A Zoo Man's Notebook, 2025

[A.L. Gardner]

I do love the Ring-tails for their wonderful sunbathing stances which are a joy to watch, even if invariably accompanied by kids screaming"King Julian!", closely followed by a toe-curling rendition of "I like to move it"

 

[Strathmorezoo]

Hil all, I’m glad to see folks are enjoying the thread. To answer the question about zoo diets, there really does seem to be a philosophical divide. This is a lazy characterization on my part, and different zoos have different cultures, but I’d say that you have the vets on the side of commercial, scientific diets, such as Mazuri and Zupreem, because they like that it’s nutritionally complete and quantifiable. The downside of such diets as 1) the animals don’t seem to like them as much and 2) it usually takes a very small fraction of the time to eat it. The plus side, besides the nutritionally value, is that it’s readily available (no seasonal fluctuations), can be stored long term, and there’s little variation to worry about. The behavioral school tends to be more in favor of natural foods, where the diet is made up of a lot of diverse food stuffs. It’s much more natural for the animals, and can be much more enriching for them to eat – think carcass feedings versus ground meat in a pan. It can also be more expensive, more subject to seasonal variation, and you sometimes run into the problem where the animals act like kids who want to eat their “candy,” but not their “vegetables.”

Most AZA zoos I’ve worked at use commercial diets as a baseline, and then supplement it with natural foods. I do think it’s good to have animals, where possible and practical, used to eating a wide variety of foods, so they won’t be too reliant on a single food source, in case that food becomes unavailable for one reason or another.


There have been a few times in my career where I’ve been something of a pinch hitter, having to fill in for other keepers and working with animals that I usually don’t. In that capacity, I’ve gotten a little experience with a few lemur species, but not well enough to really know them. There’s only one species of lemur which I can say that I’ve really worked with to an appreciable degree. I don’t suspect anyone will be that surprised as to which one it is.

To the younger ZooChatters out here, let me tell you – long before the Madagascar movies came out and every kid and their parents started screaming about “King Julian!” ring-tailed lemurs were still far and away the dominant lemur species in zoos. Despite the fact that they are the lemur most visitors think of when they think of lemurs – and the only member of the genus Lemur – in many ways they are very… well, un-lemurlike. Diurnal. Social. Largely terrestrial. The first two factors make them perhaps better exhibit animals than many of the other lemurs, which might be more inclined to sit by themselves, curled up in little balls of fur that are asleep during visiting hours. RTLs, in contrast, are always full of action and drama.

I worked with ring-tailed lemurs at two non-AZA facilities. At each, the exhibit was a simple construction of wooden poles and wire. Heat was provided with a nest box with a heat lamp at one zoo, a small indoor holding area with a heat lamp at the other. Grassy exhibit floor, lots of perching, while still keeping open space on the ground, and make sure you've got plenty of sunshine - RTLs are sun worshipers, and it was always fun to walk by on a sunny summer day and see them all basking in the glow, blissful looks upon their faces.

Diet at the two facilities was almost identical – monkey chow, with some produce tossed in. Here’s where we get one of those insights into zoo superstition that can really stress a keeper out. At one facility, a big bucket of chopped banana, orange, apple, carrot, and cooked sweet potato was mixed up every day, and from that we doled out portions for the primates, parrots, and a few other animals. It’s important to note that orange was part of that mix. At the other zoo, half of the keepers were convinced that feeding citrus to lemurs meant instant death. One keeper saw me toss a piece of orange to a lemur (a small diced piece, about the size of a grape) and actually burst into tears because she was convinced the lemurs would drop dead within minutes. I was dumbfounded. The lemurs at the other zoo, where I’d fed the produce mix, had been getting oranges for years, no issue, but she refused to believe. When she came in the next morning and the lemurs were still there, I suspect she thought that I went out and got another pair overnight and replaced them, like a parent swapping out a dead goldfish.

Where did this come from? Recent research (well, it was probably more “recent” at the time) suggested that lemurs shouldn’t have too much vitamin C in their diet. Too much vitamin C overtime was translated to the keepers as citrus = poison, because no one really explained the reason to them – which was really ironic, because the lemurs were being fed other, non-citrus produce that was even higher in Vitamin C than oranges were, because they didn’t understand what the issue was.

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Ring-tailed lemurs breed very well in zoos, and at both facilities we had a pair that regularly produced young, to the point where I could almost predict to the day when an infant would appear each year. Even when I knew they were coming, it was always still a startling sensation to have the mom climb up on the wire in the morning with her baby on her chest – much like with the tamarins and marmosets, my first instinct was always that it was a tumor or something, so misshapen did they look with their giant heads and tiny, clutching bodies (the tails looking like they were strands of thread). The babies never seemed to stay small for very long, and it never took long before they were rambling all of the enclosures, climbing over the adults and hopping through the grasses.

View attachment 769751

The basic unit of each lemur group was a mated pair, the female being dominant, and their grown offspring. In each troop, the dominant female was confident, poised, and somewhat aloof. Her consort always struck me as a kind of doofy animal, with a perpetually befuddled look, like he was just hit in the back of the head with a two by four. There was no spine in the males, and they were easily ordered around by their mates. I never saw any indications that the grown offspring were poised to challenge their mothers for rule of the little troops, though I suspect that if she passed on or were removed, things could have gotten pretty dicey, as was the case with the marmosets. Compared to many social primates, I actually found them fairly drama free – lots of interaction, but fairly little conflict, though I know this is not everyone’s experience, and certainly doesn’t reflect the way that they can behave in the wild.

The lemurs were quite bold and confident with keepers – never climbing on us, as you might see at some facilities that have lemur feeding opportunities, but willing to get very close. More than once I accidentally knocked over a lemur that was right behind me, or turned at the wrong moment and had one crash into me as it leapt from perch to perch.

Towards the end of my time at one zoo, we were building a series of new exhibits (still poles and wire, but much larger), and the lemurs were slated to move into them. I wanted to mix them with our radiated tortoises, but management didn’t like that idea. Not because they thought anything bad would happen, but because they’d have another exhibit that would need to be filled.

One last story, which doesn’t actually have anything to really do with the lemurs – one day, I had a call over the radio from one of our groundskeepers, who said that a child had fell and skinned her knee, and could someone bring the first aid kit to the lemur exhibit. I happened to be nearby, so I grabbed one and went to the lemurs. No one was there. I radioed, asking where they were and was told, not especially nicely, that they were at the lemurs, like he’d said. I looked around, no one was there. I asked again. I got an angry tirade over the radio about how stupid could I be, didn’t I hear him say he was at the lemurs, and so on for several minutes, before I finally was able to cut in. I asked him to walk to the closest animal and read the sign. He did. “Oh, that’s a serval? I always thought it was a lemur.”

It helps for your staff – especially frontline staff – to all have basic familiarity with your zoo.

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What would you say is preferred by lemurs, horizontal or vertical perching ? or a mixture of both ?

 

[Aardwolf]

@Strathmorezoo - I think providing a mixture is good, but most arboreal animals I know and/or have worked with seem to utilize horizontal more than vertical. One exception that comes readily to mind is sifaka, which really enjoy having lots of vertical perches to facilitate their unique mode of locomotion.

Pelicans in US zoos fall into two categories, separated by species. In the one group you have the two native species, the brown and the American white. Zoos that have these species are most likely to have non-releasable birds. You also have the exotic pelicans – prior to the recent SSP reimagining, there were managed programs for pink-backed, Dalmatian, and eastern white, sometimes seen in the moats and water features of savannah exhibits. These programs have always been a challenge, as pelicans don’t breed with great reliability in zoos, with most of the success achieved by a small number of facilities.

Apart from some volunteer experience with a flock of pink-backs that one zoo kept in the moat of their savannah exhibit – the viewing area overlooked the water feature, and we’d often let kids who were present at feeding time put on a glove and toss some fish with us – my experience with pelicans focuses on a flock of a half dozen American whites at one AZA facility. The birds lived on a creek that ran the length of the zoo, with various land portions that they could waddle out onto – some of these were parts of exhibits of other animals, some of them were for the pelicans’ private access. American whites were a native winter resident for us in that part of the country, which is why we exhibited them instead of the smaller, less cold tolerant brown pelicans. The pelicans shared the creek with swans – tundra and black-necked – as well as a host of wild birds, as well as turtles, muskrats, and other creatures.

Being on a creek, which was water we obviously couldn’t change or clean, and doing all of their pooping there, the pelicans were, not surprisingly, a pretty low-maintenance species. The main job everyday was feeding them. When I started working there, we only had two, and they were quite shy, so we’d have to walk out onto a pier that jutted over the water and toss the fish to them from there. It was a frustrating job, because the act of feeding attracted lots of gulls and herons, and the further the distance that the fish has to travel between your hand and the pelican’s beak, the greater the likelihood of another bird snatching it. I’ve seen gulls literally shove their heads into the open mouths of pelicans, grab fish, and retreat, squawking maniacally all the way.

As more non-releasable birds were added to the flock, our birds became more confident, to the point where we could feed them from the shoreline, the pelicans only five feet or so away, so it became much easier to toss their fish, and we lost far fewer fish to gulls. Sometimes, they would almost stampede us as we approached the water, and sometimes even stood on land to catch fish we tossed them, which really impressed you with how big they really were. The challenge then was getting the right kind of fish (finally, you guys, a diet devoid of Mazuri). Sardines, herring, capelin (in large fistfuls to make up for the small size), trout – these all featured in the rotation. We periodically would try different fish based on what was available from the good folks the supplier, like butterfish. When we did, it wasn’t uncommon to see a pelican take a new fish, and then drop it immediately, with an almost discernable retch. Then, the gulls would swoop in. Maybe it was the taste, or the texture, or the shape of the fish (some of the larger, flatter fish they especially seemed to dislike).



A few times a year, the frozen fish truck would come. It was too difficult for the massive tractor trailer, which was making deliveries all up and down the country, to make it through the windy streets to our service gate, so we'd all bundle into a truck and meet the driver at a nearby parking lot, load up the fish, and take it back to the zoo to fill up the walk-in freezer. The pelicans were probably our most expensive exhibit to feed, a trend which is true for a lot of aquatic species (having a group discussion at a conference once, I think we all settled on sea otters being the priciest dinner guests to have when once considers the cost and quantity of the food for the size of the animal).

The pelicans also enjoyed doing their own fishing in the creek, catching wild prey (I think they were single-handedly responsible for ending our city’s attempt to stock the creek – which also ran through the main city park – with trout after they realized that all they were doing was feeding the pelicans). Apart from being flight-restricted (as a result of their injuries, though some of the birds required an additional bit of pinioning to make sure they wouldn’t try to fly and hurt themselves – first time I’ve ever witnessed an adult bird being pinioned myself, and frankly I’m fine without ever seeing it again, if it was needed in that case), they probably had one of the most natural lifestyles of any of our zoo birds. When the birds were on the water and very excited or startled by something, they’d still manage to pseudo-fly across the surface, wings beating up a storm as they steamed along. They were overall very hale and healthy; the only challenge we occasionally dealt with was blood feathers – we’d see a pelican sail buy and notice a patch of red on their flank – but these always cleaned up themselves without any need for intervention on our part.

If the pelicans gave us any real headache, it was because of their proclivity to escape. The creek had heavy flaps hanging on either side to keep the birds in while allowing the water to flow. Usually the birds would respect them, but every once in a while, we’d get a call that there was a pelican on the creek (which fed into a nearby river) downtown, and we’d have to go and get them. This was an effort that involved many staff, some walking the shoreline to keep the bird in the water, others in kayaks to herd the bird back. Sometimes they would go months without doing it. Sometimes it would be several infuriating times a week. We experimented with various methods of deterring them from getting too close to the flaps, like hanging sparkly whirligigs, but nothing really seemed to work.


Visitors often asked about the tubercles on the beaks of our pelicans, which grow during the mating season, then fall off. I made it a mission to see if I could find one after it fell off and maybe preserve it, but never succeeded.

What frustration the pelicans brought us through their periodic escapades, they paid back as animal ambassadors. Remembering how cool teenage volunteer me thought feeding the pink backs at my old zoo was, I began to let visitors come in to feed the pelicans, sometimes as part of a special tour, sometimes just because I had time and the folks seemed nice enough. It was a very fun, simple, and effective way to boost engagement with visitors and animals, all while not costing the zoo a dime and not really taking any time out of my daily routine.

 

[Strathmorezoo]

@Strathmorezoo - I think providing a mixture is good, but most arboreal animals I know and/or have worked with seem to utilize horizontal more than vertical. One exception that comes readily to mind is sifaka, which really enjoy having lots of vertical perches to facilitate their unique mode of locomotion.

Pelicans in US zoos fall into two categories, separated by species. In the one group you have the two native species, the brown and the American white. Zoos that have these species are most likely to have non-releasable birds. You also have the exotic pelicans – prior to the recent SSP reimagining, there were managed programs for pink-backed, Dalmatian, and eastern white, sometimes seen in the moats and water features of savannah exhibits. These programs have always been a challenge, as pelicans don’t breed with great reliability in zoos, with most of the success achieved by a small number of facilities.

Apart from some volunteer experience with a flock of pink-backs that one zoo kept in the moat of their savannah exhibit – the viewing area overlooked the water feature, and we’d often let kids who were present at feeding time put on a glove and toss some fish with us – my experience with pelicans focuses on a flock of a half dozen American whites at one AZA facility. The birds lived on a creek that ran the length of the zoo, with various land portions that they could waddle out onto – some of these were parts of exhibits of other animals, some of them were for the pelicans’ private access. American whites were a native winter resident for us in that part of the country, which is why we exhibited them instead of the smaller, less cold tolerant brown pelicans. The pelicans shared the creek with swans – tundra and black-necked – as well as a host of wild birds, as well as turtles, muskrats, and other creatures.

Being on a creek, which was water we obviously couldn’t change or clean, and doing all of their pooping there, the pelicans were, not surprisingly, a pretty low-maintenance species. The main job everyday was feeding them. When I started working there, we only had two, and they were quite shy, so we’d have to walk out onto a pier that jutted over the water and toss the fish to them from there. It was a frustrating job, because the act of feeding attracted lots of gulls and herons, and the further the distance that the fish has to travel between your hand and the pelican’s beak, the greater the likelihood of another bird snatching it. I’ve seen gulls literally shove their heads into the open mouths of pelicans, grab fish, and retreat, squawking maniacally all the way.

As more non-releasable birds were added to the flock, our birds became more confident, to the point where we could feed them from the shoreline, the pelicans only five feet or so away, so it became much easier to toss their fish, and we lost far fewer fish to gulls. Sometimes, they would almost stampede us as we approached the water, and sometimes even stood on land to catch fish we tossed them, which really impressed you with how big they really were. The challenge then was getting the right kind of fish (finally, you guys, a diet devoid of Mazuri). Sardines, herring, capelin (in large fistfuls to make up for the small size), trout – these all featured in the rotation. We periodically would try different fish based on what was available from the good folks the supplier, like butterfish. When we did, it wasn’t uncommon to see a pelican take a new fish, and then drop it immediately, with an almost discernable retch. Then, the gulls would swoop in. Maybe it was the taste, or the texture, or the shape of the fish (some of the larger, flatter fish they especially seemed to dislike).

View attachment 769865

A few times a year, the frozen fish truck would come. It was too difficult for the massive tractor trailer, which was making deliveries all up and down the country, to make it through the windy streets to our service gate, so we'd all bundle into a truck and meet the driver at a nearby parking lot, load up the fish, and take it back to the zoo to fill up the walk-in freezer. The pelicans were probably our most expensive exhibit to feed, a trend which is true for a lot of aquatic species (having a group discussion at a conference once, I think we all settled on sea otters being the priciest dinner guests to have when once considers the cost and quantity of the food for the size of the animal).

The pelicans also enjoyed doing their own fishing in the creek, catching wild prey (I think they were single-handedly responsible for ending our city’s attempt to stock the creek – which also ran through the main city park – with trout after they realized that all they were doing was feeding the pelicans). Apart from being flight-restricted (as a result of their injuries, though some of the birds required an additional bit of pinioning to make sure they wouldn’t try to fly and hurt themselves – first time I’ve ever witnessed an adult bird being pinioned myself, and frankly I’m fine without ever seeing it again, if it was needed in that case), they probably had one of the most natural lifestyles of any of our zoo birds. When the birds were on the water and very excited or startled by something, they’d still manage to pseudo-fly across the surface, wings beating up a storm as they steamed along. They were overall very hale and healthy; the only challenge we occasionally dealt with was blood feathers – we’d see a pelican sail buy and notice a patch of red on their flank – but these always cleaned up themselves without any need for intervention on our part.

If the pelicans gave us any real headache, it was because of their proclivity to escape. The creek had heavy flaps hanging on either side to keep the birds in while allowing the water to flow. Usually the birds would respect them, but every once in a while, we’d get a call that there was a pelican on the creek (which fed into a nearby river) downtown, and we’d have to go and get them. This was an effort that involved many staff, some walking the shoreline to keep the bird in the water, others in kayaks to herd the bird back. Sometimes they would go months without doing it. Sometimes it would be several infuriating times a week. We experimented with various methods of deterring them from getting too close to the flaps, like hanging sparkly whirligigs, but nothing really seemed to work.

View attachment 769866
Visitors often asked about the tubercles on the beaks of our pelicans, which grow during the mating season, then fall off. I made it a mission to see if I could find one after it fell off and maybe preserve it, but never succeeded.

What frustration the pelicans brought us through their periodic escapades, they paid back as anima ambassadors. Remembering how cool teenage volunteer me thought feeding the pink backs at my old zoo was, I began to let visitors come in to feed the pelicans, sometimes as part of a special tour, sometimes just because I had time and the folks seemed nice enough. It was a very fun, simple, and effective way to boost engagement with visitors and animals, all while not costing the zoo a dime and not really taking any time out of my daily routine.

I agree, i think that Sifaka was a good example when knowing the requirements of individual species . Usually a mixture of perching would be ideal.

 

[Wessel799]

I do love the Ring-tails for their wonderful sunbathing stances which are a joy to watch, even if invariably accompanied by kids screaming"King Julian!", closely followed by a toe-curling rendition of "I like to move it"

I always used this during guided tours as an opportunity to tell that it should actually be ‘Queen Julia’ and explain about the dominant females in this species!

 

[A.L. Gardner]

I always used this during guided tours as an opportunity to tell that it should actually be ‘Queen Julia’ and explain about the dominant females in this species!

CWP does the same. Unfortunately, as usual, the people who could do with this information are the only ones not listening...

 

[DesertRhino150]

The pelicans were probably our most expensive exhibit to feed, a trend which is true for a lot of aquatic species (having a group discussion at a conference once, I think we all settled on sea otters being the priciest dinner guests to have when once considers the cost and quantity of the food for the size of the animal).

Definitely true at Colchester Zoo - I remember hearing a keeper there late last year say that their group of smooth-coated otters were more expensive to look after than their herd of African elephants.

 

[Aardwolf]

It often passes that animals that the public shows very little interest in are the ones that most endear themselves to the keepers. Such was my experience with tawny frogmouths. I’ve worked with this species at two AZA facilities, one with ambassador animals, one with exhibit birds. We’ll primarily be talking about the exhibit birds.

The frogmouth was acquired for the zoo for a new Australian exhibit, and was initially housed in an aviary (maybe 20’ x 20’, maybe larger – I wish I’d taken more detailed measurements of exhibits that I used to work with) with a pair of kookaburras and a pair of masked lapwings. Not to be immodest, but the exhibit, while not a masterpiece of zoo engineering (built entirely in-house) was probably one of the nicer exhibits I’d seen for the species – as with many animals which are not especially active (sloths and matamatas being two species I’ve mentioned already), there is a tendency for frogmouths to get placed in exhibits that are too small, under the assumption that they won’t use the space anyway. The great thing about building exhibits yourself is that you can do it exactly the way you think it should be done. The bad thing is that you have no one else to blame when the many mistakes you made eventually come to light.

The exhibit was well-perched, with grass and dirt substrate, a small pool for water (an elevated water bowl also in case the frogmouth didn’t want to go to the ground), and an adjacent heated indoor area (I never saw him go in willingly, and in truth I was never too worried about him in the cold, but we’d need all the birds inside to close the door and get everyone warm, so in he would have to go. He’d generally step up on a perch for us and let us carry him in).

After a period of time, the frogmouth seemed to get irritated – not frightened, just annoyed – by the boisterous kooks, and was relocated to a nearby second aviary, this one shared with spotted whistling duck, straw-necked ibis, and eastern rosellas. Worth noting that the kookaburras never actually interacted with him – their flying around in preparation for breeding season just seemed to get on his nerves. I’ve seen the species housed together at other zoos, apparently with acceptable results.



Frogmouths are masters of camouflage, and look very much like broken branches (we joked that we were going to give our book a broken off tree stump as a girlfriend, and that he wouldn’t know the difference). This, coupled with their fondness for taking shelter at the highest parts of the aviary, can make them tricky for visitors to spot. It also made him a bit of a pain to feed, especially for our shorter keepers, who couldn’t reach him on the higher hiding spots. We took to keeping a bamboo pole in the keeper area. At feeding time, a keeper would hold the pole vertically, like a walking stick, balance a mouse on top of it, and then hold it up until it was at frogmouth-level. He’d quickly grab it off and gulp it down whole. Though the species is nocturnal, he’d happily eat at any time of time, which helped with showing him off to visitors.

As a side note, I wish that we’d been in a better position to feed more invertebrates to the frogmouth to create a more natural (and therefore I would presume healthier) diet. Rodents are so easy to feed in zoos that I feel that we over-rely upon them. In some species that naturally eat a lot of invertebrates, and therefore spend a lot of time foraging and digging up small morsels of food that are largely inedible chitin, I suspect that getting one relatively large packet of meat a day might be the more delectable, but overall less-desirable, feeding option. I would have loved to have still been working with the frogmouth during a cicada year – I suspect he would have had a blast. Maybe guests would even have seen him hawking for bugs on the wing. I wonder if he ever went after moths that entered the exhibit at night. As it was, we sometimes provided bowls of crickets or super worms to provide a more balanced diet.

The keepers loved the frogmouth, who they would affectionately talk to as if he was a grumpy old shut in that they would visit every day to try and cheer up, and who was always secretly pleased to see them, though he’d never admit it. They'd sometimes do their frogmouth impression, which consisted of standing as straight as possible, nose pointed up at the sky, and saying "I'm a branch, I'm a branch" over and over again, which was one of those zoo inside jokes I guess you just had to be there for to find funny. I like to think that he at least tolerated us – I never saw any signs of stress behavior or agitation directed towards keepers. In fact, he’d get excited when we came in to feed him, doing what I considered a little “happy dance” on his perch as we approached with the mouse – though I was never able to coax him to fly down to us to receive it.

Frogmouths are a popular ambassador animal, though I sometimes wonder about their suitability. They are much like owls in that, being nocturnal birds, their instinct when brought out during the day tends to be to sit very still on the glove, as if they’re hoping that no one will notice them. This makes them very “well-behaved” ambassadors, but I’ve come to suspect that it denotes more stress than calmness and acceptance on their part. Which is a shame, because using them as ambassadors offers visitors a rare chance to see them up close and admire their adaptations, from their camouflage to their gape to the whiskers of their beak. Presented alongside owls (which they are often mistaken for), they can provide an interesting lesson in how some nocturnal birds are in some ways so similar in appearance, yet are so different in many other ways.

 

[Coelacanth18]

I think a lot of visitors will forgive the lack of activity in frogmouths because their appearance alone is already fascinating and/or comical enough - similar to a lot of herps. Alligator snapping turtles are another kind of ambush predator that hardly ever seem to move, but they still get plenty of attention in zoos. It sounds like frogmouths are a relatively easy species to look after too, which might help explain how they've become so common in US zoos nowadays?

This does bring up a question for you @Aardwolf, or for anyone else reading this who has worked in zoos - regarding the balance between husbandry and exhibit value, is this something that zoos and curators take into account when filling exhibits or changing species? Are there any animals that come to mind as being both "crowd pleasers" and also very easy and cheap to care for - or on the other hand, species that often end up not being considered worth the trouble of their difficult/expensive care?

 

[Batto]

anyone else reading this who has worked in zoos - regarding the balance between husbandry and exhibit value, is this something that zoos and curators take into account when filling exhibits or changing species? Are there any animals that come to mind as being both "crowd pleasers" and also very easy and cheap to care for - or on the other hand, species that often end up not being considered worth the trouble of their difficult/expensive care?

Based on my personal experience, it depends on the people in charge and the species in question. Zoo directors with a business background and little to no zoological knowledge / fascination [which is becoming the norm in major zoos, like Zoo Salzburg] rather tend to go for the more economic, easy to obtain or what they think is the more attractive option for the majority of visitors, i.e. paying customers. Their curators and senior keepers might be able to "sneak in" more unusual species if plausibly inexpensive, easily obtainable or good for greenwashing.
Zoologically minded zoo directors and curators might try to get their favourite species in, especially in regard to breeding programs and conservation projects.
At WdG, I try to find a balance between species that are attractive and visible to the mainstream audience and elusive species like the bushmaster and the blue krait. However, all are relevant in regard to the general educative theme and purpose of the zoo. In the case of the bushmaster and the krait, these two are part of our training courses for more experienced venomous snake keepers.

 

[Aardwolf]

@Coelocanth18, echoing what @Batto said, a lot of collection planning comes down to institutional culture and personalities (especially of those at the top). Back in the day when most major zoos were helmed by a Director – usually someone who rose up through the animal staff as a keeper or curator, or had a scientific background, such as from a museum – you saw a lot more of a desire to have scientifically interesting animals, or rarely-kept animals that the staff wanted to observe or study, or a collection tailored to the interests of the staff (one major herp house I worked in was 50% venomous, 30% varanid, 20% everything else, in keeping with staff interests. Most of my section was “everything else”). Now, we see a lot more zoos run by Presidents/CEOs, usually from a non-zoo, non-scientific background, such as business or nonprofit management, and their focus is a lot more on the economic sustainability of the facility.

Despite having spent a lot of time working in reptile houses, I haven’t built up much of a resume with venomous herps. A few venomous colubrids, heloderms, a few natives, but nothing crazy. There’s only one venomous snake that I really felt like I spent a lot of time working with.

(Again, this is one of those posts where I make no pretension to expertise – this has just been my experience).

The pygmy rattlesnake is probably as good of a starter venomous snake as any other for a trainee keeper – well, probably a lot better than most. Its venom isn’t terribly potent – not saying that you should line up to get bitten, but if you do, the impact should be relatively mild. They’re sluggish, as crotalids tend to be, so less likely to pull a fast move on you. They’re small, which makes it easy to stay out of reach when servicing the exhibit – though their smallness has its disadvantages to, as they don’t sit on a hook terribly well, and tend to flop off. And, like all rattlesnakes, they’re considerate enough to (usually) give you a warning when they’re irked with you – though in this case, it’s of dubious benefit. The buzz of their tiny tails is so faint that I feel like your ear almost has to be within striking range to hear it.



At the two non-AZA zoos where I worked with this species, I was surprised (well, not really) to find that very few keepers were willing to actually work with them. This was brought to my attention when I realized that, when servicing the rattlesnakes for the first time in several days (I’d been rotated to another section), the water bowls were dry and there was a decent amount of poop and urate. I had similar experiences with tarantulas and scorpions at one of those zoos, with many keepers opting out of servicing those exhibits. To me, this screamed “management failure.” If a zoo director or curator wants a species, they need to make sure that they have sufficient staff trained and willing to take care of those species. If not, then perhaps that animal isn’t a good fit for the zoo.

To be fair, none of us were ever actually trained on venomous snakes – I had some experience and familiarity from previous AZA facilities, but it was hardly my forte, and my colleagues had none at all. That was a potential disaster in its own right. Proper training should describe not only how to safely handle or restrain/transport a snake, but how to respond in the case of a bite, from securing the animal to alerting staff and medical personnel to first aid precautions. It should also work to shape a culture of safety working around venomous animals – not handling them unnecessarily, what is acceptable versus unacceptable risk.

I’ll talk for a quick second about venom culture in American zoos. It’s really not one culture, per se, and can be highly variable based on several factors, the main one, in my experience, being geographic. Especially in the American South, my experience has been you see a keeper culture which is a bit more reckless and wild with venomous reptiles than you see in, say, the more staid northeast. Among these keepers (including some that I worked alongside for some time), there’s almost an addiction to the danger of working with venomous snakes, with safety precautions being deemed for sissies. “It’s like heroin,” one assistant curator told me, not explaining to me where his understanding of heroin came from. “You work with hot snakes, and soon you need more and more dangerous situations to get the thrill.” And this was a guy who certainly was adept at working venomous snakes. On a day when he was planning to clean the black mamba exhibit, I asked him if he’d mind if I took some pictures, and he agreed. I stood there, camera at the ready (this was pre-cellphone cameras) as he opened the back of the cage – and almost before I could even snap one photo, he’d opened the cage with one snakestick, hooked the mamba in one fluid motion, and transferred into a waiting trashcan, then plopped the lid on, seemingly in the blink of an eye.


Between when I snapped this photo and the next one, the mamba was already in the can.

The carefree attitude in some southern zoos was not helped by a culture of hard drinking and hard partying. One of the most jarring memories I have of working in that reptile house was rounding a corner and seeing a keeper slumped over at a worktable, asleep, hungover from the night before. In front of him on the table was a 20-gallon tank with a baby eyelash viper inside, which he had been trying to feed. The lid of the tank was off. He’d grown drowsy sitting their trying to coax the little snake to strike, and the heat of the building and the droning of life support systems had lulled him to sleep. I crept up and plopped the lid on the tank.

You always had to be careful, even if you weren’t the keeper. For example, one day someone rearranged the rack of Neodeshsas on my day off, and when I came back, what had once been a row of various Asian rat snakes was now home to Philippine and Samar cobras. The keys were all the same (probably not the best idea, in retrospect) so if I’d been working on autopilot, I might have opened a cage front and gotten a nasty surprise. Likewise, you could never be 100% sure if a trash can was empty, or held a snake, put your hands on a screen lid to steady yourself, and have a snake strike you through it, or who knows what. I was once cleaning a floor drain when I felt something sharp. When I jerked my hand out, there was an old bushmaster fang sticking into my finger.

Having been used to working in a building full of so many dangerous species, the pygmy rattlesnakes years later seemed like slightly nippy kielbasas.

My goal as their keeper was to maintain them to the same standard of care as the non-venomous snakes – with some safety modifications, as needed. Water got changed just as often. Poop was collected just as often; when one of our keepers was too scared to shift the snake, I duct-taped a large serving spoon to a broomstick so she could scoop out the poop. Weighed just as often. Enclosures done just as lavishly with furniture (I’ve seen some zoos in which venomous snakes have much starker enclosures than non-venomous species as a safety protocol – fewer hiding places, less clutter than a keeper could get entangled with, etc). A snake didn’t “decide” to be venomous, I told new keepers. Being venomous doesn’t mean they deserve a lesser standard of care. Fortunately, I see this viewpoint being shared more and more often in zoos around the US, and feel we’re starting to see better standards of snake care.

One last tidbit of advice, one that worked for me in my formulative years as a keeper. I mentioned that the pygmy rattlesnake is a good “starter” venomous snake? Before you get to that stage, I’d try this. Get the nastiest, bitiest, twitchiest, angriest non-venomous snake that you can. This is your practice snake. Handle, shift, clean, etc but treat it like you would if it was a highly venomous species. If you get tagged (how we often described being bitten), make a note of it. After a set period of time, look back and see how you did…

 

[Batto]

I remember you mentioning the heroin reference before. While I have no experience in the consumption of this or other drugs, I would like to add that collecting snakes in general, venomous or not, can be quite addictive, which might occassionally lead to animal hording. It's no better with spiders, especially Theraphosidae. And it doesn't help that there are some very attractive and sometimes quite inexpensive venomous snakes available at reptile expos...
I'm not too much of a thrill-seeker; in fact, working with venomous snakes is a bit of a zen exercise for me.

While a pissy non-venomous snake is a good start, the psychological effect of knowing that you're dealing with an animal that can send you to the hospital or the morgue in less than a blink of an eye is a different matter. I remember a snake handling course during which one of the instructors randomly mentioned that the big rattlesnake you just hooked killed a man three weeks prior. The snake suddenly seemed to have increased in size and weight. And don't get me started on cobra tail spurs...
Being quick yet determined and focused around a mamba is key to surviving. Being tired and hangover when force-feeding a venomous snake is rather the opposite...
I'm not too much of a fan of pygmy rattlesnakes, but I appreciate you giving it the care it deserved. Thanks for that.

The keys were all the same (probably not the best idea, in retrospect) so if I’d been working on autopilot, I might have opened a cage front and gotten a nasty surprise.

An issue I like to address during courses.

Proper training should describe not only how to safely handle or restrain/transport a snake, but how to respond in the case of a bite, from securing the animal to alerting staff and medical personnel to first aid precautions. It should also work to shape a culture of safety working around venomous animals – not handling them unnecessarily, what is acceptable versus unacceptable risk.

True - and hence all part of my training courses. I've attended quite a bunch of snake handling courses all over the world; only a few addressed the aspect of proper first aid and options to avoid direct contact.

 

[Great Argus]

You always had to be careful, even if you weren’t the keeper. For example, one day someone rearranged the rack of Neodeshsas on my day off, and when I came back, what had once been a row of various Asian rat snakes was now home to Philippine and Samar cobras. The keys were all the same (probably not the best idea, in retrospect) so if I’d been working on autopilot, I might have opened a cage front and gotten a nasty surprise. Likewise, you could never be 100% sure if a trash can was empty, or held a snake, put your hands on a screen lid to steady yourself, and have a snake strike you through it, or who knows what. I was once cleaning a floor drain when I felt something sharp. When I jerked my hand out, there was an old bushmaster fang sticking into my finger.

This sounds like a real stressful job indeed! That first one with non-venomous getting unknowingly changed to venomous, good gracious...

 

[Batto]

That first one with non-venomous getting unknowingly changed to venomous, good gracious...

With Samar and especially Philippine cobras being some of the most dangerous cobra species to work with...

 

[Aardwolf]

That reptile house had a lot of challenges to it, to be sure – most of which came down toa fairly typical problem of major zoo reptile houses – it was crazily overstocked. About ¼ of the collection was on exhibit, while behind the scenes were hundreds of additional animals – some for breeding, some for research, and some for… you know, I never quite figured out why. There were racks of snakes and lizards, tubs of turtles and tortoises, and row upon row of frog tanks. Nearly 1000 animals, with half a dozen keepers, two supervisors, and a curator.

That meant that we were often running on autopilot in order to keep things moving – sometimes with potentially dangerous results, sometimes with ones that seemed comical at first, but were concerning when you looked back at them. I had a row of tubs of tortoises – stars, flat-tailed, spiders, etc – that were in my care, and every other day, I gave them all a plate of salad. One of those tubs was empty of animals – it just had a little half-log hide in it. I came in one day from my weekend and was collecting all of the old salad plates to clean, when I saw that there was a plate of salad (untouched, obviously), in the empty tub. At the time, we joked about how the considerate keeper had made sure t feed the log – but looking back, it was an indication that we were spread so thin that we weren’t even really checking the animals in some cases. What if there had been a tortoise in there, but it was sick, or injured? No one was really looking, they were just adding salad, topping off water, and moving on. Thankfully, I feel like we’re starting to see less of the hoarding that has been alluded to in zoo herp houses.

Even before The Lion King, warthogs were popular exhibit animals, even if their popularity seems to be eclipsed by red river hogs these days. There was a time when they were something of a rarity in US zoos, their import into the country limited by requirements put in place to protect the pork industry. I’ve volunteered with warthogs at one AZA facility, and worked with them as a keeper/supervisor at two non-AZA.

One striking difference for me between the AZA and non-AZA was that at the AZA we were strictly protected contact with the animals, but at the non-AZA, we would occasionally go in with them. We had the capacity to work them protected contact, and we usually did. The problem came when the female began nesting and appeared ready to give birth, and we were told to separate the male. This, unfortunately, coincided with the middle of winter, and we only had one indoor heated stall, which the female took, requiring the male to stay outside. To keep him warm in the winter, we spread enormous round bales of hay over the exhibit, blanketing the entire muddy yard in hay, so that he could bed down in it. The trouble was, we could seldom find him in this mass of hay, as he was unwilling to come out on cold days from wherever he was buried, so we’d have to go in looking for him. There was more than one scary occasion in which I waded through a morass of wet hay and half-frozen mud, looking for the pig, only to suddenly hear a grunt – and realize, to my dread, that it was coming from directly beneath me.


Our big male warthog, trotting about on a nice spring day.
If there is one important, practical lesson that I’ve learned from working in zoos over the years, it is this – always build more holding space (especially indoor holding) than you think you need. Always.

For the female, in turn, we’d simply open the door to her indoor stall a crack, slide in a bowl of food, grab the old bowl, and top off the water, usually while she poked her head out from her nest of hay and glowered at us. After three years of dealing with these stressful winter arrangements, it was disheartening that we only ever got stillborns.


Our would-be mama warthog - much less warty than the male, with much smaller tusks

There wasn’t a tremendous difference in the warthog exhibits between the AZA and non-AZA zoos. Suids are hard on their exhibits, with the result that even well-furnished habitats soon become muddy yards (usually a thin layer of grass would crop up in the spring, only to be churned into oblivion by the pigs), except for where they are rocky yards. The AZA exhibit at least had some slightly varied terrain, as well as a few large pre-existing trees which the yard was built around. Diet consisted of grain, along with fruits and vegetables (at one of the non-AZAs, we had a bucket where we’d toss the odds and ends from the day’s produce chopping, such as lettuce ends and other leftover bits, then toss those to the warthogs.

Personality-wise, I’ve found warthogs to be personable, intelligent, and overall enjoyable animals to work with. They respond readily to training – I remember as a teen volunteer training a male to sit like a dog, then handing him an apple as a reward – by hand was frothy with saliva when I drew it back. Tey enjoy having their bristly hides scratched, and I’d always recommend building some scratching post feature in their enclosure (such as fastening the head of a push broom against a wall so they can rub against it. They are very inquisitive and love to root around with objects for enrichment – a bucket with holes in the bottom, hung from a branch with a rope and filled with treats, is a favorite enrichment item, as is anything that they can roll around, like a boomer ball. A good mud wallow is essential, but it’s important to have some drier areas as well. They’re prone to getting their tusks caught of things, sometimes resulting in chippage or breakage. No real harm done to the animal, as far as I can tell.


Cuddling with a young warthog in holding at one non-AZA facility

I’ve seen younger animals harnessed and used as ambassadors, and suspect that’s what we would have done had any of our piglets been born live. I can see the appeal of using youngsters, but suspect that they’d outgrow that role before too long – trying to take an adult male for a walk seems like a it pretty soon turn into something akin to waterskiing on dry land.

 

[Coelacanth18]

Suids are hard on their exhibits, with the result that even well-furnished habitats soon become muddy yards (usually a thin layer of grass would crop up in the spring, only to be churned into oblivion by the pigs), except for where they are rocky yards.

As an example: Fresno's warthog exhibit. First photo is from spring 2019, right before they moved in:

And this is what it looked like by my next revisit in 2022:

There was more than one scary occasion in which I waded through a morass of wet hay and half-frozen mud, looking for the pig, only to suddenly hear a grunt – and realize, to my dread, that it was coming from directly beneath me.

I think warthogs (and wild pigs in general) are one of those animals that many people sorely underestimate the danger of; they seem cute and calm much of the time and they're certainly not the largest or most aggressive animals in their ecosystem... but this is a species that evolved alongside countless dangerous predators - lions, hyenas, leopards, painted dogs, crocodiles, etc. Their first instinct in the wild is to bolt, but if they're cornered and can't run they could easily put someone in the hospital. I don't think I'd ever want to work with an adult warthog free contact!

 

[Strathmorezoo]

That reptile house had a lot of challenges to it, to be sure – most of which came down toa fairly typical problem of major zoo reptile houses – it was crazily overstocked. About ¼ of the collection was on exhibit, while behind the scenes were hundreds of additional animals – some for breeding, some for research, and some for… you know, I never quite figured out why. There were racks of snakes and lizards, tubs of turtles and tortoises, and row upon row of frog tanks. Nearly 1000 animals, with half a dozen keepers, two supervisors, and a curator.

That meant that we were often running on autopilot in order to keep things moving – sometimes with potentially dangerous results, sometimes with ones that seemed comical at first, but were concerning when you looked back at them. I had a row of tubs of tortoises – stars, flat-tailed, spiders, etc – that were in my care, and every other day, I gave them all a plate of salad. One of those tubs was empty of animals – it just had a little half-log hide in it. I came in one day from my weekend and was collecting all of the old salad plates to clean, when I saw that there was a plate of salad (untouched, obviously), in the empty tub. At the time, we joked about how the considerate keeper had made sure t feed the log – but looking back, it was an indication that we were spread so thin that we weren’t even really checking the animals in some cases. What if there had been a tortoise in there, but it was sick, or injured? No one was really looking, they were just adding salad, topping off water, and moving on. Thankfully, I feel like we’re starting to see less of the hoarding that has been alluded to in zoo herp houses.

Even before The Lion King, warthogs were popular exhibit animals, even if their popularity seems to be eclipsed by red river hogs these days. There was a time when they were something of a rarity in US zoos, their import into the country limited by requirements put in place to protect the pork industry. I’ve volunteered with warthogs at one AZA facility, and worked with them as a keeper/supervisor at two non-AZA.

One striking difference for me between the AZA and non-AZA was that at the AZA we were strictly protected contact with the animals, but at the non-AZA, we would occasionally go in with them. We had the capacity to work them protected contact, and we usually did. The problem came when the female began nesting and appeared ready to give birth, and we were told to separate the male. This, unfortunately, coincided with the middle of winter, and we only had one indoor heated stall, which the female took, requiring the male to stay outside. To keep him warm in the winter, we spread enormous round bales of hay over the exhibit, blanketing the entire muddy yard in hay, so that he could bed down in it. The trouble was, we could seldom find him in this mass of hay, as he was unwilling to come out on cold days from wherever he was buried, so we’d have to go in looking for him. There was more than one scary occasion in which I waded through a morass of wet hay and half-frozen mud, looking for the pig, only to suddenly hear a grunt – and realize, to my dread, that it was coming from directly beneath me.

View attachment 771019
Our big male warthog, trotting about on a nice spring day.
If there is one important, practical lesson that I’ve learned from working in zoos over the years, it is this – always build more holding space (especially indoor holding) than you think you need. Always.

For the female, in turn, we’d simply open the door to her indoor stall a crack, slide in a bowl of food, grab the old bowl, and top off the water, usually while she poked her head out from her nest of hay and glowered at us. After three years of dealing with these stressful winter arrangements, it was disheartening that we only ever got stillborns.

View attachment 771020
Our would-be mama warthog - much less warty than the male, with much smaller tusks

There wasn’t a tremendous difference in the warthog exhibits between the AZA and non-AZA zoos. Suids are hard on their exhibits, with the result that even well-furnished habitats soon become muddy yards (usually a thin layer of grass would crop up in the spring, only to be churned into oblivion by the pigs), except for where they are rocky yards. The AZA exhibit at least had some slightly varied terrain, as well as a few large pre-existing trees which the yard was built around. Diet consisted of grain, along with fruits and vegetables (at one of the non-AZAs, we had a bucket where we’d toss the odds and ends from the day’s produce chopping, such as lettuce ends and other leftover bits, then toss those to the warthogs.

Personality-wise, I’ve found warthogs to be personable, intelligent, and overall enjoyable animals to work with. They respond readily to training – I remember as a teen volunteer training a male to sit like a dog, then handing him an apple as a reward – by hand was frothy with saliva when I drew it back. Tey enjoy having their bristly hides scratched, and I’d always recommend building some scratching post feature in their enclosure (such as fastening the head of a push broom against a wall so they can rub against it. They are very inquisitive and love to root around with objects for enrichment – a bucket with holes in the bottom, hung from a branch with a rope and filled with treats, is a favorite enrichment item, as is anything that they can roll around, like a boomer ball. A good mud wallow is essential, but it’s important to have some drier areas as well. They’re prone to getting their tusks caught of things, sometimes resulting in chippage or breakage. No real harm done to the animal, as far as I can tell.

View attachment 771018
Cuddling with a young warthog in holding at one non-AZA facility

I’ve seen younger animals harnessed and used as ambassadors, and suspect that’s what we would have done had any of our piglets been born live. I can see the appeal of using youngsters, but suspect that they’d outgrow that role before too long – trying to take an adult male for a walk seems like a it pretty soon turn into something akin to waterskiing on dry land.

I completely agree with your comment about surplus indoor accommodation because you can guarantee as soon as you fill up surplus indoor areas, come the cold weather you will need one.

 

[tigris115]

For warthogs and other suids, would an enclosure of stuff like mulch and leaf litter be better than grass?

It's far less likely to be ruined and it goes more with the rootling behavior of pigs.

 

[lintworm]

For warthogs and other suids, would an enclosure of stuff like mulch and leaf litter be better than grass?

It's far less likely to be ruined and it goes more with the rootling behavior of pigs.

Not for warthogs who are also very much grazers.

 

[Aardwolf]

I remember being very excited on my first day of working as a keeper for American beavers. I’d seen the species in the wild before – usually quick glances before it dove underwater – but very seldom in zoos. Not that it’s rarely exhibited – just that you rarely actually see them, which is a viewpoint I believe I’ve heard expressed by more than one exasperated member of this page. So even though they weren’t one of the more exotic or unusual animals that I got to work with in that new role, they were perhaps the animal I was most curious about getting to know better.



As it turned out, the beavers in our zoo (AZA) were hard animals to get to know. They were very disinclined to be active, and in the summer months I usually only saw them awake and active at the very end of the day. I made a habit of feeding them last, so that I could be present for that brief moment of action.

They were not in an exhibit which did a tremendous job of displaying them, with two pools, connected by a small concrete slide; the exhibit would probably have been better if they had been designed as one large pool (the upper one was essentially a small, deep cone of useless design). There was a lodge with a window for the visitors, but the beavers were almost impossible to see in it (they dug themselves into the dirt substrate and lay flat in it), and most visitors flat out refused to believe that we actually had them. When the beavers did come out, though – usually at the very end of the day, but as the weather got cooler, they’d come out a little earlier every day – they were instant hits. Few visitors could believe just how huge they were – I think most were expecting an animal more on the scale of a housecat.

The beavers shared their exhibit with a variety of duck species, as well as black-crowned night herons, a screech owl (later replaced with a crow), and pond sliders. Box turtles were also part of the mix, but the beavers had a regrettable habit of carrying the turtles around in their mouths, so we eventually removed them.


A beaver with wood ducks and green-winged teal in the background. The trusty metal bowl is in the foreground, destined to be at the bottom of the pool before the end of the day.

One thing I enjoyed about the beavers was feeding them. The daily diet consisted of wild herbivore grain (originally rodent block, but we switched it out), along with apple, pear, sweet potato, carrot, and lettuce. Diet prep took a second for them – no need to chop – and when I approached the exhibit at the end of the day, they were usually at the door waiting for me, tugging at the wire and making excited grunts. More often than not, one would literally flop into the keeper area with me when I opened the door, than follow me back in close to my heels. I’d usually hand each beaver one piece of produce, than toss whatever pieces of produce would float into the pools. Though beavers are largely herbivores, I learned soon that I had to put the food bowls for the night herons (full of chopped fish and ground meat) in elevated feeders – if I put them on the ground, the beavers would eat the meat. Likewise, I had to feed the ducks in the morning, when the beavers were asleep, otherwise the beavers would scarf down their food. The beavers were some of the only animals in the zoo which had their own reserved food bowls – large metal ones, to keep them from chewing on them. No matter where I put the bowls, in the morning they were often at the bottom of a pool.

We also provided branches and browse, of course, but I was surprised at how little more pair seemed to be interested in gnawing. Gnawing, of course, is what is needed to keep their growing teeth under control. The female had a condition from before she arrived in which her jaw failed to line up 100% properly, so her teeth didn’t wear down as well as they should. Every few months, you’d notice that her lower incisors were jutting out wildly, and she’d have to be sedated to have them trimmed back down.


A young participant in our "Zookeeper for a Day" program helping me feed the beavers

What I disliked about taking care of the beavers was the constant cleaning of the pools. It was rare that we could go more than two days without a water change. Not only did they exclusively poop in the pools (which made getting a fecal sample for the vets a challenge), but they dug constantly, throwing large quantities of dirt in the water until it was completely opaque. There were a few times that I walked into the exhibit and was surprised when a beaver surfaced in the water; the pool was so dark and dirty than a giant rodent was able to submerge in it without me noticing before.

Being natives, the beavers were able to comfortably be outdoors year round, and seemed to prefer the cooler months to the summer. Certainly more visitors saw them in the autumn and winter than they did in the warmer months. While they were not the best as exhibit animals, they were great for special tours and seeing them was always a highlight for visitors on evening programs. On slow days, or as part of tours, I’d open up the beaver lodge access door to let visitors meet the beavers face-to-face. I always liked to check them first, though – our beavers slept like the dead, and there were more than a few scary moments for me as I’d try to check that they were okay. One on occasion, the female did not respond to my pats, then gentle shakes, and then vigorous pokes. It wasn’t until I grabbed her by a leg and started to jerk her out of the den (with me convinced she was dead at this point) that she awoke with a start, and then looked at me curiously, wandering what all the fuss was about.