Monday, June 29

In the morning we had lectures from the White Oak staff--Scott and Linda Penfold--on wildlife translocation and reproduction, including White Oak's Bongo translocation project and Linda's experience importing gerenuk semen. Bill Swanson, from the Cincinnati Zoo, talked to us about reproductive biology and how he specifically works on AI in small wild felids.

In the afternoon we went over to the White Oak "Animal Science" building, which includes the hospital and labs, and had wetlabs on biological sample handling and making blood smears, extracting and handling sperm, bovine AI, and semen assessment. I got to extract and look at sperm from a bull testicle, and we saw live dog sperm swarming around skin cells in culture. I also worked on my blood smear technique, although after doing them for months in the McDonald lab at UCSF I had lots of practice.

A cow repro tract that we used to practice AI technique

Helen examining the elecroejaculator probes for various species, from gerenuk to chimpanzee

After dinner and working on our group project for an hour or two, lots of us retired to the hot tub to hang out. Florida in the summer, turns out, isn't exactly hot tub weather! It only got down to about 85 degrees while we were in the 102 degree hot tub, but it was nice and relaxing anyway.