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Cardiac chamber enlargement and hypertrophy are normal physiologic responses to repetitive endurance exercise activity in human beings and domestic dogs. Whether similar changes occur in wild animals as a consequence of increased activity is unknown. We found that free-ranging gray wolves (Canis lupus, n = 11), the archetypical endurance athlete, have electrocardiographic evidence of cardiac chamber enlargement and hypertrophy relative to sedentary captive gray wolves (n = 20), as demonstrated by significant increases in QRS duration, QT interval, and QT interval corrected for heart rate, a tendency towards increased Q, R, and S wave voltages in all leads, and a significant decrease in heart rate. We conclude that exercise activity level and therefore lifestyle affects physiologic variables in wild animals. An immediate consequence of this finding is that physiologic measurements obtained from a captive wild-animal population with reduced exercise activity level may not accurately reflect the normal physiologic state for free-ranging members of the same species.

Fatal abomasal impaction, often combined with omasal impaction, was diagnosed in 11 bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) from five different zoologic collections in the United States between 1981 and 2009. Nine of 11 cases occurred in young females (10 mo-7 yr old) and typical clinical signs prior to diagnosis or death included partial or complete anorexia, dehydration, and scant fecal production. Although the clinical histories in several of the earlier cases are incomplete, clinical signs were known to begin shortly after an anesthetic event in five of 11 bongo (45%). Pedigree analysis indicates that affected bongo were descendants of multiple founders and not from a single family line, suggesting that the development of abomasal impaction is not a strictly inheritable trait. Treatment, when attempted, was variable and included abomasotomy and removal of impacted ingesta, drug therapy (prokinetic drugs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, antimicrobials), fluid therapy, and administration of oral lubricants or intralesional stool softeners. Based on the outcomes in the cases presented here, the prognosis for bongo with abomasal impaction is considered poor to grave.

This paper presents the growth rate of 21 clinically normal, mother-raised. captive cheetah cubs from birth through 45 days of age. The development of a growth curve for healthy, mother-raised cheetah cubs provides a diagnostic tool for individuals involved in cheetah propagation. Use of the curve may alert caretakers to problems early and thus help reduce the high neonatal mortality rate seen in captive-born cheetah cubs. The growth curve was constructed using 21 (11 males and 10 females) captiveborn cheetah cubs from six litters (offspring of three unrelated adult males and three unrelated adult females) born at the Columbus Zoo from September 1985 through December 1989. Each cub was weighed to the nearest gram the morning after birth and approximately the same time every consecutive morning for 45 days. The mean weight the morning after birth was 463 g (range 385–542 g). The average litter size was 3.5 (range 2–4, n = 6). The daily weight gain was 40–50 g/cub/day.

Naturally occurring varicella was observed in a young gorilla in captivity. The isolate was demonstrated to be varicella-zoster virus by restriction enzyme analysis.