Today, Dr. Parkinson, now a clinical veterinarian at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, is trying to lay the groundwork for a resource that might have given some of these animals a chance: a blood bank for zoos and aquariums, stocked with prescreened blood from a menagerie of exotic animals.

To make this possible, she is drawing on techniques in human medicine that allow delicate red blood cells to be preserved, on ice, for years. If she can do the same thing for polar bears, pangolins, dolphins and dik-diks, it could leave zoos far better prepared for future animal health emergencies. “We could theoretically try to bank every animal that we have in zoos and have it frozen and ready,” she said.

The real challenge will come after the cells have spent six months on ice. At that point, Dr. Parkinson will thaw each sample, carefully wash away the glycerol solution and, as she put it, “compare it to how happy it was before I froze it.”

Early results suggest that red blood cells from giraffes and elephants do not “appear to mind being frozen,” Dr. Parkinson said.

Initial tests with polar bear and emu blood, however, were not as promising, Dr. Parkinson said. Still, she noted that she has only tested small amounts of blood from those animals and may need to adjust the thawing protocol.