i have a zoo

Chapter 138 Helpless
Old Zhao asked confusedly, "Director, what's the matter with this eagle owl? Is there something wrong with his health?"

Seeing that Qi Ming was not afraid of him at all, instead he yelled "Woooooooooooo" that looked like a eagle owl begging for food, his brows gradually became serious, he was a little uncertain, and hesitantly asked, "Could it be an act of imprinting?"

Old Zhao was taken aback, his mouth was wide open, and his eyes revealed disbelief: "Indentation? No way?"

Originally, he hadn't thought about that, but after listening to Qi Ming's words and looking at the appearance of the horned owl, it was indeed a bit similar!

Imprinting is a special learning behavior in animal behavior. Certain information from the outside world will have a lifelong impact on some creatures during a period of time after they are born or hatched.

For example, some newly hatched young birds, or newly born mammals, open their eyes and learn to recognize and follow the first creature they see.

Lorenz, an Austrian animal behaviorist, once conducted such an experiment. He divided gray goose eggs into two groups for hatching, one group was hatched by the female goose, and the other group was hatched by the incubator. Lorenz became a mother, and Xiao Yan followed wherever Lorenz went.

If two groups of baby geese are buckled under a box, when the box is lifted, the baby geese will go in two directions, one group will run to the mother goose, and the other group will run to Lorenz.

Since the newly hatched goslings remembered Lorenz, they continued to follow him even as adults, and would follow him closely when he swam.

Most imprinting behaviors occur in the infancy of animals, and some special skills can only be learned at this time. For example, the easiest time for chicks to learn to fly is just a few months after birth. flew.

Scientists have not yet figured out the reason. It is speculated that the nervous system is in a special state at birth. As the age increases, the nervous system gradually changes, and engram learning can no longer be performed.

Moreover, imprints will have an impact on the behavior of animals throughout their lives, and may treat humans as the same kind, become dependent on humans, and even woo humans when they reach sexual maturity.

For example, the staff in the giant panda breeding base wear panda costumes when they take care of the newborn red pandas, not to show cuteness, but to reduce possible imprinting behaviors.

Therefore, when raising animals, if they are carefully taken care of by breeders when they are young, although the survival rate can be greatly improved, a trust relationship can be established to facilitate future daily management, and the training will be more cooperative, but even so, the cubs should be allowed to Stay with the mother and siblings more often. If you can breastfeed and raise the cubs normally, let the mother take care of the cubs as much as possible, so that the cubs can have the opportunity to learn more survival skills and show more natural behaviors when they grow up.

The imprinting behavior has different effects on various animals, and the most obvious one is the birds!

Therefore, extra care must be taken when rescuing birds, especially chicks, and they must avoid seeing humans.

When the staff of the Bird Rescue Center feed the chicks, they usually wear a bird's headgear on their heads, put on black feather clothes, and pretend to be a large bird.

Or simply take a piece of wood to cover the face, and poke two holes in it. When the chicks are young, they will remember a piece of wood or a wooden stake to feed themselves, but they can't find this kind of wooden stake when they grow up.

Including the hands of the staff who feed the chicks are also hand puppets of birds, or long blunt tweezers disguised as beaks, and they do not speak when feeding.

Some people don't know the imprinting behavior of birds. It is actually quite normal to see a young bird learning to fly on the roadside, jumping on the ground, and the parent bird may be watching over it.In the end, I picked it up and took it home to raise it myself, thinking that it was doing a good deed to save the bird. In fact, the bird will almost die in its lifetime, and even if it does not die, it cannot leave humans.

Qi Ming didn't think about imprinting behavior at first, mainly because this horned owl is already an adult bird!It stands to reason that after the age of the chicks, the adult birds will not produce imprints.

It is not uncommon that there will still be imprints after adulthood, such as vultures!
Birds are prone to imprinting, and vultures are particularly prone to imprinting, so they are also dependent on humans to be fed after adulthood.

Once the police at a police station in Inner Mongolia rescued the vulture and released it, the vulture flew back with the police car all the way while the police were patrolling. Food expenses for money, this matter is also on the hot search.

But Qi Ming never knew that adult eagle owls are so easy to produce imprints, it's not written in this book!

After rescuing the horned owl, his contact time is very short every time. It only takes a few minutes to feed and change the water every day. Although he really wants to touch the eagle owl, he has never touched it. The eagle owl usually stays to raise its young. No one in the room disturbed.

Not as cautious as with chicks, but sufficiently distant.

So at the beginning of the wild release, although the eagle owl looked a little strange, he didn't think about the imprint at all. Today, when he heard Lao Zhao call to say that the eagle owl was still in place, he still didn't think about it.

Seeing the horned owl poking its head towards him, with a look of eagerness and "woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
You are already a mature eagle owl, you should learn to find food by yourself instead of being a big baby and waiting for others to feed you!
What is going on? Is it true that eagle owls are easy to imprint when they become birds, or is it related to their breeder halo?Or is it the reason why the horned owl lost comfort to make it feel that it can be trusted?

It's useless to be depressed any more. After Qi Ming calmed down a bit, he began to think about how to arrange the horned owl.

After thinking about it, after all, it is an adult horned owl. This behavior of relying on human begging may only be temporary. I feel that it is so cool to be able to eat meat without preying on my own. If I give food at this time, maybe it will be true. Make it a habit.

So he said to Old Zhao: "Don't worry about it, keep putting it here, when it's too hungry, it should know that it's hunting when it sees that no one brings food, and return to normal state, I'll come back tomorrow have a look."

The eagle owl was fed enough food before, so it should be no problem to starve for two days!In the wild, after a full meal, you don’t need to eat for a few days.

Old Zhao nodded and agreed, "Okay, I'll talk to the breeders here."

Qi Ming didn't even say hello to the eagle owl, and just left!

The eagle owl opened its big yellow eyes, looked at his receding back, tilted its head as if in a daze, what's going on, why don't you give me some meat?
He yelled "Woooo" twice, but he couldn't stop Qi Ming from walking away mercilessly.

Somewhat disappointed, he retracted his head back and continued to close his eyes to rest.

But after a while, Qi Ming walked up to the eagle owl with a helpless expression on his face, looked at each other with the eagle owl, and sighed: "Good guy, are you going to completely rely on me?"

Horned owl???: "Woo~woo~"

The eagle owl just wants to eat meat, so what evil could the eagle owl have in mind?

He could just stand on this tree trunk, waiting for someone to bring meat to it.

Qi Ming had no choice but to look at the situation, if he dared not feed it, it would really dare to starve itself to death.

So I said to Old Zhao: "It seems that this one really needs to be kept by our zoo now! Let's keep it first, and slowly give it some wild training, we can't make it so dependent on people all the time."

Old Zhao scratched his head and suggested, "Since we need to raise it first, why not give it a name?"

Qi Ming thought for a while and said, "With such a silly personality, why not call him a silly eagle. Or if you like to eat so much, you can eat and drink with us, how about calling him a prostitute?"

Looking at the eagle owl with a dumbfounded expression, he scratched the white fluff under the neck with the back of his index finger, and then scratched the black patterned sweater on his chest, and asked, "Well, what do you think, idiot?"

Hey, I have become dependent anyway, so just touch it.

The horned owl was being touched, and he tilted his head and looked at him: "Kukuku~"

It seems to be quite comfortable to be masturbated.

Old Zhao hurriedly dissuaded him: "Director, this name doesn't sound good! It won't be convenient for us to introduce it to tourists."

"Oh, it's just a joke!" Qi Ming looked at Lao Zhao's serious appearance, and couldn't help laughing, "Well, let's call it Xiaojiao, after all, the ears are so protruding."

The horned owl's ears are on the top of the head, and there are ear-shaped tufts around the ears, which seem to have two "horns". prey.

At this time, the new breeder assigned to Lao Zhao came with a pot of cut meat: "Director, here you are, and these tweezers!"

"OK, thanks!"

It was tiring to hold one arm like this all the time, not to mention a bird weighing more than three catties standing on it, so Qi Ming put the little horn on the lawn and shook his arm to relieve the soreness of his arm.

Xiaojiao looked up at him in confusion, "Woo~woo~" yelling, why did you put me down, don't you want me?
"Hey." Qi Ming picked up a piece of meat with tweezers and started feeding it.

It seems that the eagle owl has not eaten in the past few days. The meat in his stomach has been digested. He is really hungry. With the meat in his mouth, he immediately raised his head, swallowed the meat, and slammed his mouth twice. The throat no longer rolls.

It only took a second or two to eat such a large piece of meat, which gave people the feeling of freshmen rushing into the cafeteria after military training, and gobbled it up!

When he raised his head to swallow the meat, the white nictitating membrane also flipped up, looking like it was so delicious that he rolled his eyes.

After eating, he stared straight at Qi Ming again. To be precise, it was the meat caught in his tweezers. He opened his mouth and stretched his head forward. He couldn't wait to bite the meat and swallowed it.

The speed of pinching meat is not as fast as that of Xiaojiao eating meat!
As soon as it was handed over, the throat rolled twice, and it was finished in an instant. It was the reincarnation of a starving ghost.

Qi Ming was a little worried that it would choke on eating too fast, so he slowed down a bit, held a piece of meat and waited for a few seconds before handing it over: "Hey, don't be in such a hurry, I won't miss you Yes, eat slowly!"

Xiaojiao is impatient!
His eyes were completely occupied by the sweet meat, and he bit the meat hard, not letting go, even with the tweezers.

Qi Ming wanted to take the tweezers out, but the little horn was biting tightly like a tug-of-war and pulled towards him. He couldn't eat meat, his eyes widened in despair, and he screamed anxiously, with a sharp and slight moan from his throat. Shout!

"Yi Yi Yi! Yi Yi Yi!"

Qi Ming sucked the tweezers, very speechless, why the child looked stupid: "Hey, you stupid bird, let go first! Let go and eat!"

Old Zhao shook his head and sighed, "Look how hungry the child is!"

Qi Ming commanded: "Don't just look, go help get some water!"

"Oh, yes!" Lao Zhao agreed, and quickly ran away to get water.

Although there should be dew on the leaves at night, it may not be enough for the eagle owl's size, and Xiaojiao is more stubborn. He has been staying on the trunk without going anywhere else. He must be very thirsty.

Lao Zhao filled a cup with some water from the peacock cage, and ran back in less than 2 minutes.

At this time, Xiaojiao had already eaten more than a dozen pieces of meat in a row, and finally he did not gobble up as much as he did at the beginning. His speed slowed down, and he couldn't swallow a piece of meat after biting it in his mouth for a long time.

"Is this choking?" Lao Zhao guessed, and passed the water glass over, with a flattering smile on his face, "Come on, Xiaojiao, drink some water!"

"Are you tired from eating so much in one go, and your cheeks have no energy?" Qi Ming looked carefully, the expression on his face was dull with meat in his mouth, it didn't seem like he was choking, or was he eating so much in one go, and his head went blank , Forgot how to eat meat?

Seeing a water glass dangling in front of his eyes, Xiaojiao came back from his dazed state, tilted his head and glanced at Old Zhao, sized him up for a while, took a few more bites to swallow the meat, and then looked at Qi again. bright!

Old Zhao was a little surprised and said: "Strange, aren't you thirsty?"

I thought that Xiaojiao would drink water as eagerly as he eats meat!
Qi Ming: "Well...give me the water glass."

Handed over the water glass, Xiaojiao immediately pouted his buttocks, plunged his head into the water glass, smashed his mouth and drank several times in a row, then raised his head, blinked and rolled his eyes, and the water droplets flowed down the hook-like black The tip of the beak drips onto the grass.

Then he kept bowing his head and took a few sips. Then he looked satisfied and comfortable, and turned his head to look around.

After Xiaojiao drank the water, he rested for a while and was able to cook again. Then he ate meat. Pieces of meat were swallowed into his stomach, and half of the meat in the small iron basin miraculously disappeared.

Qi Ming scratched the thick sweater on Xiaojiao's chest, and said with a smile, "Hey, are you full?"

Xiaojiao happily responded: "Woo~woo~"

I don't know if I've eaten and drank enough, and my voice has become a little stronger.

Qi Ming put Xiaojiao on his shoulder: "Since Xiaojiao doesn't want to leave, I'll put it on the tree at our parrot house for a few days, so it's easy to take care of. Report to the relevant department."

(End of this chapter)