Meet The 'Poo Zoo' Team Battling Animal Extinction One Dung At A Time

A lion at Chester ZooLast year, Professor Suzannah Williams began a project with a noble aim and a hilarious title: the Poo Zoo. The scheme, created with funding from conservation non-profit Revive and Restore, has partnered with Chester Zoo to optimise the care and protection we can offer the million-plus species at risk of extinction.More specifically, the experts want to help at-risk animals by using their dung. Dr Rhiannon Bolton, who’s researching the droppings of animals in the care of Chester Zoo, is at the forefront of the “game-changing” program. But how could excreta save the endangered?Dung samples have special legal and physical advantagesDr Bolton shared that current UK veterinary guidelines mean you can only collect genetic samples in very limited circumstances, which limits the samples that can be collected.But since Oxford University researchers, working with the Poo Zoo project, started trialling new ways to isolate, wash, and culture living animals cells to store them for conservation purposes, a whole new world of sampling has opened up.“It’s early days yet, but this would allow us to collect cells from a far broader range of animals than we currently can, both individuals within a species and in terms of different species,” she said. The Chester Zoo team are currently collecting samples from giraffe, okapi, and lions. The cells, if successfully extracted, could eventually become stem cells, which in turn can become egg and sperm cells used for conservation breeding. Dr Sue Walker, head of science at Chester Zoo, told HuffPost UK: “We know living cells are shed every time a bird, mammal, reptile and amphibian evacuates faecal matter.“They come from the gut walls and are carried out with the waste. The process involves sifting the waste to isolate and capture those cells.”She adds that the researchers’ work “is all about testing this process until it reliably yields cellular material that’s robust enough to store and use in conservation science”.The cells, which “would be banked just like a tissue sample,” have a unique benefit: “Faecal matter is readily available, and it can be collected without disturbing the animal.” In the case of the Poo Zoo, she continued: “The goal is to bank [washed cells] so they can be used to prevent extinctions.”Dr Rihannon Bolton collecting samplesThat’s not the only dung-based scheme the zoo runs Chester Zoo’s staff are used to dealing with dung; they have had an endocrinology programme where faecal samples are used to track animal health over the years.“There are parallels with human fertility science,” Dr Walker stated.Getting over fertility challenges or finding out an animal’s ability to conceive involves looking at their hormones, she shared.“You can measure oestrogen, progesterone and other hormones to find out where someone is in their fertility cycle, how compatible they are with potential partners and if they have successfully conceived.” The zoo has long used the same theory, “but we don’t take bloods. We use faecal samples, as it’s less invasive”.If you thought helping wildlife through stool samples was a load of crap, well, it seems you’re partly right...Related...This Is The Critical Point That Wildlife Photographers And Filmmakers Can Actually Intervene13 Incredible Wildlife Photos To Distract You From The World Today‘Stunning’ Wolf Discovery Caught On Wildlife Camera In Minnesota

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