Hey guys!

We're back at Animal Wonders, I'm Jessi and today we have no script to go off of because life is crazy. And I thought we'd just have some fun today.

(Intro)

So I thought I'd just bring out a couple of our animals and just kind of play with them and talk about what they're doing. Right now Zoe's really excited. You can tell that she's excited, her feathers are fluffed up a little bit; her tail feathers are out. Ah!

She's vocalizing a lot and her eyes-- her pupils-- are pinning. And so it looks like they are changing colors. Thank you!

So all those behaviors tell me that she's super excited. Now, that excitement in Amazons can actually turn to aggression pretty quickly. And so I just have to make sure that she is not going to cross that threshold and become aggressive. And I know Zoe really well, we've been hanging out together for about seven years and so we're pretty familiar with each other.

Aren't we? Ya.

So these little things I'm doing with her if we've been interacting a lot and, um, she's heard me do the wolf whistle - not that one.

Can you whistle? Whistle. Good girl.

So she finishes my whistle if I don't finish it. So you can see if I do the first part she'll do the second part.

And that's just 'cause she's heard me do it so many times. She'll also do things like - Can you wave hello? You're calling them pretty. There you go. Good girl.

And after every time she does one of those things I ask her to do--behavior--I give her a little treat. Now the way that we got that wave was: I would put, I would just move my finger down, and I would push her foot up in the air and her foot would be stuck up in the air like that. Then I'd put my foot... finger back - gonna put your finger down, your foot down? Look. There

And so I just paired it with a cue and now she'll wave when I put my finger up like that. Good girl.

Would you like a bigger treat? Wanna show off your beak? Look at this - gasps - Eyes pinning, you can see she's leaning towards it, she definitely wants it. Oh, good reach. So if you look closely they have very, very sensitive beaks. And if you look closely she’s actually peeling the skin off of the almond because she doesn't want to eat the skin. She's kind of spoiled. But you can see she's using her tongue and pushing that food up against the top of her beak which has all these sensory receptors in there and so she's really feeling that. Birds are psittacines, I should say parrot types are very particular about the texture of their food.

All right, so you saw that she moved forward when she wanted something, let's see what she does if she is scared of an object that I give to her. Oh, shake it off, shake it off. Ready, what's this? Oh; sleek feathers, eyes still pinning, but I move closer and she leans back. And moves further and further and further away. And then she wants to get out of there. Yeah, I know. I know, that wasn't very fun, was it?

What about a treat? Here. Treat. It's like, do I trust you? You scared me before. Okay, I guess it's okay. I guess it's okay. Huh.

Thank you. This is one of my favorite things that me and Zoe have learnt to do together. Are you ready? Are you ready? Ready? Bang! Now what? Nice work. All right, Zoe, say goodbye.

Now, some of our animals are super loud, like Zoe and just super interactive and then we have all different kinds of animals though, so um, Bindi, the bearded dragon. She's a much more subtle communicator. But she does have communication.

Right now she's got a keen eye; there's a door right here with glass in it and she can see our dog. And so she has her head tilted and she's looking at the dog saying keep an eye on you, is it something I need to be worried about? So if I distract her with other things, she might start looking at - hi! - Now she's looking at me.

So when Bindi's relaxed she's not gonna be doing a lot of movement. She's just gonna really just chill on my hand. Like that. I can move her around. And once I start moving her she's gonna start getting a little bit more aware and on guard, okay, do I need to be on alert for some reason? She's starting to puff under here which they call her beard. Under there, the bearded dragon. And she's started puffing it out, see, just a little bit more than she would naturally and then she is gonna start gaping if I keep touching her. Hi, buddy. Now she's looking at me.

So that puffing of the beard is the start of the beginning of a threat display. And they would do this when they're threatened in any way. And those threats are going to be predators and other lizards, other bearded dragons that are going into their territory. So she would puff out her little beard and it would all turn dark, dark black and then she would start doing a threat display of like push ups or head bobs. Doing that.

And sometimes they'll take their front legs and kind of stand up and do this funny wave. And those are all variations of how intensely angry they are that your in their territory and how much they wanna scare you off.

And so she’s not, she's not super upset right now, she's just starting the beginnings of that and that's because she saw that puppy dog. So you can see she's not as vocal as Zoe is, she's a little bit more on guard. But she definitely has communication in there. And so if you pay attention to your animals and know what that specific animals communication is; they're language: Then you can take better care of them and know: Okay, what are stressors, how do we mitigate those stressors, how can we provide better stress free care for them in captivity. What do you think? Wanna go back now? Yeah, eat some worms. Uh huh.

This is Cheeks; he's a Netherlands Dwarf Rabbit. And he's another quiet communicator like Bindi the bearded dragon. Now, animals are gonna react or interact or behave differently when they're just kind of left to their own devices versus when you're interacting with them and holding them. So I just went and picked him up and he was lying on his back and he was like, lounging there and he saw me - aw, what do you see? - and he saw me coming and he immediately got up and he ran to the front of the enclosure, looking for treats or interaction or whatever, bless him, you go ahead and give him some apple. Definitely wanted that apple. Aw look at you, yum yum yum yum.

So, observing your animal if you have a rabbit or some type of animal as a pet like this: Observing them without actually interacting with them is a really good way to really understand your pet's personality. Cheeks has a pretty laid back personality. He relaxes a lot. And then when I’m holding him and I'm getting him out into different stimulating environments, he perks up, he gets pretty curious, he can get nervous and over stimulated, so you have to watch for those things.

So right there you saw he got pretty excited about something, but he wasn't nervous. Now if he was nervous he would stiffen his whole body; and there he was like perked up elongated body, without being stiff, back legs would be stiff. And I could feel him quivering a little bit, if he was nervous.

I like to work with animals a lot so that I can just hold them and do any type of maintenance procedure; husbandry procedure that I need to do on them. So I make sure that I can touch their ears and they're not too worried about me touching their ears so I can look for - if they end up getting an infection or anything like that; I can really get in there and I can just make sure that I can see in there. I can work with their eyes, their mouth, but then also their feet. And so that you can clip their nails when they need it.

Um, rabbits don't have pads on the bottom of their feet. The just have a big tuft of fur underneath there. And that's gonna help in a lot of ways. It's gonna help give them traction on different surfaces. But they are every adaptable, this body plan - sorry buddy - this body plan is very adaptable to really, really cold areas, just regular medium areas and then really hot deserty areas. That fur there, covering the bottom of the foot there is gonna help keep them warm, keep them cool, give them traction.

You can see how I'm supporting him, I'm always - when I had him down here I was supporting his hips with my wrist here. And when I pick him up I support his hips again with this other hand here, you always wanna make sure that those back legs are supported. You never wanna hang them by under their arm pits or anything like that. They have very fragile backs. They're made to have all four feet on the ground at all times. And if they're hung by their front up there, and they kick they can actually dislocate the vertebrae in their back which is gonna be incredibly painful, I mean, you can imagine. So you always wanna be able to support both. Use two hands, support both quadrants of their body. So they never feel uncomfortable and try and kick or scratch, huh.

Hi, you're so cute. Look at those big eyes.

So we have a lot of fun with our animals. I have spent a lot of time with them and we - I just get to know them on a personal level and I do my darnedest to provide them with the best care possible. Depending on their individual personality. And that's what I really hope for all other animals in captivity, is that their human care takers or companions also really get to just experience their full personality.

I hope you enjoyed our unscripted little show and meeting my friends and if you would like to ask me any questions, tell me stories about your animals you can do that in the comments below. You can also find me on twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. And you can follow us every week on an adventure on our YouTube channel. Subscribe right here.

(Outro)

Welcome to Animal Wonders. Today we're gonna meet some of our amazing animal ambassadors, we're gonna learn about their group, we're going to talk about why it's confusing some times to classify animals.

So we've got some banana for him. Is that...? I don't even need to ask. Obviously... Oh Cheeks. More? Looks like a smiley face on you.