Equid Manager Activity

Overview

This activity is a card game that simulates some management practices of wild equine species. It's a good activity to use if you're having your students build a pretend zoo.

Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, students will be able to:

• Describe methods used by animal managers.
• Explain ways that animal managers obtain specimens.
• Understand the importance of cooperation.
• Explain what "inventory" and "census" means.
• Explain how their decisions produced an end result.

Important Words

• inventory
• census
• paddock
• endangered
• surplus
• conservation - the wise use of natural resources.

Materials

• One dice.
• Equid cards and paddock sheets.

For the equid cards you will need to set your print command to "landscape" orientation. To do this click on "file" on your browser's toolbar. Then click on "Page Setup". In the "orientation box" choose "landscape". The paddocks should be printed "Portrait" style. If possible the cards would turn out better if they were printed on card stock. Use your browser's "back" button to get back to this page. You'll need to print all six card sheets and all four paddocks for 5 students. You can access the cards and paddock sheets by clicking:

(Be patient, they are big files.)
Female Cards
Male Cards

There are four paddock sheets. You can access the cards and paddock sheets by clicking:

Paddocks

Background Information

Many wild equids are endangered and therefore protected. The challenge of the men and women who manage these endangered species is keeping a captive group of animals without getting animals from the wild. Modern zoos and other institutions must cooperate with each other to maintain their captive populations.

Activity:

The equine species cards will either have the symbol for male or female . Each card will have a number too.

The cards with the number 2 stand for the most common of all species. The numbers progress to reflect their status in the wild with number 30 being critically endangered.

I used the IUCN status for the card species. To maintain a population the students will have to take a careful inventory of what species they have, how many they have and how many males and females of each species they have. They will need this inventory to make decisions important to animals (cards) under their management.

Inventory

First, they need to make breeding groups. Breeding groups are four animals (cards) of same species with at least one of the two sexes. For instance, three Grevy's zebras and one Somali Wild ass does not make a breeding group because they are different species. Also four males with one female does not make a breeding group.

Have the students place their breeding groups, if they have any, in their paddocks. Explain that a "paddock" is a fenced area used for grazing horses. There are four card spaces on each paddock card. Each of the four cards must go on these four squares. When this is accomplished the students will have a breeding group composed of four cards in one of the three paddocks if they have a breeding group at all.

The paddocks and squares printed in the paddock sheets have numbers which will be referenced later. Some students may not have a breeding group. Some may have more than three breeding groups and no paddocks to put them in. This will all most likely change when they start trading the cards with other "animal managers".

The students will have some wild equid cards that have a potential to make a breeding group. For instance three female cards of one species and no males. They need to decide which cards will be surplus and what cards have a potential to make a breeding group. The surplus equine cards can be traded for equine cards that will make a complete breeding group.

Conference

Once the students have made decisions that divide their extra cards into surplus and potential breeding groups they will go to conference of animal managers. I set up a table away from the students desks for this purpose. If there are more than one students per zoo or institution ask that only one student go to the conference.

Once assembled at the conference they may start trading their equids with the goal being to obtain more breeding groups. I watch the action at the "conference" looking for a time when there seems to be no progression in trading. When this time comes have the students return to their zoos / institutions and make another inventory as they did before.

Inventory

Have them place any new breeding groups in paddocks, make a potential breeding group and surplus pile with their newly obtained cards.

Life occurrences

Now the fun begins. It's time for examples of real life occurrences. The game manager, teacher, instructor rolls a dice. The first roll decides the paddock. For instance if the first roll is 6 that number symbolizes paddock number 6. The second roll of the dice determines the fate of the animals within the paddock determined by the first roll.
If numbers 1, 2, 3 or 4 then that animal dies on that number square.
If number 5 is rolled then no animals die.
If number 6 is rolled then all animals in the paddock die.

Have the students make an inventory, again place the cards in breeding groups and surplus. Now the game manager, teacher or instructor takes a census of the entire population of equines left in the game. Explain that the census gives us information on the entire population, from all zoos or institutions.

From this point in the game you can decide to go through the basic steps of the game again which are:
1. Inventory
2. Conference
3. Inventory
4. Life occurrences
Another option is to have each "zoo" add their card numbers. Considering that zoos that have endangered wildlife are important conservation institutions and that zoos with rare animals draw visitors that bring in revenue for support programs the highest scoring zoos in this game can be considered quality institutions for conservation.

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