diving than we ever will be. And they can hold their breath for way longer, they actually
exhale as they dive as opposed to us when we go underwater, we don't really do that big inhale. But obviously, if their lungs are collapsing, that would be very helpful.
Meaning I want to talk about a behavior that they do, which is you'll see them here at the aquarium with one of their flippers sticking straight up sailing. It's so sweet. What is that about?
It's one of the ways that they're able to thermo regulates one of the ways that they control their temperature. So their flippers are pretty highly vascular ated they have a lot of like surface level blood vessels. And so when they are a little bit too warm, they can expose that flipper to the air and have like the water evaporate off it, they don't sweat like we do. But it's the same idea of that, like liquid evaporating off your skin helps cool you down. And then when they're a little bit too cold, you'll often see them on land, and they'll tuck their flippers up under their belly. And it's very cute. And they'll keep them nice and warm against themselves. They look
like a sweet potato and
the sweetest potato, they are sweet little potatoes. We talked a little bit about their behaviors and training already. But I would love to talk kind of how that relates to their enrichment, because I know you guys are training them to do things like jumps in the air sticking their tongue out barking.
Those are very important medical.
I agree. I fully agree. But I know that is enriching to them and to an animal that is so intelligent and needs a lot of that stimulation. Can you talk a little bit about what that enrichment looks like?
Yeah. So when it comes to the training side of things, one of the biggest things we're looking for, in addition to those husbandry or medical behaviors, is that mental stimulation, an animal out in the wild is using their brain all day every day just in order to survive. And at the aquarium for good reason. We've covered a lot of those basic survival needs for them. Were providing that fish we have not allowed there to be predators in their environment, but we still want them to use that incredible brain that they have. So we talked about canine liking to solve puzzles. That's where that comes from, is their ability to solve problems out in the wild. We have them solve those blooms under human care by learning new things. It's really fun teaching them new things because they don't speak English. So you're trying to kind of nudge them in the right direction, when they have that lightbulb moment, if they're like, Oh, I got this, they get so into it, it is a very exciting thing for them. And honestly, so exciting for us. The chairs you hear from people sometimes when that like approximation towards like a new behavior has been successful is very exciting. So that's one of the ways that we keep their days enriching. But on top of that, we also have literal objects so we can provide that involve them working in different ways for their food, we have feeder balls, where they literally it's looks like a lot of dog toys just large. And it's a big ol ball that has holes in it that they have to move around the water and the fish slowly fall out. And it's very fun watching because every once in a while a sea lion will have it but they'll miss a fish and one of the seals is just like waiting
to grab the drought crocodile. Yeah, you have the intelligence and the you have the intelligence of the animal who's just waiting for, for them to do the work for it's really great.
Or you have one of the seals has gotten the feet are toying with the sea lions who thinks they're all big and strong. It's like, I'm gonna go take it and are 35 year old harbor seal. Elliot's like, No, you're not. This is mine. And then on top of that, we have just different things that we do throughout the day. So we can change up when they get fed. We can do one of my favorite is called fish from heaven, where we go hide somewhere outside their exhibit, and we just start throwing fish in the water. And we're probably not as good as it could be. But in theory, they don't know where that's coming from. And it kind of comes out of nowhere like, well, fish, yeah. And then they get that kind of opportunistic feed. But a lot of our enrichment program is designed for that mental, mental and physical stimulation in ways that promotes natural behaviors of things they would do out in the wild, which is why so much of it is focused around food, that's a lot of what an animal is life out in the wild is focused around getting enough food,
it's a lot of eating a lot of eating, I think, when you're talking about training, and you're talking about just people getting very excited to it is funny to see like, when we are training our animals, we mark good behavior, the same way that people training their dogs to use a clicker or you know, like, whatever it is. And we use the word good typically to mark good behavior. And we think that we're very scientific and very good trainers. And we're like good and always sounds good. Here's the key is consistency in the tone of your branch or that mark. But we get so excited. And you go from hearing this like very sharp, like consistent good across the exhibit, someone's working on something. And it's like the squeaky is highest pitch longest but like it has become reinforcing to the animals over time. But it is funny to see people just totally lose composure, because it's so exciting when you are like I have communicated something to it a totally different species and understands what I'm asking. And we got it we work together to be
an amazing feeling. It's pretty cool. That's amazing. Okay, with that, I think we'll get into our social media questions, social media. Followers, you can follow us at aquarium Pacific and at pod cific. That's where we post where to submit your questions. So the first question is, where does their name come from? How were they named sea lions? Or do you think,
um, I actually don't know, the first sure history behind this. But my assumption would be is if anyone's ever looked at a southern sea lion. They have this big kind of thick layer of fur main around their necks that helps protect them. And you look at one of them, you're like, oh, that's that's a lion that lives in the ocean. That's a mermaid line. Yeah, but in other languages, not necessarily like English. I know in Spanish, sometimes. It translates to like Wolf of the sea. And a lot of people often compare them to dogs. You can kind of see that similar physiology. But I think also that big roar that they have some people call it a bark. Sometimes it sounds like a bark. Sometimes they just scream and it sounds like a roar
can have chases, bark versus chases for. And
then you can decide if they're wolves or lions.
I love that. Do they have a good sense of smell?
They have a pretty impressive sense of smell for an animal that spends a lot of its time underwater. It's not literally close out. Yeah,
it's really cool to see them underwater. You see them just totally shut to keep water out.
And then the second little their noses look like little hearts. You ever get a print of a sea lion nose, it's literally shaped like a little hearts. It's very cute. I know every time we talk about it's just more that makes them really good at being in the show. It's just like, I guess their main deal.
See lions? So yeah,
they do have a pretty good sense of smell. The first thing that comes to mind for me for why that's important is it's one of the ways that moms recognize their pups. So when their puppy has gotten a little bit older and they're the moms going to forage and start to eat again, they want to find the correct pup again, and one of the ways they can do that is how that pups smells. That's
my stinky boy. Stinky.
I do find it impressive that you can tell the difference because they're all
They're all stinky. I think some of it's how they sound too. Right? They
call. Yeah, they definitely yelled. Cute little like,
wow. Babies are so sad sounding.
Who is the loudest sea lion?
Um It's I don't. It's pretty loud. canes pretty loud
if we we should get a decibel meter. Right. I
was like Parker's is so deep give us campaign. Yeah. But like it's it's definitely a really impressive sound like I think if I heard that one out of nowhere that might be the most like intimidating to me. silicided ideas, different questions. Yeah. But I think I think cancer is probably the most painful to hear really close to your ear. But I think Harpo was the loudest. So it was pretty darn loud. Yeah. Because he also liked to lean in. Yeah, for it.
I think he got a kick out of like getting people to jump a little bit. He's like, Well, I'm gonna be super loud right now.
I think that question does come from our our very first viral Tiktok, which was who is allowed to see mine at the aquarium and Harpo completely took the cake. It was really funny because I was working with Jeff and Harpo on that last scene in the Tech Talk. And Jeff queued Harpo to interrupt me, which I think adds to the hilariousness of the video. And it's just so good. It's just he just screaming in my face. And that was wonderful. I'm so lucky. Blessed. Really. And that's pinned to our tic tock profile, probably linked, I'll blink every C line video,
I'll just link everything in the link and not my favorite
or anything. You can tell her anything she wants. Like, I don't care. I'm not here.
I have mine brains, about very different things.
How have people study their physiological adaptations, like their breath hold and their depth of die, I
think some of it is done at the long run lab and similar research places. And animals can actually train to participate in these types of things, which is crazy. I don't know specifically, if they've just recorded the longest I've they've ever seen, or they trained a sea lion to dive very deep, but they certainly can participate in sort of metabolic and oxygen consumption studies and get an understanding of what their bodies are capable of. And so there are some amazing research labs that train marine mammals to participate so we understand how their bodies work. And that information can then inform decisions on like, what's healthy in the ocean, and what should we be doing? How loud can sounds be without bothering other things like that that are important. But I'm sure some of it is also observational data to like if you're like 100,000 feet down at the bottom of the ocean, you see a sea lion, you're like, hey,
we have a very interesting question here. Who is the cutest and why is a chase from Megan smiling? A
little bit by us? He is pretty cute. I do think it's the blockhead part of him.
He looks like a giant egg.
Bagel egg, which is cute. I think it depends on literally which one of them is currently directly in front of me. And I'm like, that's probably the KFC line I've ever seen Parker right
up close with a bagel buys big brown eyes.
He has a really cute little face like it sticks out his tongue and he gets a mohawk. And then you see cane and you're like, well, he's tiny, and he's smart.
And also he has a nice tactile behavior where you can reach out and he leans his neck, your hand and that's just very sweet and reinforcing for me personally. Then you have Chase, you have Chase, and you're like, that's pretty cute. He sings at you. Yeah.
And he really commits to every guest. So hard. Also charming. They really are. So So to answer your question, Megan. It's not necessarily Chase depends on. Yeah, that's true. Chase is such a fan favorite, though. He is. So really, he's like the jock of he is the doc. He's
the quarterback.
He is athletic. For sure. Yeah. And I do think He's smart. He's just smart in a way that he understands and I may be.
Okay, so if Chase is the jock Kane,
this is my favorite game. Okay. Take it away. I think Kane is more like the he's all like a nerd. And he's like popular, but he's definitely in like advanced placement classes.
Yeah, he's a little he could be a little competitive with everyone, too. He's like, What did you get on your test? That's exactly that is
Parker. ASB president.
We just, he's such a good boy. He is. Everyone's older brother. You know, like, he's like the one that you watch. Like, he was like, Oh, you're gonna be really successful in life.
He's prom king. Yeah,
he's always just nice to everyone. Which is funny to say because he is our most dominant male and he's sweet.
That so far he is sensitive, though. Sweet
and sensitive. Yeah, that's a good combo. Anything outside of their pods or families in the oceans? Do they have friends? groups.
So once like a sea lion has weaned from its mom and starts to be on its own, they tend to hang out in like juvenile groups as they get a little bit bigger. Usually juvenile males and the females are a little bit more separate. And then as they get bigger and bigger than they kind of end up with their own harem of females during breeding season. And the females will all kind of hang out together with whoever their big male is out on the beach. But the nice thing about sea lions is while they might not stick to the same social groupings all the time, they are very social, which is why you always get those really cool videos of them all sleeping together out, undock, and there's just like, 40 sea lions all smushed together.
I think mo tactic. Yeah. Want to touch each other. They gravitate towards physical contact. It's just interesting. Yeah, I'm
all snuggled up on the beach. Do they have any favorite petting spots? Or are they ticklish?
I have never experienced one being ticklish in the way that I think we would think about them being ticklish. But I've also to be honest, never tried to tickle them normally. keeping my distance a little bit more than that. But like I mentioned earlier, Cain definitely leans into when we scratch along his neck. And whether that is because we always feed him a lot of fish for that or because it also feels nice when we do it. They don't speak English, so we can't ask him to his favorite because of all Yeah, exactly. So sea lions are tactical animal like tactile animals with tactile animals. But we don't spend a lot of our time just petting them. No, usually we got other stuff we got to work on.
I think that the inverse can be said they definitely have least favorite petting spots. They don't really like being touched on their face. They don't really like being touched on their belly. And I think they are essentially still wild animals in their core. And so anything that feels vulnerable to them, they are extremely wary of and if you're touching a spot where they're like, hey, that's all of my organs, or that's my whole face, they are going to be a little bit weirder about it. So they definitely have more preferred and less preferred but I don't know that it's necessarily I want to be pet here. Yeah, it's more when I get pet here. Oh, you're fiddling?
Do are they susceptible to diseases like rabies or things that are land mammals are susceptible to?
They certainly can be. They are mammals. And I know with the avian influenza, they have detected that in some pinnipeds. Things like rabies. As far as I know, there has not been a case in the US of A pinnipeds, contracting rabies, or at least not one that we have caught. I would be so scared of that. That would be very scary. Kind of going back to the gym. Okay, so like any animal that large when they're not fully in control. It's a little frightening. Wow. But I think there has been one case ever. I don't know that it was a sea lion though. Sort of pinnipeds? Yeah. Is my my memory of conversation I had a really long time ago.
Are they vaccinated against any?
They do get vaccinations?
I think they we do West Nile vaccines annually at the aquarium for sure.
They are you know, they're out in the open. If you've ever been to our habitat, it's outside so mosquitoes can bite them they get itchy little mosquito bite, like we do. And unfortunately, mosquitoes are vectors for disease and so we do want to protect them against whatever might be introduced. They
are plenty of them are trained to do voluntary I am or intramuscular just cool. injections.
It makes me really notice,
you know,
my pot my slippers being touched.
And so
the last question we got was dropped the Parker lore which I feel like this whole episode. What do you have any additional Parker lore to share?
My favorite story I've ever heard about Parker came from one of our volunteers who has actually been volunteering at the aquarium since before it opened. We have some incredible volunteers who have been with us the whole time. And so they knew Parker when he came to the aquarium at like one or two years old. They knew baby Parker and apparently young slash baby Parker was a little bit less of a steady Good boy. He is right now. I've just heard stories about them like trying to train new things like flipper Stan, where he stands up on his front flippers and it's very impressive and then like asking it I'm trying to remember if I'm telling this right. It involved him being asked to behavior on one of our rocks that we have on exhibit and just like being so excited about it. He just like flung himself off of the rock. Which is so hard to imagine for our like, steady, sweet boy that he is maturity, energy
to do to flinch. A little crazy. He is just the absolute best animal that we have. Like, hands down. Cain is amazing. Chase is amazing, but Parker is All around a good boy and that is so rare to find. In luck Bo was to Harpo was an all around good boy to our boys on all around loud boy also, what else has what else was Parker lore? I feel like there's so many things when
How old is he when he arrived at the aquarium so a year old?
He was tiny. And if you see pictures of baby Parker he looks like Parker but you're like whoa, like drunk facial features are the same with but then just add like a huge lump on his head. And that's him. He still had that little Mohawk. Yeah, he had a little baby Mohawk. Now
for anyone that isn't going to be able to see Parker up close, his little Mohawk is actually like coarser fur. And it does it feels different than the rest of it, which makes it very fun to fly wild.
And when he's dry, just like three or four hairs stand up right at the front, we
have several pictures of when he's been woken up. After he's decided it's time to go to bed and he has literal bedhead.
He's like, you guys. Cute is. I want to think of one more story that might be Parker lore. What else has he done in his time,
Parker is a really sweet boy. But when people are in his environment, he has his path that he chooses to travel. And so it is really funny when we dive in there with him. Because Parker is not watching out for you. Swimming, you're watching out for Parker, he knows he knows his house, he knows his environment. And so you do kind of spend the whole time just kind of looking around making sure you're not in his path, because he's absolutely skimmed the top of my head. Diving before.
Oh, I know, Parker has the same routine every day, because he is a boy that colors inside the lines. That's how I often hear him described as he loves to follow the rules and things that he knows exists. And so Parker, for example, wakes up every morning spends about 10 to 20 minutes on the ledge scratching his neck kind of behind the concrete pillar where you can't see him if you were a guest. And then he comes up on our steps. And he rubs his face and sneezes all over the stairs for like 10 minutes. And then we have to clean all his sneezes off of his knees rock. And then he goes to do his sessions. And then around 4pm, he goes to bed. And that's like every single man and he's figured out what works for him. But we used to do our sessions at slightly different times than we do now. And you know, just the way programmatically, we changed things. Parker was so used to his routine that it took him months to adapt to like, we'd be like, we've been feeding you at 915 every time every day for like a year now. 945, I could probably come back for my actual breakfast, like daylight savings is rough. He has no concept of it. It's like, my favorite
is we've been pretty variable recently of where we enter our habitat, because they were very reinforcing to them. We bring all the fish we bring, you know, they see us coming. So we've been entering from the other side of our exhibit a lot. And they all have what we call stations where they begin their sessions. That's how they know who they're working with. And Parker will just swim past his trainer, because he's like you entered from the wrong direction. I don't think we're doing this yet. And then he'll watch like Cain and chase will catch on a little bit quicker. And they're like, alright, we're starting and Parker's like, Oh, my God, you've been there the whole time. They say, how do you get in here? Come in, which is why we do that. We want him to have those moments where things are a little shaken up for him. But he adjusts slower than the other boys for sure. Oh,
last one. And this is the one I was trying to think of is that Parker hates hearing. He doesn't hate hate hearing. But it is his least favorite food type. And he has learned to tolerate it. Yeah, it's it's broccoli, it's brussel sprouts, it's whatever. But especially if you cut hearing in pieces, for whatever reason, it makes it infinitely closer to where if it's in pieces, and I see Yeah. Oh, it's over. But there was a time where we were working with sort of like rut ish Parker, like pre rut Parker, and we tossing him food. And he was on deck and he was doing a reasonable session. And someone had cut his hearing and his bucket. And you know, as feeding him what he has tossed him a piece of cut herring, and he turns his face to the side and lets it hit him in the cheek. Instead of catching it like he does with every other fish. It falls to the ground and it's not in a position and we haven't picked it up immediately. And whatever he was doing, he moved his flipper knees stepped on it. And he, like so horrified, picked up his flipper like kind of like shaking, and was staring at it. And he just like made a fate like I've never seen a sea lion. Make a face, but it was like obvious disgust. And you can see it's an 800 pound animal that had stepped on a little piece of fish that had smeared all along his flipper. And he just turned with his flipper up and hopped to the water. When it touched the ground again, and never came back for the rest of the session. He was like that
was so gross. Similarly, we tried out what we have called Fish shell, which is just kind of an emergency supplement that we could have if for whatever reason, we could not get access to fish. We want to make sure that we can take care of our animals and so We tried the fish shell and I was the one working Parker on the morning we tried the fish gel and we all knew he was gonna go for this. But he didn't notice the first couple I fed to him and I was like, like these likes it. Like this is awesome. So I like fed it like fed him some fish fed another one fed him some fish went for the third one. And he figured out what was
fishy. Yeah,
he spit it out, shook his head. And he not only didn't come back for that session, he didn't come back for the next. He's like this day is ruined. Similarly, it was close to rent, so he wasn't all that motivated by food anyway. Whereas Chase was in the corner, just chowing down eating all the stuff that Parker dropped, he
was like fish shells. Great.
You should always do a fish into a view for me.
I think Cain and Harpo did eat it but not enthusiastically use it.
We were trying trout with him. And Harper uses swallow the trout down and then wait till you weren't looking or you like looked away or he would walk away from you. And he would like just spit it up in a corner kind of the way that dogs to like take a treat from you that they don't really, they just put it in a corner and they come back. And so he would always pretend like he was eating it, but he would just disappear underwater and then he would come back and you would see a trout fly. Like, hey, but I know what it's
very weird. It doesn't have a gag reflex ligand. Just store fish in their throat sometimes and you're like
that's our best lore.
This is great Parker lore this great sea lion lore in general Grenier and lore.
Come to their prenup. We will talk about our animals for
first probably a little bit longer than you
want it all have a great time.
We do and we're happy to talk about it. That's amazing. Well, thank you, Aaron, so much for being on the podcast.
