TACOMA, Wash. — The Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma announced this week it will be welcoming a new member soon.
Muskox Charlotte is pregnant and expected to give birth to her calf this summer. The father is four-year-old Hudson.
Zoo officials shared the news Tuesday just in time for Valentine's Day.
“We’re closely monitoring Charlotte to help ensure all goes smoothly for her with this pregnancy,” Zoo General Curator Dr. Karen Goodrowe said in a press release.
Zookeepers were able to determine Charlotte was pregnant after testing her poop, which they distinguished from other muskoxen by putting blue glitter in her food.
“Because there is not a good blood test to confirm pregnancy in muskoxen and we are unable to perform an ultrasound on Charlotte," said Goodrowe, "collecting her poop and measuring hormones in those samples is a great way to non-invasively determine pregnancy and to determine a specific time-frame for when she conceived."
Hudson came to Point Defiance in July 2016 as a young calf from the Large Animal Research Station at the University of Alaska, and Charlotte followed a few months later from the Alaska Zoo. The two were paired together in hopes they would eventually mate, officials said.
Charlotte experienced pregnancy for the first time last August, but the calf was stillborn, officials said.
Muskoxen have lived in the frozen Arctic for thousands of years and are known for their extremely thick coat.
The animals were hunted for meat and hides in the 19th and 20th centuries, and their populations plummeted. The Northwest Game Act of 1917 allowed for conservation efforts that helped their recovery, and there are now about 80,000 muskoxen in the wild.
The Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium is one of only three zoos in the U.S. to house muskoxen.
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