Donations treat zoo animals to natural foods

It's carcass day.

When the gates open, the six canines dash for the meat in the snowy enclosure. A 115-pound black wolf, Denali, goes for the biggest prize -- a mass of bones and flesh. A skinnier, skittish one, Ruby, lets the others go first then settles for a small piece. All grab their chunks of caribou, moose and deer and start to rip.

The Alaska Zoo has been inundated this autumn with hunting leftovers. Pickup trucks came and left behind plastic garbage bags full of trimmings, sinew and Flintstone-size meaty bones. For Anchorage hunters, the zoo is a much-appreciated dumping ground. For the state's best-known zoo, the donations provide a source of enrichment for the tigers, bears, lynx and other carnivores, and for some, like the wolves, it even supplies a source of social order.

In a time when the zoo is repositioning itself as a cold-climate conservation park after years of controversy housing an African elephant, the food is important to the natural environment goal. (The board recently refocused the zoo's mission statement on the conservation of arctic, sub-arctic and like-climate species.)

"Simulating natural things that they would be doing in the wild is great," said zoo director Pat Lampi.

THE ALPHA WOLF

For the gray wolves, the hunting meat plays a critical role in their zoo lives. The animals have lived all but their first few weeks in captivity, not the wild. Alaska Department of Fish and Game employees took them from a McGrath den two years ago, when the pups were 2 weeks old, as part of a culling program.

Normally, in the wild, wolves tend to leave the pack when they are 18 months old, according to Peter Siminski, a California-based wolf expert who advises the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The breeders, or leaders, go off to find mates. Because wolves are highly social animals, the newly formed packs have rules and order, which includes leaders and followers.

"Their whole behavioral repertoire and their social organization depends on this arrangement," Siminski said.

But in zoos, where forming their own packs is not an option, wolves adapt. "They stay together as a pack, and they work it out with that typical social arrangement," Siminski said.

The Alaska Zoo wolves established their order when the wolves were pups. Zoo keepers reinforce it. When it's not carcass day, keepers first feed the bowls of kibble to the leaders and first let them out of their pens into their wooded enclosure.

Eating around a kill site makes clear the pecking order. The dominant and submissive behaviors get played out with postures and growling. The alpha, or leader, is in charge of the distribution of food. The omega, or lowest member of the pack, exerts no influence and has its dinner decided by others.

CARCASS DAY

In 2007, about 1,500 Anchorage residents harvested more than 1,600 Alaska big game animals, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. Many sportsmen hunted far outside Anchorage and only the meat made it back to the city. But some carcasses -- it's impossible to guess how many -- end up back in town. By municipal law, hunters can't just put the leftovers in the curbside garbage. They must be taken to the landfill or transfer station.

"Animal carcasses are not garbage," said Mia Nistler, customer service supervisor for the city's Solid Waste Services.

At the height of the hunting season in September, the zoo can get two drop-offs from hunters a day, zoo officials said.

"We rely on it," said zoo keeper Stephanie Hartman. "Each season we get stuff in it will last us to the next season."

On a recent Wednesday, or "carcass day" for the wolves, Hartman and a fellow zookeeper threw the meat around the three-quarter acre, wooded enclosure. When they released the canines from the pens, the alpha, Denali, exerted his dominance by going for the biggest piece. None of the others challenged him.

"He gets to decide who gets to have some and when," Hartman said as she watched the wolves from outside the chain-link fence.

Several minutes later, the alpha female, Lucky, and the beta, or middle-ranking, male, Nikolai, spar over a piece. Both are closely ranked in the pack. Nikolai showed his fangs and let out a snarl heard across the enclosure. He sauntered off with a bone nearly as tall as him.

"You can see he won that one," Hartman said.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.