スミソニアン国立動物園さんのインスタグラム写真 - (スミソニアン国立動物園Instagram)「Pasta gave birth to our first litter of black-footed ferret kits this year at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia! The four kits are doing well and will start opening their eyes around 35 days old. Black-footed ferrets are native to the grasslands of North America, and they have come back from the brink of extinction. They were thought to be extinct in the wild as a result of habitat loss and sylvatic plague until a colony was discovered in Wyoming in 1981. All of the black-footed ferrets alive today are descended from the remaining 18 ferrets that were rescued and brought into human care to prevent the species from disappearing completely. In 1988 the offspring of those 18 black-footed ferrets came to live at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Since then, our scientists have pioneered assisted breeding techniques and helped maximize the genetic diversity in the population. More than 700 black-footed ferret kits have been born at SCBI and vaccinated against sylvatic plague (one of the biggest threats to wild black-footed ferrets). Every year kits born there are sent to preconditioning sites where they learn how to survive in the wild. They are eventually released to the wild at sites selected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. #WeSaveSpecies」4月2日 4時39分