00:02Hey everybody, I'm Rick Schwartz and I'm here at Utah's Hogle Zoo.
00:05You know, every now and then you have to take medicine.
00:07In fact, you might be taking medicine now.
00:09But have you ever wondered, how do you give a giraffe medicine?
00:12Or even a toad?
00:15So I heard we're going to see how to give medicine to a giraffe,
00:20elephants, I think a big cat or two, sloths and even a toad.
00:23Hey Dr. Eric, how's it going?
00:25Hey Rick, what's up?
00:26Well, I heard you're going to show me how to give medicine to certain animals today.
00:29You bet, I was just checking out the zebra and the guinea fowl, but let's go.
00:32Alright, excellent.
00:41Alright, Dr. Erica, who are we hanging with right now?
00:43This is a sloth and her name is Kohlrabi.
00:46This is so cool.
00:47Now we have been talking about giving medicine to different animals.
00:50How do you give a sloth medicine?
00:52Well, everyone loves fruit, right?
00:53Well, Kohlrabi loves melon, she loves grapes, so we medicate a grape every day.
00:57And then you just feed it to her, I guess, huh?
00:59Yep, the keepers come into the rainforest and they give her a medicated grape every day.
01:02So I have read that it can take up to seven days for a sloth to process all its food.
01:07Does that change how frequently or how much of the medicine you give?
01:10You know, that's a great question.
01:11We still give the same amount of medicine every day, but it does take about seven days for her to
01:16go to the bathroom.
01:17Wow.
01:29Good girl.
01:35Good girl.
01:36Alright, so who do we have here?
01:39So this is Capenzi.
01:40She's one of our giraffes.
01:41Hi Capenzi.
01:42She's really social.
01:43She loves hanging out with us.
01:45We're doing alright, yeah.
01:46So we've been talking about how we give meds to animals.
01:49Giraffes are a little bit different than some of the other animals we've met so far.
01:52How do you give medicine to a giraffe?
01:53Yes.
01:55So Capenzi loves bread and she loves kale.
01:57So if it's a medicine that we could put in bread or stick to kale, it'll go down the hatch.
02:02Well, there you go.
02:02And so what do you do, like a powder on the bread or is it like a bagel smear?
02:08How does that work?
02:09Exactly.
02:09So we're giving her a daily medicine.
02:10Think of it as a nutritional supplement.
02:12It's a powder.
02:12So the keepers make a bread sandwich, wet it down, and then she uses her 18-inch long tongue
02:17to help get it down into her mouth.
02:20Obviously.
02:20Wow.
02:21This is great.
02:22Well, and it probably helps that the keepers have such a good relationship with these animals
02:25that they trust them enough to do something like this.
02:27Yeah.
02:28Capenzi's really personable and she loves hanging out with her keepers and luckily her veterinarian.
02:32So it's not a problem.
02:33At least today it's not.
02:34That's great.
02:46All right, Dr. Erica, I know when we give medicine sometimes it's a pill and sometimes
02:50it's a shot.
02:51With a toad like this, exactly how do you give medicine?
02:53Well, we actually could get him to open his mouth and say, ah, and give him something
02:57in his mouth.
02:58But we prefer to use the skin that absorbs medicine.
03:02Now, is there a term for medicine going through the skin like that?
03:05Sure.
03:05I would call it transdermal.
03:07And in human medicine they actually sometimes will give you a patch that goes on your skin
03:10to absorb medicine.
03:12But in this case we would just drop it directly onto his skin.
03:15Wow.
03:15And is there any other way then you could do a transdermal treatment for a toad?
03:18Absolutely.
03:19We would do a bath.
03:20We could fill a little bathtub with some special medicine, maybe an antibiotic or a vitamin
03:24or a dewormer and he could go right into the bath and absorb it through his belly.
03:38All right, Dr. Erica, so who do we have here?
03:40These are two African lions.
03:41They're four years old and their names are Vulcan and Baron.
03:44Very cool.
03:45Now, we have been talking about giving animals medicine today.
03:49What medicine do they need or are we just practicing stuff?
03:52So these boys are really young and really healthy so they don't get any medicines routinely.
03:56But we do practice and we practice by giving them daily meatballs that we could medicate
04:00or even a syringe to get an injection.
04:04You mean these guys will willingly take a shot?
04:06They are so well trained and their keepers work with them every day that yes,
04:09we can use what's called a pole syringe.
04:11It gives us a little bit more length than a regular hand syringe.
04:15Very cool.
04:15Well, let's go check that out.
04:25Valerie has a really good relationship with these lions.
04:28She's their primary keeper and they trust her.
04:30And so every once in a while she might put something in a meatball that tastes a little bit funny.
04:34But usually they gobble it right down.
04:36I can see.
04:37It looks like that doesn't stay on the tongue very long.
04:39Exactly.
04:40So what we're doing right now is we're getting ready to practice a pole syringe.
04:43It's a way to be able to give an injection but not get super close to the lion.
04:47So what we'll do, Valerie has him in position and then I'm going to use this back area and give
04:51him an injection.
04:52Are you ready, Valerie?
04:53Okay.
04:54And we'll just say the word touch when we touch him.
04:56Touch.
04:57So you can see he doesn't mind.
04:59He's really well trained and this could be a vaccine.
05:01It could be an antibiotic.
05:03It could even be an anesthetic if we needed to sedate him.
05:14All right, Dr. Erica, this is pretty cool.
05:16We have this awesome elephant behind us and we're here to talk about giving elephants medicine.
05:20How do you give an elephant medicine?
05:22Well, elephants eat a lot, as you know, but they like a lot of fruits.
05:25So melon, pineapple, bananas, that's how we give elephants medicines.
05:29And given that elephants are so big, how much medicine do they need to get?
05:33Well, Dari's 55.
05:35She's the oldest African elephant that we know of.
05:37So she needs a whole lot of medicines.
05:39One of her doses is 200 pills.
05:41Oh my goodness.
05:42And because of her age, I'm guessing this is for arthritis.
05:45It's like an older senior citizen, right?
05:46Yep.
05:47Dari's like your grandma.
05:48So she has some aches and pains.
05:49So we have her on a couple anti-inflammatories and a couple other pain medicines to keep her comfortable.
05:53So you're saying with all of this now, it just dawned on me, 200 pills.
05:57How do you give 200 pills to an elephant?
05:59Is this all like you mentioned in the fruit?
06:01Like how many bananas does that take?
06:02So first we count out 200 pills and then the keepers stuff 200 pills into individual bananas.
06:10Well, this has been an awesome day.
06:11Thank you so much for showing us how to give medicine to a sloth, a toad, the giraffe even,
06:16and lions, and now the elephant.
06:18This has been so much fun.
06:19Well, it's been our pleasure to host you here at Utah's Hogle Zoo.
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