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[Carrie McLaren <stay.free AT verizon.net>]

Zoos using drugs to help manage anxious animals
Toledo has wealth of success stories
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050912/NEWS38/50912012

By JENNI LAIDMAN
BLADE SCIENCE WRITER

Johari the gorilla is on antidepressants. It eases her PMS.

When the Toledo Zoo needed calm zebras, it used an antipsychotic 
medication to quiet their jitters. Zoo staffers tried to soothe 
wildebeests with antipsychotic medication for eight months last year, 
and even occasionally this year. A swamp monkey was dosed with the 
antipsychotic, but it didn't help her get along with her daughter. It 
wasn't much good for ostrich aggression either. Yet a little Valium 
calmed the silverback gorilla when one of the females had a doctor 
visit. And Prozac helped a female orangutan negotiate life in her 
group.

Now that humans have warmly embraced citizenship in the Prozac 
Nation, zoo animals are making tentative gallops, flights, and 
knuckle-walks into the world of psychotropic pharmaceuticals.

In the last decade, zoos across the nation have turned to 
antidepressants, tranquilizers, and even antipsychotic drugs such as 
haloperidol, sold as Haldol, to ease behavioral problems in zoo 
denizens.

"They're definitely a wonderful management tool, and that's how we 
look at them," said the Toledo Zoo's mammal curator, Randi Meyerson. 
"To be able to just take the edge off puts us a little more at ease."

Klechka was 300 pounds of sinewy orange ferocity. Then keepers hung 
shade cloth in the Amur tiger's enclosure to keep him out of the sun. 
(Amur tigers are also called Siberian tigers.)

That did it. He morphed from brave tiger into cowardly lion.

"It was terrifying for him," Ms. Meyerson said. "He even stopped eating."

To help Klechka get accustomed to his altered environment, the big 
cat received a low dose of Valium for two days. It did the trick. The 
2-year-old tiger went back to being his normal, formidable self.

Long-term treatment

Most often, the drugs are short-term interventions to help animals 
through a bad patch, but occasionally, they become a long-term 
treatment for animal behavior. Take the case of Johari, a 17-year-old 
female gorilla.

To hear gorilla keeper Char Petiniot describe interactions among the 
Toledo Zoo's gorillas is to follow a soap opera featuring a 
greater-than-average number of bite wounds.

Johari is a nervous gorilla at the best of times, plucking hair from 
her arms and face the way some people chew fingernails. To make 
matters worse, her family group has had more than its share of drama, 
with members moving in and out of the group, and alliances constantly 
shifting. When Kwisha, a silverback, returned to the group in 2002 
after a lengthy separation, Johari kept getting injured in fights 
with Kwisha.

At first, keepers blamed Kwisha. He attacked Johari on a number of 
occasions, and many of the attacks required medical treatment. Johari 
had to be knocked out, separated from her group, and given time to 
heal. On return, she'd be attacked again.

Things got so serious, there was talk of blunting the silverback's 
teeth, an idea no one liked.

"We finally decided, after watching what was going on, that it really 
wasn't Kwisha's fault," Ms. Petiniot said. Kwisha was just being a 
normal dominant male.

"He was trying to approach her, and she would go berserk. He'd walk 
up to her, and she'd scream bloody murder and charge him and jump on 
him."

By tracking Johari's menstrual cycles against injuries in the gorilla 
group, Ms. Petiniot noticed a correlation.

Troupe members were most likely to be injured the week before Johari's menses.

Johari was given daily doses of an antidepressant often used for 
premenstrual tension. A month after she started on Prozac, she was 
reintroduced to her group. To everyone's delight, the reintroduction 
was trouble-free.

"They were fine. I don't think we had any injuries," Ms. Petiniot said.
In fact, Johari and Kwisha bred, and the female gave birth to Dara in 
August, 2003. The zoo staff hoped the hormonal changes of pregnancy 
and nursing would reduce her premenstrual symptoms. Antidepressant 
treatment was stopped. It proved a mistake.

"She got kind of psychotic on us," Ms. Petiniot said. Johari was back 
on antidepressants in a month, and she remains on them.

Ms. Petiniot acknowledges she is conservative when it comes to the 
use of any drug. She'd rather have the animals living drug-free 
whenever possible. But animal behavior expert and veterinarian Kathy 
Houpt of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., says real ethical 
problems can arise when needed treatment is withheld.

Ethical issues

"I think it's unethical to have an animal - for example a dog with 
separation anxieties, desperately trying to get out of the house, 
digging until his paws are bloody - it's unethical not to treat them 
with drugs if it will make them not as anxious or not as aggressive. 
You're making an animal feel more contented," Dr. Houpt said.

The emotional lives of great apes seem to demand special 
intervention. When any of the gorillas is immobilized for treatment 
or surgery, Kwisha becomes completely unglued, Ms. Petiniot said.

"He just gets really upset," she said. His displeasure is compounded 
by profuse diarrhea. Kwisha's emotional state, and its unpleasant 
side effects, spreads to all the other gorillas. Everyone gets sick. 
The male also refuses to take his group outside.

"They're afraid to move. They want to stay where it's safe," Ms. Petiniot 
said.

Today, Kwisha gets a dose of Valium before any gorilla is sedated for 
treatment. Unfortunately, the calm isn't flawless. It does nothing to 
stem the nervous diarrhea.

In zoos, increased contentment can mean decreased injuries. When the 
Toledo Zoo opened its Africa exhibit in 2004, it used the 
antipsychotic medication haloperidol to ease animals into the new, 
mixed-species exhibit.

Haloperidol is used to treat schizophrenia in humans, but it is known 
for its severe side effects. Extended use can produce tardive 
dyskinesia - involuntary movements of the face, tongue, lips, trunk, 
and extremities. The dyskinesia can be permanent. But when Haldol is 
used for short periods in animals, it acts as a tranquilizer, zoo 
staffers say.

The zoo's four new wildebeests were on Haldol off and on from April, 
2004, through December, and they have been put on it at various times 
this year as well.

The wildebeests' feisty nature drove the zoo's veterinarian to try 
drug intervention.

"They're sort of unique in the hoofstock world in how they deal with 
the different challenges they face as a herd animal," said Wynona 
Shellabarger, the zoo's veterinarian. "They tend to stand and 
challenge rather than run away. There's a lot more just general 
competition for the alpha spot, the dominant animal."

The animals were continually monitored while on the drugs, she said.

"We were looking for all the potential side effects," but saw none, she said.

The zoo's new Grant's zebras were on haloperidol in November and 
December to ease them into new surroundings.

Zebras will chase anything new or unfamiliar in their environment, 
said Dr. Shellabarger. When it was time for the zebras to join other 
animals in the Africa exhibit, the animals received haloperidol.

"It would be silly to try an introduction without some type of 
intervention," Dr. Shellabarger said.

When one of the impalas in the Africa exhibit gave birth, the zebras 
were put on haloperidol again.

"Zebra are known to kill baby impala. That's just a natural 
behavior," Dr. Shellabarger said. "Something new, something 
vulnerable, perhaps they somehow perceive it as a threat."

This time, the zebras were on haloperidol for three days, Dr. 
Shellabarger said, blunting their response to the new animal in their 
environment.

But the antipsychotic failed to work on Maxine, a swamp monkey at 
violent odds with a young daughter reaching sexual maturity. Last 
year Dr. Shellabarger, Ms. Meyerson, and the zoo's behavioral 
specialist agreed to try the drug on Maxine over the objections of 
the monkeys' keeper. At first, Haldol made Maxine groggy. But a 
reduced dose did not stop her attacks on the youngster. Eventually, 
Maxine's daughter was removed from the family group.

Nor did the drug work on a pair of female ostriches.

"It's not a foolproof thing," Dr. Shellabarger said.

A dose of caution

Karen Overall, a veterinarian who specializes in animal behavior at 
the University of Pennsylvania, has acted as a consultant to zoos and 
animal sanctuaries. While she is an advocate for the use of 
antidepressants in animals, including pets, she's more cautious when 
it comes to haloperidol.

While antidepressants generally increase the availability of the 
neurochemical serotonin, haloperidol works with the brain chemical 
dopamine. Dopamine-effecting medicines tend to produce more side 
effects, Dr. Overall said.

"I've seen it used in monkeys. I usually get called after it doesn't 
work," she said. "I don't like Haldol. I don't like the dopaminergic 
drugs, the ticks they produce. It can make some animals more anxious."

She acknowledged Haldol is often used successfully in parrots and 
other birds, but she noted that a bird's metabolism is dramatically 
different from that of a mammal.

Laurie Bergman, a veterinarian and behavior specialist with the 
University of California, Davis, says haloperidol is a drug of last 
resort. Dr. Bergman also does consulting work with zoos.

"Something like Haldol, that's in many ways a sloppy drug. You have a 
lot of risk of side effects and also overall repression of normal 
behavior."

Haloperidol was effective for the Toledo Zoo's female Birds of 
Paradise, Trouble and her sister, Double Trouble, said Robert 
Webster, the zoo's bird curator. The females were plucking out 
feathers, and no amount of new toys or other interventions put a stop 
to the behavior. After three days on Haldol, Trouble stopped 
plucking. Double Trouble, who now lives at a Fort Worth zoo, stopped 
plucking after a second three-day treatment.

Although there is little published veterinary literature about the 
effects of drugs like haloperidol in wild animals, the use of 
psychotropic drugs is likely to increase, as zoos look for ways to 
keep confined animals as happy and as injury-free as possible.

"It seems to me if people are willing to keep animals in a zoo, they 
ought to do anything necessary to make those lives as atraumatic as 
possible," Dr. Overall said.

Contact Jenni Laidman at: jenni AT theblade.com or 419-724-6507.