AS YOU MIGHT WELL IMAGINE, artificially inseminating an elephant is a touchy business. But, says Janine Brown, artificial insemination (AI) is an important tool, because natural reproduction can be difficult for captive elephants. Bulls are dangerous to keep, there aren’t many of them around, and transporting the females to where the bulls are is both stressful and expensive.
Brown, who completed two degrees in animal science (’80 M.S., ’84 Ph.D.) at Washington State University, is the senior endocrinologist at the Smithsonian Institution National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. There, in late February 2000, she coordinated the successful artificial insemination (AI) of Shanthi, a 24-year-old … » More …
Zoology professor Herbert L. Eastlick was devoted to preparing students for professional careers in medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. He once described himself as a “taskmaster and autocrat in the classroom,” motivated by his overriding concern for his students and the rigid demands they would face in professional schools. He mentored thousands and gained a reputation among medical schools for honest, accurate evaluations of the students he taught and advised. Often, deserving WSU applicants were admitted to leading schools on the basis of his word.
During his 33 years at WSU Eastlick gained wide respect for his research on the origin of pigment cells in … » More …
A series of videos introducing WSU’s Conner Museum and its work in research, education, and public service. The Charles R. Conner Museum features the largest public collection of birds and mammals in the Pacific Northwest, and the scientific collection used by researchers houses over 65,000 specimens.
Education and Public Displays at the Conner Museum
Why is lead shot bad for birds? Is it possible to bring a mammoth to life using fossil DNA? Director Mike Webster tells how new displays and public lectures at the Conner explore these and other questions.
Rose-Tu warily eyes the stranger shuffling toward her. He is moving slowly and grasping the arm of a human she sees almost daily. As Matthew Maberry (D.V.M. ’47) plants his cane inside the Oregon Zoo’s elephant compound, he lifts his eyes and returns the look.
“The only trouble with elephants,” says Maberry, the Portland zoo’s first staff veterinarian, “is you can fall in love with them.”
Maberry—”Doc” to some—is eager to get started. Now up close to Rose-Tu, the 90-year-old presses an instrument against the elephant’s wrinkled belly. Inside, the first Asian elephant baby to be born at the zoo since 1994 is finishing … » More …
Washington State University is home to three superb research collections, all begun soon after the young agricultural college opened its doors. What makes them research collections, says Ownbey Herbarium director Larry Hufford, is "sheer numbers." The Conner Zoology Museum has about 69,000 specimens, the Herbarium about 375,000, and the James Entomology Collection more than 1.25 million. These numbers make WSU's collections among the best in the nation. » More ...
“We get a lot of things that people might not think we’d get a lot of,” says Kelly Cassidy. She opens a drawer to reveal one cedar waxwing and five Bohemian waxwings that were brought in by a Pullman resident on a single day. They’d flown into her window after being spooked by something. Students and faculty regularly bring in songbirds that have dashed their brains out on the glassed-in walkway between Abelson Hall and the Science Library. “It’s a terrible bird killer because it’s clear all the way through,” Cassidy says. Other animals make their way into the collection as road kill. Barn owls, for … » More …
Several WSU scientists are gearing up to use stable isotope analysis to ask new questions of the Conner’s specimens. Physiologists Ray Lee and Hubert Schwabl joined Dick Johnson and visiting scientist Elizabeth Yohannes of Germany’s Max Planck Institute to do stable isotope analysis on hairs from small mammals collected on the Palouse over the past hundred years. Their study lays the groundwork for explorations of habitat and dietary changes in mammals, similar to those done with marbled murrelets and other birds. Yohannes has also outlined plans to do SIA with elephant teeth that former WSU zoologist Irven O. Buss donated to the Conner Museum in … » More …
The Conner has one of the biggest collections of bird skeletons in the nation. Kelly Cassidy opens a drawer and pulls out a box the size of a small microwave oven. It rattles. It contains a disarticulated golden eagle skeleton, each piece labeled with a number (except for the very smallest, which are about the size of a sesame seed).
“Our skeletons are literally boxes of bones,” she says. The Museum has a few dozen skeletons that have been fully assembled, which are useful for public display, but not for research that requires being able to look at the bones from all angles.
