| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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here at the academy Pat Morales The Egyptian spiny-tailed lizard (Uromastyx aegyptius) is particularly loathsome looking, having a flat, round body the color of dirty plaster and a horny, knobby tail that resembles a primeval hand grenade. Pat Morales cradles one in her hand, its tail trailing down her wrist. She regards it as it regards her, her patient green eyes facing down its wise brown ones. With one gentle finger Morales stretches out one of the lizard's swollen toes. "This particular lizard appears to build up uric acid deposits in its joints. That's the same as gout in a human." Two spiny tails, this one and a companion with a burnt back, are in the Steinhart Aquarium infirmary, having been confiscated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as illegal imports. Right now they are Morales' patients. Pathologist is Morales's official title at the Steinhart Aquarium. She oversees the health of all the animals: some 5,000 individuals representing 750 species of fishes, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. If an animal shows signs of disease, she gets out her microscope, her books, and a worldwide network of human resources to find a cure. She is not alone in this work, of course. Besides the curators and keepers, there is a staff veterinarian, Freeland Dunker. He comes in once a week, but is the first to admit he learns a lot from Morales. "I help with treating the individual animals, suturing wounds and removing tumors," Dunker says. "Pat does most of the group management, and she teaches me a great deal about the fish." This is not a job she sought out; it is a job that found her. As a girl in a small village in northwest England, she admits she wasn't quite like most of the neighborhood kids. She wanted to be a veterinarian, but in high school, science caught her imagination. One of only three women in her course at Liverpool University, she finished at the top of the class, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in biochemistry and physiology. She spent ten years in research, starting with cellular respiration at the University of Pennsylvania and ending up at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco studying the biophysics of muscle contraction. Then she got married. "I became a tennis bum for quite a while." It was fine at first, she says, but found, "It doesn't really exercise your mind." Unknown to Morales, her husband, then a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, wrote to the Academy, inquiring about a place for her. They called her for an interview, inviting her to become a volunteer. Her energy and knowledge quickly landed her a paid position. She downplays the difficulty of her conversion to working with cold-blooded animal physiology. "Fish are our oldest ancestors; they are the first bony vertebrates. They have essentially the same equipment as other vertebrates: a stomach, a heart, and some sort of reproductive system. Unzip a fish and it looks more or less the same as a human." It is not that simple, of course. Because they live in water, fish are the most difficult of all patients to treat. A fish pathologist must understand not only the biochemistry of the fish, but the chemistry of the water, too. A treatment done to a single fish can change the water's molecular and microbial balance, and threaten the whole tank. Fish are dangerously stressed by handling, also. It is safer to anesthetize them even if all they need is an injection. If humans are harmful to aquarium patients, the patients can be harmful to humans. Morales is often "slimed," as she calls it, when a not quite anesthetized fish flops free and lands on her chest. One African lungfish bit her after she gave it an enema to clean gravel out of its gut. Her worst scar came from an alligator, who ill-advisedly started a fight with a rather quicker crocodile. Waiting for the veterinarian to come, Morales cleaned up the wounds, including a nearly enucleated eye. Since the alligator seemed depressed, she and the keeper decided not to tape its mouth. A mistake. Her left hand is badly scarred and one finger still does not work, a misfortune that has curtailed her piano playing. These days the lessons have paid off. Morales lectures on fish diseases at the veterinary school at the University of California at Davis, and has given papers at professional meetings. She documented the second case of systemic mycobacteria marinum (fish tuberculosis) in a manatee, and a bizarre tumor (called a hemangiopericytoma) in a goldfish. She removed the tumor, and the goldfish survived to go home with its owner. The fish, she says, have grown on her. Although she tries to spread her favors around, she has a special fondness for an alligator gar she calls "Alphonse." Alphonse (who is a female) can be depended upon to respond to Morales and put on a feeding display every time she brings a visitor, which means the visitor gets soaked. "People think of a fish as just something you can toss down the toilet when it dies. But fish can be intelligent. This fish," she says, referring to Alphonse, "could take your arm off, but, so far, she hasn't." Cynthia Mills is a freelance writer and veterinarian. |
Winter 1995
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