All human beings have a certain gross-ness threshold that they can tolerate, but biologist seem to have raised the bar. Feces, a.k.a. poop, is a favorite topic among this crowd of life-science, like-minded research nerds. With the amount of panda poop that we collect, it comes to mind that we might be fecal professionals… A poop pro has a much better ring to it though.
Our current foray into Sichuan, China is to establish our presence at the Dujiangyan veterinary facility. The official name is the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda Dujiangyan Base. Many of the workers at Dujiangyan were previously stationed at Bifengxia, so we feel right at home. There aren’t as many tourists here as there are at the Bifengxia or Chengdu facilities, so the days are very quiet.
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- Nathan in his extremely small lab coat
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- Nathan, ready for work
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- Meghan being careful not to drop any poop.
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- Meghan, ready for work
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- Poop Pro’s
As we begin our training, we are reconnected with many familiar faces- Lee, Amy, Sophie. We attempt to dress in your typical white lab coats, except that my 200lb. frame doesn’t seem to cooperate with their 100lb. limit clothing. Masks, gloves, and a whole lot of freeze dried poop fill the majority of our time here. There is a multitude of procedural steps in analyzing for fecal steroids, but to cut to the chase, we:
- Collect and freeze
- Freeze dry
- Remove large bits
- Extract with alcohol
- Analyze
The whole process takes about a week. The end product is a value that can have glorious insight into the biology of pandas and what makes them who they are. This will ultimately allow us to see what is happening to male bears during the breeding season and how their hormone levels fluctuate around breeding events.
As always, if you would like to know more about what we do, feel free to send us an email or comment below. Or, you could always join us on one of our many trips to China that we make each year.