Wild Wise Coexisting with Carnivores What is Coexisting

Wild Wise: Coexisting with Carnivores

What is Coexisting with Carnivores? Wild Wise: Coexisting with Carnivores offers you a chance to work with zoo staff and community members to: • Create your own scientific investigation about wild carnivores in your community • Work in groups to develop solutions and recommendations for real world problems • Act as a leader in your community by helping people to coexist with carnivores

What is a carnivore?

What is a carnivore? A carnivore is an organism that mostly eats meat (flesh of animals). • Sometimes carnivores are called predators. • Carnivores have biological adaptations that help them hunt American mink eating a crayfish • Can include birds, mammals, plants, and more! Venus fly trap

For this program, you will focus on carnivores in the taxonomic order Carnivora that live in your community. How is “carnivore” different than “Carnivora”?

How is “carnivore” different than “Carnivora”? “Carnivore” is a general term that can be applied to any plant or animal that eats mostly meat. “Carnivora” is a special scientific classification of mammals that includes over 270 species!

What is special about Carnivora? • Carnivora have carnassial teeth: modified molars which are adapted for shearing meat. Carnassial Teeth • Some carnivora are omnivores (eat plants and meat) or herbivores (eat only plants)! Raccoons eating apples

Which members of the order Carnivora live in your community?

Which members of the order Carnivora live in your community? Coyote Raccoon Cougar Bobcat Black Bear

What is coexistence?

Coexistence is the state of living in harmony despite having different needs. Coexistence is achieved through: • Observation • Research • Informed decisions • Proactive behaviors Wanna be my neighbor?

You will use your research to answer the following question about coexisting with carnivores in your community: How can humans and carnivores peacefully coexist--meet our needs while allowing carnivores to meet their needs?

What will you do during the Wild Wise: Coexisting with Carnivores program?

Conduct Scientific Research You will • Research a question about carnivores that is relevant to your community • Learn how humans affect carnivores (positively or negatively) • Learn why carnivores are important to ecosystems

Educate Your Community • You will share the results of your research with your classmates and with the community! • You will provide your community with evidencebased recommendations for positive coexistence with carnivores.

E 1: Carnivore Community Mapping

Objective You will create and/or examine maps of carnivore sightings. Your map will help you practice analyzing, interpreting, and asking questions about patterns.

Key Term What is a Resource? • What humans and other animals need to survive • Naturally occurring (animals, plants, water, soil) • Human-designed (buildings and roads for people) • Living things (food, such as plants and other animals) • Non-living things (water, light, roads, soil, etc. )

What natural and designed resources do you see?

Can you identify those (or other) resources on this map?

Make a Carnivore Community Map What is a community map? • A research tool that you can use to learn new information about your community. • Shows the location of carnivore sightings near your neighborhoods and school. Carnivore Sighted: Bobcat When: Morning, June 2017 Notes: The bobcat was running across the sidewalk into the woods.

Make a Carnivore Community Map Find and mark the location where you saw a carnivore in your community on the map. Jenny’s carnivore sighting is the pink dot.

Make a Carnivore Community Map Second, write what carnivore(s) you saw and when you saw it/them. You can include other details you remember about the carnivore(s), too. Carnivore Sighted: Bobcat When: Morning, June 2017 Notes: The bobcat was running across the sidewalk into the woods.

Make a Carnivore Community Map You can also include sightings that you learned about from your family, friends, or the news. Every time you learn about a new carnivore sighting, add to the map! You can do this until the end of the school year.