Credit: SWNS / ZSL
This lion looks as if it's sneaking a little cat nap as it undergoes a CAT scan for earache at London Zoo.
The 12 year old endangered Asiatic lion, called Bhanu, was suffering recurrent ear infections in his left ear.
So the team of vets at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) brought the scanner to the zoo to investigate.
This lion looks as if it's sneaking a little cat nap as it undergoes a CAT scan for earache at London Zoo.
The 12 year old endangered Asiatic lion, called Bhanu, was suffering recurrent ear infections in his left ear.
So the team of vets at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) brought the scanner to the zoo to investigate.
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00 (percussive music)
00:02 Banu, our male Asiatic lion, came to us a few years ago
00:08 with a history of some ear problems
00:10 when he was a younger animal.
00:11 And over time here, we could see his ear was uncomfortable.
00:13 So a few times we've got hands on, under anesthetic,
00:16 had a look at the ear, had some specialists come in,
00:19 and we could see that we couldn't get very deep
00:21 into that ear compared to the other ear.
00:23 But even the other ear, they're such very big ears
00:26 with no instruments designed to go in there
00:29 that it was very difficult to appreciate what was going on
00:31 and to really get to the bottom of it all
00:33 and also to check that he had no middle ear disease,
00:35 which is an area you can't actually see,
00:37 we needed to have a better look using a CAT scan.
00:40 So we got a CAT scan for our big cats.
00:42 And we did this by getting a truck
00:44 with a CT scanner on board so that we could safely move Banu
00:47 just from his den into the CAT scan and back to his den,
00:50 which was safe and comfortable for everybody
00:52 rather than moving him far away.
00:54 These procedures are always very much collaborative.
00:57 We want the best for the animals,
00:58 so we get all the specialists on board.
00:59 We had a specialist to have a look,
01:01 help us look at the ear itself
01:02 from the Royal Veterinary College,
01:04 a specialist dermatologist.
01:05 And then while we were actually CT scanning alive,
01:08 we had a specialist in Australia
01:09 having a look at the scans for us
01:10 to decide whether we had anything
01:12 we had to worry about further.
01:13 We were very relieved to know that both sides
01:16 were very symmetrical in terms of the middle ear,
01:18 so no tumors and no disease there,
01:21 but that his left ear canal was very narrow
01:23 compared to the right.
01:24 And this is no doubt why we keep getting infections there.
01:28 We're probably getting a little bit of moisture
01:29 trapped in there,
01:30 which in the other ear just clears itself,
01:31 and with Banu leads to sort of a little bit of
01:33 an environment where bacteria and yeasts can thrive.
01:36 Moving forward, we now know that there's nothing
01:38 seriously wrong with Banu's ears,
01:39 except for an outer ear infection,
01:41 which we'd love to treat with just, you know,
01:43 drops and a massage, but we can't do that.
01:45 So we're going to be giving him some oral medication
01:48 to reduce the inflammation in that ear.
01:50 Also a little bit of medication
01:51 to reduce infection in the ear,
01:53 and that should hopefully keep things under control.
01:55 We will also be doing regular health checks,
01:57 so next time he has his health check,
01:58 we'll be just checking that ear,
02:00 giving it a bit of a flush and a clean if we need to.
02:02 And going forward, we know that we can keep things
02:04 under control and Banu should be comfortable.
02:06 (upbeat music)
02:08 (upbeat music)