\n<\/p>\n
For all of the eons that animal life has existed on Earth, the sun has been there, too. And for all of those eons, animal life has had only one solution for intense exposure to the sun: evolution. Some creatures have thick, dark skin that\u2019s resistant to UV harm; others sprout fur, scales, or feathers that block the sun\u2019s rays. Many fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds may produce a compound that protects their cells against the sun\u2019s damaging effects. Hippos, weirdly, ooze a reddish, mucus-y liquid from their pores that absorbs light before it can destroy their skin. And plenty of creatures have evolved behaviors that take advantage of their environment\u2014rolling around in dirt or mud, simply retreating into the shade.<\/p>\n
But certain modern animals have sun problems that natural selection can\u2019t easily solve. Some reside at zoos that can\u2019t perfectly replicate their habitat; others live at latitudes that their ancestors didn\u2019t experience. Others spend too much time sunbathing in a living-room window, or sport sparse or light-colored fur or hair because their domesticators liked the way it looked. For these animals, people have come up with a shorter-term solution: sunscreen.<\/p>\n
If, that is, a creature is willing to accept the treatment. Indu, an Asian elephant who lived at the Phoenix Zoo, was game. A few years ago, Heather Wright, one of the zookeepers, noticed the tops of Indu\u2019s ears pinking, peeling, and flaking in the summer heat, much like her human keepers\u2019 did. So her caretakers picked up some zinc-oxide-based sunblock\u2014specially formulated for sensitive (human) skin\u2014and dabbed it on the elephant. Indu, to be fair, was used to a level of care most wild animals don\u2019t enjoy. \u201cWe had already been applying lotion,\u201d to manage dryness, Wright told me. The elephant knew the drill: Once in the barn, she\u2019d lumber up to a window with an opening for her ear and stick the appendage through.<\/p>\n
As far as zoo staff members could tell, the treatment helped. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing magical\u201d about other animals\u2019 skin, Leslie Easterwood, a large-animal veterinarian at Texas A&M University, told me: Bake it in the sun, and it will burn. Scientists have spotted whales suffering from sunburns; cats, dogs, horses\u2014even alpacas, turtles, and penguins\u2014can develop all kinds of skin cancers. Pigs, in particular, \u201chave skin most similar to humans,\u201d Mitchell Song, a veterinary dermatologist based in Arizona told me. At Zoo Miami, keepers have spread mud on older, arthritic wild pigs who can\u2019t wallow as well as they did in their youth; they\u2019ve also applied sunscreen to a babirusa, a species of swine native to Indonesia\u2019s forests, and to a Kunekune pig, Gwen Myers, the zoo\u2019s chief of animal health, told me.<\/p>\n
In some sunny places, vets commonly recommend sunscreen for pets and other domesticated creatures, especially light-colored dogs and horses. Steve Valeika, a veterinarian in North Carolina, advises the same for \u201cwhite cats that go outside.\u201d This particular conundrum is one of our own making. \u201cYou don\u2019t see a lot of white-skinned animals in the wild,\u201d Anthea Schick, a veterinary dermatologist in Arizona, told me. Only thanks to generations of selective breeding have they become a frequent presence in and around people\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n
Of course, to sunscreen your pet, you have to \u2026 sunscreen your pet. Some pet owners, vets told me, are definitely flummoxed by the suggestion: \u201cIt\u2019s not widely discussed,\u201d Schick told me. Vets are more unified in recommending teeth brushing for cats\u2014and most cat owners still just decide they\u2019d rather not. But some animals would certainly benefit from block: Schick told me she\u2019s seen her fair share of badly burned dogs, especially after long bouts of sunbathing that scorch their bellies. \u201cWe see a lot of sun-induced skin cancers that could be avoided,\u201d she said. Pit bulls, Dalmatians, and other short-haired breeds are especially vulnerable; even long-haired white cats are sensitive around their eyes, their nose, and the tips of their ears. And Easterwood estimates that the majority of paint horses, left unprotected, will eventually develop skin issues. Squamous-cell-carcinoma cases make up the majority of her workload: \u201cI see it every single day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The vets I spoke with generally agreed: Don\u2019t bother with sprays, which a lot of animals find annoying or downright terrifying; reapply often, and well; it is way, way, way <\/em>harder to sunscreen a cat than a dog, though some brave souls manage it. But although some vets recommended human sunscreens, formulated for kids or sensitive skin, others told me they preferred blends marketed for animals. (The FDA has dubbed just one pet sunscreen, made by a company called Epi-Pet and marketed to dogs and horses, \u201cFDA compliant\u201d\u2014not the same as FDA approval, which requires rigorous safety testing.) Several warned against zinc oxide, which can be toxic to animals if ingested in large quantities; others felt that zinc oxide was worth the risk, unless administered to a tongue-bathing cat.<\/p>\n Regardless of the product they\u2019re offered, most animals generally aren\u2019t as eager as Indu to subject themselves to a human-led sun-protection ritual. And even she was usually plied with a five-gallon bucket of fruits and vegetables while her keepers tended her ears. At Zoo Miami, keeper Madison Chamizo told me she and her colleagues had to spend months training an okapi\u2014an African mammal closely related to a giraffe\u2014to accept caretakers gently scrubbing sunscreen onto her back with a modified Scotch-Brite dishwand, after she lost some patches of hair on her back to a fungal infection. But for creatures in very sunny parts of the world, the alternatives are, essentially, being cooped up indoors, kept away from windows, or wrestled into full-body sunsuits. (Some dogs don\u2019t mind; cats, once again, are unlikely to comply.)<\/p>\n And some sun-related problems, sunscreen can\u2019t fix. Gary West, the Phoenix Zoo\u2019s vet, told me he suspects that UV glare has caused eye inflammation in some of his animals; Myers, in Miami, worries about the sensitive skin around some species\u2019 eyes. \u201cThey\u2019re not really going to wear sunglasses for us,\u201d Myers told me. So she and her colleagues have started to wonder: \u201cGosh, is this an animal that we could put a sun visor on?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For all of the eons that animal life has existed on Earth, the sun has been there, too. And for all of those eons, animal life has had only one solution for intense exposure to the sun: evolution. Some creatures have thick, dark skin that\u2019s resistant to UV harm; others sprout fur, scales, or feathers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[5011,5010],"class_list":{"0":"post-11586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-cat","9":"tag-sunscreen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}