(gentle music) (water splashes) - My name is Carlos Sanchez.
I am the head veterinarian at the Veterinary Medical Center at the Oregon Zoo.
Part of my exam is to move the leg back and forth, back and forth.
I manage a team of three veterinarians, five technicians, and we take care of all the medical needs of the zoo collection for all animals from the little frogs to the big elephants.
(water splashes) We are responsible for over 2000 animals of all kinds.
They fly, they swim, we take care of all of them.
(ice clattering) One day we're checking out a tiger and the next day we have to check a butterfly.
So it's always different, and that's what I like about it.
(gentle exotic music) So we use radiograms very often to evaluate different systems and organs in the body of all animals.
- A little bit more.
- From the radiographs we're able to tell if there is anything abnormal, whether it's in the joint, if the animals started developing arthritis, sometimes we are able to detect cancer at an early stage where we can do something about.
Sometimes we just do routine exam.
- Isolate out these digits.
- This female bat is an 18-year-old bat, which is like, you know, an equivalent of a 75, 80-year-old person.
But for her age, she looks pretty healthy.
We can see, for example here, this is actually an old fracture that healed.
These bones are very, very thin, very small so sometimes just by flapping into something hard they can break the bones.
But then also they have a great generative capability and you can see it's almost straight.
(gentle ethereal music) (gentle ethereal music continues) We love seeing the radiograph not just from the diagnostic point of view.
You can actually argue that these are pieces of art very unique for that animal.
So something that I do enjoy from a purely the artistic point of view is the diversity of things that we can see.
You can see the bats and the fingers are so thin and spread out, and then you look and compare it with a bear, and you see this massive digit.
So for me, the comparison between a species is something that it fascinates me.
I love it.
I wish sometimes to be able to print them in a big size and hang it on the walls because they are so unique and they're so majestic that makes me happy to look at them.
If I walk in a building and I see a radiograph of an animal, to me, it's just like looking at a nice painting.
(gentle ethereal music continues) (no audio) (no audio)