Tales of Two Cities Episode 7: Loss

Tale of Two Cities election special podcast

In this week’s episode of the Tales of Two Cities podcast, hosts Brad Bailey and Matt Beagle will be discussing loss, and stories about people moving on when something or someone important is taken away. We’ll hear about a lost Oakland bus stop so important to bus riders that they’re trying to bring it back.…

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Oakland Zoo celebrates Earth Day

An elephant's trunk contains over 100,000 muscles, says the sign outside its enclosure. The trunk will help the elephant eat between 200 and 300 pounds of food every day.

The celebration took place on Saturday, April 23, when thousands of visitors flooded through the park’s gates to watch the animals and observe the performance by Trapeze Arts Inc., a circus arts school in West Oakland.

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Oakland Zoo partners up with Madagascar’s Centre ValBio to save lemurs

Ring-tailed Lemurs at Oakland Zoo. Photo courtesy of Oakland Zoo.

There’s something furry connecting the distant island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa, with Oakland in the East Bay: lemurs. These charismatic primates are the focus of conservation efforts at Centre ValBio, a state-of-the-art lemur research station in Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park. The Oakland Zoo has partnered with the center to join their efforts. On…

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Love and sex at the Oakland Zoo

Harry Santi, a docent at the Oakland Zoo, has been leading the zoo's Animal Amore tour every Valentine's Day for the past twelve years.

“How would you like to have husbands who have testicles that weigh 14 percent of their body weight?” asked Harry Santi to a handful of women at the Oakland Zoo on Friday.

He isn’t talking about any sort of terrifying medical anomaly here. Santi, 81, a docent at the Oakland Zoo, is referring to the tuberous bushcricket, a type of tiny katydid, and one of dozens of animals with unusual, peculiar, or fascinating sex lives that were highlighted at Oakland Zoo’s annual Animal Amore this Valentine’s Day.

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Oakland Zoo to treat endangered California condors for lead poisoning

This is what an endangered species looks like: A California condor living in the wild is marked with a number as a means of tracking the species' growth in the California Condor Recovery Program. Photo Courtesy of the Oakland Zoo

Prehistoric animals with wingspans the length of automobiles will be arriving at the Oakland Zoo soon to receive treatment for the health effects of a chemical that continues to threaten their survival. The California condor, the largest flying land bird in North America, has been on the endangered species list since 1967, and now sick pairs of the bird are slated for arrival at the zoo’s new condor treatment center in March.

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After fierce fight, Oakland Zoo parcel tax measure fails

Alyson Yarus, senior associate at Noll & Tam Architects and Planners, discusses the Oakland Zoo's California Trail project. Opponents to Measure A1 claim that funds from the parcel tax would have gone toward the expansion project.

Alameda County’s Measure A1, which would have created a parcel tax to fund animal care and educational programs at the Oakland Zoo, set off a stir of claims and counterclaims between zoo officials and local and state environmental groups. Roughly 62 percent of the county’s voters finally voted in favor of the measure—but because it was a tax, that fell short of the two-thirds majority of votes needed for approval.

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Zoo celebrates opening of new veterinary hospital, California Trail project expansion in planning stages

Maria Trenary, a senior veterinary technician at Oakland Zoo, describes an anesthesia mask meant for larger animals like lions, at the grand opening of the zoo's new veterinary hospital on Thursday.

The veterinary facility at Oakland Zoo was once so small and cramped that during one surgery, senior veterinary technician Maria Trenary had to crawl under an operating table, navigating beneath the dangling limbs of an anesthetized tiger, just to get to the other side of the room and continue working.

Now, at the zoo’s new veterinary hospital, which celebrated its grand opening Thursday afternoon, a camel, a bison or even a juvenile giraffe can be easily accommodated in one of the hospital’s revamped surgery suites.

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