<em>By Amy Smith, Bird Keeper III</em>
<em>Knoxville Zoological Gardens, Knoxville, TN</em>

<span><strong>Background</strong></span>

<span>The Knoxville Zoo currently houses 1.1 Andean condors. Until 2007, the condors were housed in separate behlen cages with no contact. An older exhibit was retrofitted in October 2007 for better visitor viewing and easier husbandry. This new exhibit has an upper exhibit area and a lower shift area separated by a guillotine door (see photo below for exhibit layout). The upper and lower areas were also separated in the middle by fencing and a movable partition to help with introductions of new pairs. Each condor is shifted daily for exhibit cleaning and maintenance.</span>

Our female, Humpty, hatched in 1983 and came to the Knoxville Zoo in 1991. She was hand-reared due to a failed introduction to a California condor (<em>Gymnogyps californianus</em>) surrogate. Our male, Atreyu, hatched in 2003 and came to the zoo in 2007. He appeared to be a very nervous bird and wouldn’t come near keepers. Over the course of the next three years, he became much more comfortable with keepers and would approach the fence to allow keepers to assess his physical condition. The two birds were placed into the exhibit with the partition in place and housed that way for two years and six months. The decision to wait to introduce the two was made because the male was a youngster and staff wanted him to mature. The female exhibited a great deal of aggression through the fencing of the partition usually resulting in the male having bite wounds on his caruncle. Many of the wounds were minor but a few were significant and caused some concern about introductions.

<span><strong>Pre-introduction Study</strong></span>

<span>Before introductions occurred, staff wanted to become more familiar with the condors’ behaviors toward each other. Using an existing observation study as a guide and the help of the zoo’s Conservation Science Coordinator, an observational study was developed to record the interactions between the condors. The goal of the study was to determine whether there were more aggressive behaviors than normal or positive behaviors. These observations were only recorded by zoo volunteers or interns to control for any behaviors displayed as a result of keeper presence. Table 1 illustrates the behaviors being studied and recorded. The ‘other’ event included any actions the condor exhibited that did not include being located within one body length of the other condor. The observations were done at different times of the day and multiple times a day and began in early March 2010. The observers recorded the specified bird’s behavior every 20 seconds for 15 minutes and only one behavior/event was recorded each time. They were also asked to note if there were visitors and/or keepers in the area and how many were present. The check sheet observers used to record the behaviors is shown in Figure 1.</span>

<span>The introductions were held off until after the breeding season as a result of advice from other condor keepers. The recorded observations were analyzed in June to make sure the aggressive behaviors were not constant and more positive behaviors were being recorded. The results were very encouraging (see Figure 2). The ‘other’ or ‘out of site’ events were not included in the results because those recordings did not reflect interactions between the condors. The results for the female showed that 84% of the time an interaction was observed, only a ‘proximity’ event occurred (neither a positive or negative event occurred). Our male exhibited practically the same percent of proximity. Many of the comments written by observers stated that the birds were lying next to the fence by each other with no movement. Of the recorded events, ‘social amicable’ or positive behaviors were recorded 10% of the time and ‘social negative’ behaviors were recorded less than 1% of the time. Staff felt that these results demonstrated the condors were interested in being near each other and most of the time they interacted, it was positive. One other event that confirmed our male reaching maturity was the ‘display’ event recordings. Keepers had noted the female displaying often to the male but the male displayed only a few times in return. However, the study demonstrated our male was displaying more often than we thought. After analyzing the data, the decision was made to introduce the condors…</span>

<img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-2264" title="condors-2" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/condors-2-1024x768.jpg" alt="condors-2" width="614" height="461" />

Pre-Introduction, the Andean Condors displaying to one another. <em> Photo by Amy Smith.</em>

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