The grayness of the photo is not the only thing leading to this conclusion. Hoolock seems like a good bet, too.
A Zoo Man's Notebook, 2025
- Thread starter Aardwolf
- Start date
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Well, don’t know what to tell you guys then, I can only assume that he was some sort of gibbon hybrid and they chose Lar for how he would be designated. This same facility also had a bobcat that was actually a Eurasian lynx/bobcat hybrid, and I’ve worked with a gemsbok/scimitar-horned oryx hybrid that was generally referred to as the later, so this was probably the same thing. I wish I had more photographs of him for comparison, but given the poor camera I had back then, the difficulty in photographing this particular individual, and the relatively brief time I was at that facility, it’s all we’ve got
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
I agree with your comment about some animals taking an instant dislike to you, especially on your first meeting . My first day working with Black Lemur, a devoted pair that had several young over the years, the male seemed to hate me from the first time that I entered its enclosure and immediately went to attack me. Fortunately, I had a broom with me and fended him off and i left the enclosure quicker than I had entered it. The female on the other hand was totally different, always very well behaved and seemed to enjoy my company when the male was safely locked away .
Your comment about inferior animal accommodation immediately reminded me of the indoor housing for African Lions at a certain zoo I worked in. When encouraging the Lions to be locked in by putting meat into the indoor area the male lion would rush into it with such force he would hit the back wall which would make the roof bounce up causing a crack of about 1 inch. The roof and the sides were made of exterior plywood. Needless to say working with the Lions was always a hurried affair, even when I got used to the idea of the roof suddenly flying off,which of course it never did. The indoor housing was eventually replaced with bricks.
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, noted that you offered the Siamangs mini marshmallow, I do this with Tamarins and Marmosets, because they love them, I find its a good way of indicating if they are off colour if they show no interest. Also I find it a good way for having to give them anti biotic during vet care. They seem to know straight away if I try to hide it in fruit but they take it with marshmallow, no problem. Thanks again for the entertaining posts
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Today, we’ll take a look at some interesting birds that, all too often, get overlooked by folks as “filler species,” and not appreciated for the beautiful birds that they are – the geese and sheldgeese. (As was touched on briefly in the swan post, waterfowl taxonomy is in constant flux and what birds count as sheldgeese is up for some debate – but a secret about taxonomy in zoos is that, apart from determining if two animals are of the same species/subspecies for breeding purposes, taxonomy doesn’t really matter that much. If it looks/acts like a goose, you manage it like a goose).
My experience is with five species, spread over two facilities. At a non-AZA facility, we had a large pond, on which we kept bar-headed geese and Egyptian geese. While the Egyptians were flight restricted, the bar-heads, curiously, were not. The zoo had changed ownership hands a few times, and I think that the bar-heads were acquired by a previous owner, who had opted not to clip them, and allowed them free range. That meant that I was never 100% sure on how many there were supposed to be, and it wasn’t uncommon to see one on the wing (in their wild state, the species flies over the Himalayas). They also mingled freely with the wild Canada geese, and I did notice some of those Canadas had lighter coloring and some patterning quirks which led me to suspect some hybridization had been going on.
A bar-headed goose with a Canada goose friend (not one which showed evidence of hybridization)
The bar-heads and Egyptians had run of the zoo, until the pond (which they also shared with assorted domestic ducks) was deemed as “attractive nuisance” and a fence was run around the whole thing to keep kids away. Later, a pair of Reeves muntjacs were added to the newly formed enclosure. Later still, the pond was opened up to paddle-boats that visitors could rent, to which the geese (I’m just going to use the words “geese” and “goose” to also include sheldgeese from here on out) paid not a bit of attention. The birds were among the lowest maintenance animals I ever cared for, with the main headache associated with them being the enormous hordes of wild waterfowl that were attracted to her feeder. The challenge is that our birds were warier of the keepers than the wild birds were, so if I tried to stand guard over the grain trough, the Canada geese and mallards will still come up to feed, while the Egyptians and bar-heads hung back. This was about 15 years ago, mind you – I feel like in today’s era of HPAI, I’d end up writing the whole pond off.
At an AZA zoo, we had snow geese (blue and white phases) and Andean geese together in a large, fenced-in yard with a section of creek running through it, which they shared with Patagonian cavies. Elsewhere in the zoo were Orinoco geese, housed alternatively with a variety of other birds (curassows, conures, Amazons, cuckoos, tinamous), as well as sloth, small primates, tortoises, and iguanas. The originally plan had been to put them in our capybara exhibit, but that exhibit was so large and so open that we feared that we’d either be unable to manage them in it, or they’d be grabbed up predators, so into an enclosed exhibit they went.
Geese as a whole tend to be some of the more terrestrial waterfowl, and the sheldgeese certainly are too. While the bar-heads and snow geese would take to the water fairly often, I rarely saw Egyptian geese swim, and the Orinoco geese never. Our Andean geese would do whatever it took to avoid going in the water, and if pursued until they had no option, they made the strangest sight while swimming. They ride so low in the water and swim with such an obvious effort that you can tell it’s not their natural element.
As I’d mentioned, the Orinoco geese were originally slated for an open-top exhibit, and as such, we’d acquired a flight-restricted trio. Had we known they’d have gone into an aviary, it would have been nice to have left them full-winged, as I think that they would have benefited from the tall perching in that exhibit, and maybe we would have had better luck breeding them. They struck as very attractive, charismatic birds, and I especially enjoyed watching the male strut around with his puffed-up chest and crocked wings, in what’s known as the triumph display (the male Andean did this quite often too), trying to show off to his consorts.
When I first became a more serious waterfowl keeper, the first thing I did was set out to buy a good reference book, and after some hemming and hawing, I eventually bought a phone book sized copy of Frank Todd’s Waterfowl: Ducks, Geese, and Swans of the World, which I began to study every night. I learned in it (and had gleaned from conversation with other keepers) that sheldgeese are supposed to be highly aggressive and territorial birds; the Andean geese in particular were described as absolute savages, and Todd seemed to think that they’d rip other birds to pieces. My experiences were far different; much as with the bar-heads and Egyptians (another species that supposedly has a tough guy reputation) at my previous, non-AZA zoo, I was constantly exasperated by the unwillingness of the Andean geese to stand up for themselves in the face of the avian invaders who stole their food and strutted around like they owned the exhibit. Our Orinocos were likewise fairly meek, and were moved out of own aviary into a different exhibit in the face of bullying from the curassow.
I see the label “aggressive” thrown around a lot with waterfowl, everywhere from curators who are afraid to add a species to their exhibits because they’ve heard it’s aggressive, to folks on this forum who plan their speculative zoos, and folks in the comments tell them certain species just won’t work because they’re aggressive. I prefer to think of it, in most cases, as being assertive, not aggressive, and in many situations just labeling a bird as aggressive is a lazy cover for poor husbandry or exhibit design. If you give birds enough space, an environment that’s complex and varied enough that they can avoid each other, ideally leave species full-winged (especially beneficial for whistling ducks and perching ducks, as it lets them have an entire layer of the exhibit that other waterfowl won’t utilize as much), even supposedly “savage” species can usually get along fine.
My experience is with five species, spread over two facilities. At a non-AZA facility, we had a large pond, on which we kept bar-headed geese and Egyptian geese. While the Egyptians were flight restricted, the bar-heads, curiously, were not. The zoo had changed ownership hands a few times, and I think that the bar-heads were acquired by a previous owner, who had opted not to clip them, and allowed them free range. That meant that I was never 100% sure on how many there were supposed to be, and it wasn’t uncommon to see one on the wing (in their wild state, the species flies over the Himalayas). They also mingled freely with the wild Canada geese, and I did notice some of those Canadas had lighter coloring and some patterning quirks which led me to suspect some hybridization had been going on.
A bar-headed goose with a Canada goose friend (not one which showed evidence of hybridization)
The bar-heads and Egyptians had run of the zoo, until the pond (which they also shared with assorted domestic ducks) was deemed as “attractive nuisance” and a fence was run around the whole thing to keep kids away. Later, a pair of Reeves muntjacs were added to the newly formed enclosure. Later still, the pond was opened up to paddle-boats that visitors could rent, to which the geese (I’m just going to use the words “geese” and “goose” to also include sheldgeese from here on out) paid not a bit of attention. The birds were among the lowest maintenance animals I ever cared for, with the main headache associated with them being the enormous hordes of wild waterfowl that were attracted to her feeder. The challenge is that our birds were warier of the keepers than the wild birds were, so if I tried to stand guard over the grain trough, the Canada geese and mallards will still come up to feed, while the Egyptians and bar-heads hung back. This was about 15 years ago, mind you – I feel like in today’s era of HPAI, I’d end up writing the whole pond off.
At an AZA zoo, we had snow geese (blue and white phases) and Andean geese together in a large, fenced-in yard with a section of creek running through it, which they shared with Patagonian cavies. Elsewhere in the zoo were Orinoco geese, housed alternatively with a variety of other birds (curassows, conures, Amazons, cuckoos, tinamous), as well as sloth, small primates, tortoises, and iguanas. The originally plan had been to put them in our capybara exhibit, but that exhibit was so large and so open that we feared that we’d either be unable to manage them in it, or they’d be grabbed up predators, so into an enclosed exhibit they went.
Geese as a whole tend to be some of the more terrestrial waterfowl, and the sheldgeese certainly are too. While the bar-heads and snow geese would take to the water fairly often, I rarely saw Egyptian geese swim, and the Orinoco geese never. Our Andean geese would do whatever it took to avoid going in the water, and if pursued until they had no option, they made the strangest sight while swimming. They ride so low in the water and swim with such an obvious effort that you can tell it’s not their natural element.
As I’d mentioned, the Orinoco geese were originally slated for an open-top exhibit, and as such, we’d acquired a flight-restricted trio. Had we known they’d have gone into an aviary, it would have been nice to have left them full-winged, as I think that they would have benefited from the tall perching in that exhibit, and maybe we would have had better luck breeding them. They struck as very attractive, charismatic birds, and I especially enjoyed watching the male strut around with his puffed-up chest and crocked wings, in what’s known as the triumph display (the male Andean did this quite often too), trying to show off to his consorts.
When I first became a more serious waterfowl keeper, the first thing I did was set out to buy a good reference book, and after some hemming and hawing, I eventually bought a phone book sized copy of Frank Todd’s Waterfowl: Ducks, Geese, and Swans of the World, which I began to study every night. I learned in it (and had gleaned from conversation with other keepers) that sheldgeese are supposed to be highly aggressive and territorial birds; the Andean geese in particular were described as absolute savages, and Todd seemed to think that they’d rip other birds to pieces. My experiences were far different; much as with the bar-heads and Egyptians (another species that supposedly has a tough guy reputation) at my previous, non-AZA zoo, I was constantly exasperated by the unwillingness of the Andean geese to stand up for themselves in the face of the avian invaders who stole their food and strutted around like they owned the exhibit. Our Orinocos were likewise fairly meek, and were moved out of own aviary into a different exhibit in the face of bullying from the curassow.
I see the label “aggressive” thrown around a lot with waterfowl, everywhere from curators who are afraid to add a species to their exhibits because they’ve heard it’s aggressive, to folks on this forum who plan their speculative zoos, and folks in the comments tell them certain species just won’t work because they’re aggressive. I prefer to think of it, in most cases, as being assertive, not aggressive, and in many situations just labeling a bird as aggressive is a lazy cover for poor husbandry or exhibit design. If you give birds enough space, an environment that’s complex and varied enough that they can avoid each other, ideally leave species full-winged (especially beneficial for whistling ducks and perching ducks, as it lets them have an entire layer of the exhibit that other waterfowl won’t utilize as much), even supposedly “savage” species can usually get along fine.
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Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
In one of my earliest entries in this thread, I described my experiences with macaws. My experiences with another group of psittacines has been fairly similar… if a bit more so.
"Cockatoos guard the gates of hell." So a curator told me one day after a particularly trying morning of being bitten, chased, and screamed at, and I've seldom had cause to disagree with her.
Compared to macaws, the majority of the cockatoos that I’ve worked with have been, almost all of them surrendered pets, have been more neurotic, more emotionally needy, and more prone to the sort of loud, piercing, nonstop screaming that really makes you consider taking a power drill to your forehead.
I’ve worked with three species of cockatoos that fall into the former-pet category – umbrella (AKA white), citron crested, and Moluccan (AKA salmon-crested). I’m mostly going to be talking about the Moluccan.
Tutu was pretty. I knew that. Everyone who worked with her knew that. She had the sort of coloration you'd get if you tossed a bright red garment into the wash with all of your whites and let it bleed out onto them. She was also smart as a whip, had a wicked sense of humor, and could whistle perfectly melodious tunes all day long. Of course, out of all of my coworkers, I was the only one who was ever in a position to really appreciate any of these. That's because I'm the only one who's face Tutu wasn't always trying to rip off.
She was a former pet, surrendered to our zoo by an owner who couldn't handle her high-maintenance self, which would have been a great thing for them to have realized before they bought her. Like many former pet parrots, Tutu had poor socialization skills, was easily bored, was highly destructive, and could scream for hours if she didn't get her way. Unlike most former pet parrots that I worked with, Tutu liked me. A lot. I'm pretty sure that from the moment that she first laid eyes on me, she was already starting to pick out names for our future kids.
The keepers called her my "work wife." They stopped laughing the first time that nutcracker of a beak snapped shut inches from their nose. The problem was that Tutu's love for me came at the expense of everyone else. She loathed every single other person that we worked with, and if she saw a female colleague get to close to me, her rage was uncontrollable (though she never seemed angry at me for this perceived infidelity). At best, she was grudgingly cooperative with the other staff, sometimes letting them tend to her unmolested, sometimes not.
This was especially unpleasant because Tutu had to be carried back and forth each day in the spring and fall between her unheated outdoor enclosure and her indoor holding. I remember watching keepers carrying her outside with their arms stretched as far away from their faces as possible; they wore the kind of expression you'd expect to see on the face of a soldier who was carrying a live grenade with the pin pulled out. As a result, most days I had to be the one to ferry her around, which meant that I often had to plan my days around Tutu. I was always living in fear that the day would come when I'd be off, home and relaxing, when I'd get a panicked call from work, saying that Tutu had darted up a tree, or was lunging at anyone who came close and couldn't be carried in, so would I please come and get my stupid bird?
(The one job that I was excused for with Tutu was her beak trims – we wanted there to be at least one member of the staff she didn’t hate. The towel trick that I mentioned with the macaws was also used on her to good effect)
If I'd been in charge and planning from the beginning, I don't think I would have indulged Tutu so much. I would have socialized with her and played with her still, sure, but I would have made more of an effort to rotate other keepers to her instead of doing what was easier and surrendering to her whims. Everyone needed to learn to work with Tutu, and Tutu needed to learn to work with everyone. Eventually, she did start to settle and become more tractable with other keepers. A week could pass at a time without my needing to do anything with her. That's just as well, because eventually, I did leave to take a job at a different zoo.
Before I drove away on that last day, I made one slow, careful inspection of my car. I needed to make sure that none of my coworkers had slipped a pink, feathery passenger into the backseat as a goodbye gift.
Besides Tutu, I’ve also worked with several umbrella cockatoos which, to a bird, have been train wrecks. Severe feather plucking, endless screams, volatile personalities. It’s amazed me that I’ve never seen what I would call a behaviorally-competent, well-socialized umbrella cockatoo in my entire life. I almost want to make it a professional goal to round up a lot of umbrella cockatoos that are in somewhat decent shape and put them in a large, naturalistic aviary and let them be cockatoos. I got the idea after seeing a similar exhibit for African grays at Columbus – a chance to think of the birds actually as wild animals, not as feathery little people with severe neurosis.
In contrast to the umbrellas and Moluccans (the one citron-crested I worked with was a fairly bland bird, and I don’t have many memories of her, apart from wheeling her cage in and out of our reptile house on warm summer days – she was a fairly laid-back bird), I worked with one additional cockatoo species. This one, more due to circumstances than anything, quickly became my favorites.
I had a lovely pair of galahs, or rose-breasted cockatoos, at one non-AZA zoos (with the exception of one of the umbrellas, all of my cockatoo experience is non-AZA). I found them lovely not just because of their appearance, but because they actually behaved like cockatoos. They were a bonded pair in a flight cage that, if not especially natural, was at least large enough to allow them to fly back and forth, rather than a small, stuffy bird cage. They preened each other, used enrichment, and overall did parrot things. Even when they were occasionally aggressive towards me, such as when they were nesting and I was checking on them (several eggs, none fertile), it was a good aggression, a natural one, rather than the crazed rage of the other cockatoos. There were many aspects of their care that I would have liked to improve upon, looking back with experience and hindsight – but hands-down, they were the happiest, best adjusted cockatoos that I ever worked with.
For those reasons, I've always wanted to work with palm cockatoos - often considered the gentle giants of the cockatoos, and the one species which is subject to an AZA managed program - but the opportunity never presented itself. I think I'd have found it a lot more satisfying to be a palm cockatoo zookeeper than the nursemaid to a bunch of screaming little feather demons.
"Cockatoos guard the gates of hell." So a curator told me one day after a particularly trying morning of being bitten, chased, and screamed at, and I've seldom had cause to disagree with her.
Compared to macaws, the majority of the cockatoos that I’ve worked with have been, almost all of them surrendered pets, have been more neurotic, more emotionally needy, and more prone to the sort of loud, piercing, nonstop screaming that really makes you consider taking a power drill to your forehead.
I’ve worked with three species of cockatoos that fall into the former-pet category – umbrella (AKA white), citron crested, and Moluccan (AKA salmon-crested). I’m mostly going to be talking about the Moluccan.
Tutu was pretty. I knew that. Everyone who worked with her knew that. She had the sort of coloration you'd get if you tossed a bright red garment into the wash with all of your whites and let it bleed out onto them. She was also smart as a whip, had a wicked sense of humor, and could whistle perfectly melodious tunes all day long. Of course, out of all of my coworkers, I was the only one who was ever in a position to really appreciate any of these. That's because I'm the only one who's face Tutu wasn't always trying to rip off.
She was a former pet, surrendered to our zoo by an owner who couldn't handle her high-maintenance self, which would have been a great thing for them to have realized before they bought her. Like many former pet parrots, Tutu had poor socialization skills, was easily bored, was highly destructive, and could scream for hours if she didn't get her way. Unlike most former pet parrots that I worked with, Tutu liked me. A lot. I'm pretty sure that from the moment that she first laid eyes on me, she was already starting to pick out names for our future kids.
The keepers called her my "work wife." They stopped laughing the first time that nutcracker of a beak snapped shut inches from their nose. The problem was that Tutu's love for me came at the expense of everyone else. She loathed every single other person that we worked with, and if she saw a female colleague get to close to me, her rage was uncontrollable (though she never seemed angry at me for this perceived infidelity). At best, she was grudgingly cooperative with the other staff, sometimes letting them tend to her unmolested, sometimes not.
This was especially unpleasant because Tutu had to be carried back and forth each day in the spring and fall between her unheated outdoor enclosure and her indoor holding. I remember watching keepers carrying her outside with their arms stretched as far away from their faces as possible; they wore the kind of expression you'd expect to see on the face of a soldier who was carrying a live grenade with the pin pulled out. As a result, most days I had to be the one to ferry her around, which meant that I often had to plan my days around Tutu. I was always living in fear that the day would come when I'd be off, home and relaxing, when I'd get a panicked call from work, saying that Tutu had darted up a tree, or was lunging at anyone who came close and couldn't be carried in, so would I please come and get my stupid bird?
(The one job that I was excused for with Tutu was her beak trims – we wanted there to be at least one member of the staff she didn’t hate. The towel trick that I mentioned with the macaws was also used on her to good effect)
If I'd been in charge and planning from the beginning, I don't think I would have indulged Tutu so much. I would have socialized with her and played with her still, sure, but I would have made more of an effort to rotate other keepers to her instead of doing what was easier and surrendering to her whims. Everyone needed to learn to work with Tutu, and Tutu needed to learn to work with everyone. Eventually, she did start to settle and become more tractable with other keepers. A week could pass at a time without my needing to do anything with her. That's just as well, because eventually, I did leave to take a job at a different zoo.
Before I drove away on that last day, I made one slow, careful inspection of my car. I needed to make sure that none of my coworkers had slipped a pink, feathery passenger into the backseat as a goodbye gift.
Besides Tutu, I’ve also worked with several umbrella cockatoos which, to a bird, have been train wrecks. Severe feather plucking, endless screams, volatile personalities. It’s amazed me that I’ve never seen what I would call a behaviorally-competent, well-socialized umbrella cockatoo in my entire life. I almost want to make it a professional goal to round up a lot of umbrella cockatoos that are in somewhat decent shape and put them in a large, naturalistic aviary and let them be cockatoos. I got the idea after seeing a similar exhibit for African grays at Columbus – a chance to think of the birds actually as wild animals, not as feathery little people with severe neurosis.
In contrast to the umbrellas and Moluccans (the one citron-crested I worked with was a fairly bland bird, and I don’t have many memories of her, apart from wheeling her cage in and out of our reptile house on warm summer days – she was a fairly laid-back bird), I worked with one additional cockatoo species. This one, more due to circumstances than anything, quickly became my favorites.
I had a lovely pair of galahs, or rose-breasted cockatoos, at one non-AZA zoos (with the exception of one of the umbrellas, all of my cockatoo experience is non-AZA). I found them lovely not just because of their appearance, but because they actually behaved like cockatoos. They were a bonded pair in a flight cage that, if not especially natural, was at least large enough to allow them to fly back and forth, rather than a small, stuffy bird cage. They preened each other, used enrichment, and overall did parrot things. Even when they were occasionally aggressive towards me, such as when they were nesting and I was checking on them (several eggs, none fertile), it was a good aggression, a natural one, rather than the crazed rage of the other cockatoos. There were many aspects of their care that I would have liked to improve upon, looking back with experience and hindsight – but hands-down, they were the happiest, best adjusted cockatoos that I ever worked with.
For those reasons, I've always wanted to work with palm cockatoos - often considered the gentle giants of the cockatoos, and the one species which is subject to an AZA managed program - but the opportunity never presented itself. I think I'd have found it a lot more satisfying to be a palm cockatoo zookeeper than the nursemaid to a bunch of screaming little feather demons.
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I had to laugh out loud when reading your cockatoo part. They have character and wits and unfortunately they are pretty. In my view one of the parrot groups that is least suitable for a pet situation. Palms are amazing, the are amazingly smart but a lot more mellow. Brilliant to work with. I guess you would love to work with the other species of black cockatoo as well. Not as extreme in behaviour as the white cockatoos and stunning.
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
I agree with you that Zoos/Bird Gardens seem to be the places where people try to offload their pets because they can no longer cope with them. Personally, I would like to see more legislation like the UK will be doing with primates,with regards to the ownership of Cockatoo and other large psitacines. However, I once owned a Red Vented Cockatoo over 40 years ago, which I found for sale in a pet shop. The owner had no idea what species it was and cost me £100. It was a male, due to it having black eyes, although DNA these days would confirm it either way . I knew then,that I couldn't keep it properly, so I contacted a friend of my dad who owned a private zoo which specialised in birds. He agreed to take the bird and paid me £100. He thought that to get a mate for the bird would be difficult so housed it with other Cockatoos in a very large aviary . Unfortunately a mate was never found but at least it lived a contented life for the next 14 years when it unfortunately died.
Plus-Sized Scribe
New Member
Reading through the thread here...
... and this caught my attention. I've not been to the Detroit Zoo in a little while, but I must ask what the "personal philosophical grudge" is with Detroit!
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
The thing that’s always really exasperated me about pet surrenders is that the former pet owners always seem to think that they’re the ones doing us the favor – like it’s been my life’s dream to except their spur-thighed tortoise with a shell ravaged by severe metabolic bone disease, or a cockatoo that only has 27% of its body covered with feathers… like, yes, thank you, I look forward to spending the next several years laboriously trying to undo your shoddy animal care, what an honor it is…
I’ve worked with a wide variety of amphibians over the course of my career, but some of the strangest have been the caecilians. I’ve worked with two species over the course of my career… well, really it’s one and a half.
The Mexican caecilian was perhaps the most non-entity zoo animal I’ve ever worked with. They were kept in tubs of soil in the back of our reptile house, which was probably as frank of an admission that we were going to get that they had no exhibit potential. I think I only ever actually saw them on a few very rare occasions during my time working in that building. Mostly, I added moisture to the soil and dropped the occasional earthworm or cricket in for them, then made sure that the lid was secure. They seemed to be a species of interest to our designated amphibian keeper, who guarded them jealously from most of the reptile keepers, who she regarded (not entirely unjustly) as being idiots. As a result, all the care that they really required came from her, and on her days off, I (being the youngest and therefore presumably the least-corrupted by the bonehead culture of the building) was asked to do the bare minimum for the caecilians in order to hold them over until she returned.
I’m actually not positive why we even had them. I suspect a lot of curators at other zoos would have felt the same way, as I hadn’t seen the species before, and I haven’t seen them since.
Far more common as an exhibit animal – and far more engaging as a keeper – were the aquatic caecilians, sometimes called rubber eels. We had a tank of them on exhibit, as well as several behind the scenes. The exhibit was lushly planted and furnished with rocks and driftwood, so it wasn’t uncommon for visitors to only have a peek at the animals, maybe a gray coil sticking out of a crevice. The tanks behind the scenes were much starker, as off-exhibit accommodations often are, which meant that it was a lot easier for me to watch them as they swam around their tank in sinuous motions.
Apart from water changes, the main interaction I had with the aquatic caecilians was feeding them. This was done by plucking an earthworm with a pair of forceps and waving it in the water in front of the caecilians, hopefully coaxing them to eventually bite. This didn’t always happen quickly, and I sometimes spent long periods of time sitting in a roller chair in front of the caecilian tanks, waving the worm around, trying to decide what manner of movement would be the most likely to entice the caecilian to bite. So much time did I spend doing this that I even developed a little song that I would sing (quietly) to the caecilians as I tried to coax them.
Caecilians are not very active predators, which can work well for keepers, as it allows them to house a large, strange looking amphibians with smaller, active, colorful fish, reasonably secure that the fish will be unmolested.
For reasons that I could never understand, I found the idea of being bitten by a caecilian very unsettling, and I flinched a bit whenever one lifted its head out of the water and appeared to look at me with its tiny, vestigial eyes. The surprising violence with which they (eventually) seized the worms always startled me, and there was something about being bitten by an animal that didn’t really have a face that I just found creepy.
Perhaps my most memorable caecilian memory came with the death of one of our larger female specimens. One of the vets popped in to take a look and, for reasons best known to him, decided to do the necropsy there, on the reptile house counter, rather than back at the hospital. When he slit the female open, I was startled to see that she was filled with black, noodle-like forms. It took me a little while to realize that she had been on the cusp of giving birth to a brood of young caecilians before her untimely passing.
I’ve worked with a wide variety of amphibians over the course of my career, but some of the strangest have been the caecilians. I’ve worked with two species over the course of my career… well, really it’s one and a half.
The Mexican caecilian was perhaps the most non-entity zoo animal I’ve ever worked with. They were kept in tubs of soil in the back of our reptile house, which was probably as frank of an admission that we were going to get that they had no exhibit potential. I think I only ever actually saw them on a few very rare occasions during my time working in that building. Mostly, I added moisture to the soil and dropped the occasional earthworm or cricket in for them, then made sure that the lid was secure. They seemed to be a species of interest to our designated amphibian keeper, who guarded them jealously from most of the reptile keepers, who she regarded (not entirely unjustly) as being idiots. As a result, all the care that they really required came from her, and on her days off, I (being the youngest and therefore presumably the least-corrupted by the bonehead culture of the building) was asked to do the bare minimum for the caecilians in order to hold them over until she returned.
I’m actually not positive why we even had them. I suspect a lot of curators at other zoos would have felt the same way, as I hadn’t seen the species before, and I haven’t seen them since.
Far more common as an exhibit animal – and far more engaging as a keeper – were the aquatic caecilians, sometimes called rubber eels. We had a tank of them on exhibit, as well as several behind the scenes. The exhibit was lushly planted and furnished with rocks and driftwood, so it wasn’t uncommon for visitors to only have a peek at the animals, maybe a gray coil sticking out of a crevice. The tanks behind the scenes were much starker, as off-exhibit accommodations often are, which meant that it was a lot easier for me to watch them as they swam around their tank in sinuous motions.
Apart from water changes, the main interaction I had with the aquatic caecilians was feeding them. This was done by plucking an earthworm with a pair of forceps and waving it in the water in front of the caecilians, hopefully coaxing them to eventually bite. This didn’t always happen quickly, and I sometimes spent long periods of time sitting in a roller chair in front of the caecilian tanks, waving the worm around, trying to decide what manner of movement would be the most likely to entice the caecilian to bite. So much time did I spend doing this that I even developed a little song that I would sing (quietly) to the caecilians as I tried to coax them.
Caecilians are not very active predators, which can work well for keepers, as it allows them to house a large, strange looking amphibians with smaller, active, colorful fish, reasonably secure that the fish will be unmolested.
For reasons that I could never understand, I found the idea of being bitten by a caecilian very unsettling, and I flinched a bit whenever one lifted its head out of the water and appeared to look at me with its tiny, vestigial eyes. The surprising violence with which they (eventually) seized the worms always startled me, and there was something about being bitten by an animal that didn’t really have a face that I just found creepy.
Perhaps my most memorable caecilian memory came with the death of one of our larger female specimens. One of the vets popped in to take a look and, for reasons best known to him, decided to do the necropsy there, on the reptile house counter, rather than back at the hospital. When he slit the female open, I was startled to see that she was filled with black, noodle-like forms. It took me a little while to realize that she had been on the cusp of giving birth to a brood of young caecilians before her untimely passing.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
I would’ve shared a caecilian pic yesterday, but though I have a million aquatic caecilian photos, the only one I took of the caecilians that I worked with was a photo of the necropsy mentioned at the end, and I didn’t want to dump that on any delicate stomachs. It never occurred to me to take a pic of the Mexicans… not that I ever really saw much of them anyway.
Moving on down from capybara and American beaver, the next rodent of unusual size I’ll talk about is the Cape porcupine, which I worked with at one AZA and two non-AZA zoos. At all three of those facilities, the species was called African crested porcupine, the divide between the two species being fairly nebulous at the time, if it even was on anyone’s radar.
In keeping with what I described for other species (coati, spider monkey, warthog), the porcupines were largely managed protected contact at the AZA zoo, free contact at the two non-AZAs. The AZA animals were in a grotto with mulch substrate and some deadfall – it was fairly typical in size of what I’ve often seen for that species, though they’ve since moved to a much larger, grassier yard, which was originally built for another species. At the back of the exhibit was a small, heated holding stall. Seeing the porcupines in the larger, more natural exhibit was quite a treat, and it goes to show that many animals will use all the space and environmental complexity that they can get, regardless of what we think is “enough” for them.
Porcupines are tremendous diggers, and exhibits need dig barriers. Especially in small enclosures, the habitat often looks like a minefield after the animals have gone to work on it
At the two non-AZAs, the exhibits were much smaller and plainer, basically a hog-panel enclosed patch of dirt with a small shed towards the back of the yard, with a heat lamp and a lot of hay for bedding (inferior winter holding in unaccredited zoos is, regrettably, another trend that I feel I’ve been harping on in this thread). The non-AZA porcupines were kept outside year-round. Granted, they can be reasonably cold hardy, and I saw the AZA pair go outside on snowy days fairly often, but I think some zoos do make a mistake of assuming that “surviving” = “thriving” in these cases.
Diet was a base of commercial pellets (rodent block at the AZA, a mixture of dog chow and petting barn grain at the non-AZAs), along with produce – especially “hard” produce, such as carrots and sweet potatoes. Whereas with primates and other small animals it can be beneficial to chop their produce up small to scatter to promote foraging, with porcupines and other rodents, you want to give them big pieces, preferably whole produce, to give them more to gnaw on. Like other rodents, they benefit from gnawing and other browse opportunities, but I’ve also found that they really enjoy deer antlers (the two non-AZA zoos both had safari park components, so we always had lots of shed antlers). They are highly food-motivated which, given the small enclosures that they are often kept in, can lead to problems with obesity (and as with many animals – and people – once an animal gets overweight, it can be very hard to bring it back down). I’ve heard of similar problems in exhibits that porcupines share with primates, with the porcupines scarfing up lots of dropped monkey chow and produce.
The porcupine that I remember the best was the unoriginally named Mr. Quills, a lone male housed at a non-AZA zoo in what was the shabbiest of exhibits at the three zoos. Mr. Quills, like most of the animals there, nominally double-functioned as an ambassador animal. I say “nominally” because only a single keeper in the zoo could actually manage him. The porcupine would tolerate any of us coming into his enclosure for cleaning (he left one pile of dog-like poop in the corner every day) and feeding. This was just as well, because with the size of the enclosure, sharing space with a porcupine who was not tolerant of your presence could have been a bit challenging. What he would not tolerate, however, was anyone putting on his harness and leash – unless it was his one beloved keeper. Every time I walked up to the fence (the gate was a pain to work and the fence was only waist high, so we usually just climbed over it), he’d run up excitedly… then, he’d see it was me, and not his favorite keeper, sigh, and putter away to sulk in the corner while I cleaned. If I did try to harness him – well, he had feelings about that, chomping his jaws and rattling his quills. When he was mad at us, it was interesting that he tried to bite us rather than quill us, not that either seemed very pleasant.
Mr. Quills eating out of the hand of his favorite keeper
When his favorite keeper came, however, he was a very different animal, trotting around excitedly, making little jumps, wriggling his backside, which made his quills rattle. He’d happily let himself he harnessed and taken for a stroll. I’ve heard some folks on the forum speak dimly of zoo animals being taken for walks, especially if the sense is that it’s done more for show or to let kids pet an animal. I do feel that taking animals for walks, in the right circumstances, is excellent enrichment – new substrates, new smells, new experiences. This was especially true for Quills, who lived in a rather small exhibit that lacked much in the way of stimulation. After Mr. Quills finished playing with his keeper, he’d often… well, “celebrate” the good times by devoting some special attention to his metal food bowl… which I learned to remove for cleaning immediately after, if I had reason to suspect I’d be taking care of him the next day. That stuff was extremely hard to clean off after it dried and hardened… (who wouldn’t want to be a zookeeper, it’s so glamorous!).
I don’t think I’ve ever met a single Hystrix keeper (or a keeper who’s even worked in the vicinity of the genus) that doesn’t have at least a few of the large, impressive quills as keepsakes. Unlike those of, say, North American or prehensile-tailed porcupines, the quills of this genus can be very impressive, some thicker than pencils. They shed naturally and fall out all the time, so it’s very easy to collect them in large numbers. The tips can range from somewhat blunt to needle sharp, and I can easily imagine the kind of damage that a porcupine could do if it rammed back into you at full speed.
As a fundraising idea, and inspired by a recent trip to East Africa (where I saw this species in the wild), I took some of the larger quills and tried to cut them up into beads, then to string them on wire to make necklaces or bracelets for sale at the zoo. Many African cultures utilize porcupine quills in this way (I have a necklace and bracelet from my travels), but it takes skill and patience, both of which I seemed to lack.
Moving on down from capybara and American beaver, the next rodent of unusual size I’ll talk about is the Cape porcupine, which I worked with at one AZA and two non-AZA zoos. At all three of those facilities, the species was called African crested porcupine, the divide between the two species being fairly nebulous at the time, if it even was on anyone’s radar.
In keeping with what I described for other species (coati, spider monkey, warthog), the porcupines were largely managed protected contact at the AZA zoo, free contact at the two non-AZAs. The AZA animals were in a grotto with mulch substrate and some deadfall – it was fairly typical in size of what I’ve often seen for that species, though they’ve since moved to a much larger, grassier yard, which was originally built for another species. At the back of the exhibit was a small, heated holding stall. Seeing the porcupines in the larger, more natural exhibit was quite a treat, and it goes to show that many animals will use all the space and environmental complexity that they can get, regardless of what we think is “enough” for them.
Porcupines are tremendous diggers, and exhibits need dig barriers. Especially in small enclosures, the habitat often looks like a minefield after the animals have gone to work on it
At the two non-AZAs, the exhibits were much smaller and plainer, basically a hog-panel enclosed patch of dirt with a small shed towards the back of the yard, with a heat lamp and a lot of hay for bedding (inferior winter holding in unaccredited zoos is, regrettably, another trend that I feel I’ve been harping on in this thread). The non-AZA porcupines were kept outside year-round. Granted, they can be reasonably cold hardy, and I saw the AZA pair go outside on snowy days fairly often, but I think some zoos do make a mistake of assuming that “surviving” = “thriving” in these cases.
Diet was a base of commercial pellets (rodent block at the AZA, a mixture of dog chow and petting barn grain at the non-AZAs), along with produce – especially “hard” produce, such as carrots and sweet potatoes. Whereas with primates and other small animals it can be beneficial to chop their produce up small to scatter to promote foraging, with porcupines and other rodents, you want to give them big pieces, preferably whole produce, to give them more to gnaw on. Like other rodents, they benefit from gnawing and other browse opportunities, but I’ve also found that they really enjoy deer antlers (the two non-AZA zoos both had safari park components, so we always had lots of shed antlers). They are highly food-motivated which, given the small enclosures that they are often kept in, can lead to problems with obesity (and as with many animals – and people – once an animal gets overweight, it can be very hard to bring it back down). I’ve heard of similar problems in exhibits that porcupines share with primates, with the porcupines scarfing up lots of dropped monkey chow and produce.
The porcupine that I remember the best was the unoriginally named Mr. Quills, a lone male housed at a non-AZA zoo in what was the shabbiest of exhibits at the three zoos. Mr. Quills, like most of the animals there, nominally double-functioned as an ambassador animal. I say “nominally” because only a single keeper in the zoo could actually manage him. The porcupine would tolerate any of us coming into his enclosure for cleaning (he left one pile of dog-like poop in the corner every day) and feeding. This was just as well, because with the size of the enclosure, sharing space with a porcupine who was not tolerant of your presence could have been a bit challenging. What he would not tolerate, however, was anyone putting on his harness and leash – unless it was his one beloved keeper. Every time I walked up to the fence (the gate was a pain to work and the fence was only waist high, so we usually just climbed over it), he’d run up excitedly… then, he’d see it was me, and not his favorite keeper, sigh, and putter away to sulk in the corner while I cleaned. If I did try to harness him – well, he had feelings about that, chomping his jaws and rattling his quills. When he was mad at us, it was interesting that he tried to bite us rather than quill us, not that either seemed very pleasant.
Mr. Quills eating out of the hand of his favorite keeper
When his favorite keeper came, however, he was a very different animal, trotting around excitedly, making little jumps, wriggling his backside, which made his quills rattle. He’d happily let himself he harnessed and taken for a stroll. I’ve heard some folks on the forum speak dimly of zoo animals being taken for walks, especially if the sense is that it’s done more for show or to let kids pet an animal. I do feel that taking animals for walks, in the right circumstances, is excellent enrichment – new substrates, new smells, new experiences. This was especially true for Quills, who lived in a rather small exhibit that lacked much in the way of stimulation. After Mr. Quills finished playing with his keeper, he’d often… well, “celebrate” the good times by devoting some special attention to his metal food bowl… which I learned to remove for cleaning immediately after, if I had reason to suspect I’d be taking care of him the next day. That stuff was extremely hard to clean off after it dried and hardened… (who wouldn’t want to be a zookeeper, it’s so glamorous!).
I don’t think I’ve ever met a single Hystrix keeper (or a keeper who’s even worked in the vicinity of the genus) that doesn’t have at least a few of the large, impressive quills as keepsakes. Unlike those of, say, North American or prehensile-tailed porcupines, the quills of this genus can be very impressive, some thicker than pencils. They shed naturally and fall out all the time, so it’s very easy to collect them in large numbers. The tips can range from somewhat blunt to needle sharp, and I can easily imagine the kind of damage that a porcupine could do if it rammed back into you at full speed.
As a fundraising idea, and inspired by a recent trip to East Africa (where I saw this species in the wild), I took some of the larger quills and tried to cut them up into beads, then to string them on wire to make necklaces or bracelets for sale at the zoo. Many African cultures utilize porcupine quills in this way (I have a necklace and bracelet from my travels), but it takes skill and patience, both of which I seemed to lack.
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Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
I like your comment regarding taking animals for a walk, if they actively look forward to it, especially if their enclosure is not great,why not. Like yourself, I too ,have a collection of quills which I treasure.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Looking back over the last few decades, I’d almost say that there have been more days in my post-college life when I have seen a giraffe than days when I haven’t. They’re easily one of the most common of the ABC species, abundant both in AZA and non-AZA facilities. Even many smaller zoos have them (especially since the popularization of giraffe feeding stations), and it sometimes feels like the only zoos that don’t have them are those in which giraffes don’t fit for thematic/zoogeographic reasons.
I mention all of this because it surprised me a great deal to look back and realize that, though I’ve been in the presence of giraffes for so many years, I’ve only worked with them at two zoos – two very different zoos, with very different experiences.
The AZA zoo had a herd of five giraffes, all females. Four were what we’d today call reticulated (and this was twenty years ago, so these animals may very well have been pure reticulated) and a single Masai. The only real difference I noticed was that the Masai was much shier than the retics (for sake of argument we’ll just call them that), though the fact that she was a) much younger and b) a newcomer to this facility probably had more to do with that than any genetic traits. The giraffes had a decent-sized grassy yard, which was adjacent to a house with indoor viewing (in my zoo nomenclature, I consider it a “house” if the public has access to the indoor area, a “barn” or “den” if they do not).
As popular as they are, I feel like I’ve rarely seen a truly great giraffe exhibit. Most of them tend to look alike – flat, plain, and relatively uninteresting, like a scaled-up version of the sort of pen we keep the domestics in the farmyard areas in. I feel like the only really remarkable exhibits I’ve seen for these animals have been ones that are exceptionally large and a bit more varied, such as Living Desert, White Oak (I was tickled pink to see a giraffe exhibit with trees taller than the giraffes), and, of course, San Diego Wild Animal Park. Giraffes do not get water features, except an occasional wet moat. The terrain in their habitat is very flat – no commanding mountains for caprids, for example. There tend to be minimal obstructions. It’s usually just… an open space. Sometimes with a feeder pole, or a tall shade structure… and these days, inevitably, a feeding platform at one end of the yard.
The flatness is by design, because giraffes are notoriously poor of footing (you’d think a species with a name that translates to “one who walks quickly” would have a bit surer of footing, but here we are). They do not do well on steep terrain, and they don’t do well on wet, slippery ground, with the result that many zoos don’t let their animals out on days when it is even moderately rainy. The cold they can handle moderately well – but the wet, no, and it’s frustrating to have one of those beautiful winter days when the sun is out and it’s the first warm day in weeks, but you can’t let the giraffes enjoy it because it’s too muddy from the rapidly-melting snow, and they’d be likely to slip and fall.
I can understand this logic, because if there is one thing zoo vets fear (actually, in my experience, there are a lot of things they fear – they tend to be a neurotic bunch), it’s a giraffe that requires medical treatment, and especially anesthesia. That impressive neck and respiratory system that they species is famous for makes them the devil to sedate, and you typically only knock down a giraffe if you have zero other options. The invention of the GRD – giraffe restraint device – was supposed to help reduce the need for such procedures by encouraging more voluntary care, but giraffes are very skittish beasts, and some individuals never agree to use such a device in their entire lives.
Despite the challenges they posed, I really loved our giraffe herd. It didn’t take long to learn to recognize each of the four retics by the quirks of their patterning, and soon I got to know their personalities and past histories. My favorite thing to do was climb up a ladder in the back of their indoor holding to a platform where their hayrack was, and busy myself with filling it while they busied themselves with pulling it out just as quickly. I’d usually pocket a few treats to bring up with me and handfeed them there, enjoying their long, black tongues slipping out to grasp the treat. This was in the days before giraffe feeding experiences were everywhere, and it felt like such a unique opportunity to be so close and so contended with such a massive animal. As boring as I’m sure many users of this forum now find these exhibits, as commonplace as they are, I really am glad that we’ve developed a way to bring visitors (for whom this would be a once in a life opportunity) together with such remarkable animals.
The drinking buckets were also hung from up here, sparing our girls the awkward duty of having to spread their legs and drop into a low position to drink, as they would in the wild.
In addition to the hay that I mentioned, the giraffes were also fed grain, as well as produce (especially lettuce) and lots of leafy browse.
Under usual circumstances, they are easy to clean up after – more raking up spilled hay than cleaning their grape-sized droppings, which often scatter after falling from such a height. I’ve usually found the smell of giraffes – and the barns that they inhabit – to be quite pleasant.
Usually.
My experience with a lone male giraffe at a non-AZA zoo was decidedly less pleasant. For both of us.
He was kept in a cavernous, foul-smelling barn (which, to be fair, was also shared by many other animals, contributing to the smell), almost entirely devoid of light except for a few dim bulbs, and whatever came in naturally when the door to his outdoor yard was open. The outdoor yard was a relatively small plot of stone dust with a wire and wood fence encircling in. I felt like my relatively short tenure at that zoo was a very cold, wet one, so it seemed like he never went out, and as a result, I had to clean around him.
He did not like that. Not one bit.
I’d be raking as quietly and quickly as I could, but his impatience would inevitable boil over and he’d come at me. Once he swung his neck down low in a menacing arc; I’d read Grzimek’s description of how a bull giraffe walloped an adult male eland with his head in such a fashion and sent the antelope flying like a golf ball, and I was very determined not to be on the receiving end. Other times, he’d kick out at me, and I’d scurry to a crevice of the barn until he moved away and I could make it back to the exit. As a result of his bad temper, the barn seldom got cleaned very well. On my first day, I thought I’d had it all swept up – until I noticed a small hole in the floor, about the size of a quarter. I bent down and picked at it (keeping an eye on the giraffe), and was horrified with a chunk came up.
What I’d thought was the floor was actually a solid, compacted layer of giraffe dung.
Our cranky bull on a rare day outside in the sun
That giraffe fortunately moved to a better, newer exhibit at that zoo before he died years later, and even got a female companion. It made me happy to know that his lot improved – as much as he disliked me, I never held any hard feelings towards him.
I mention all of this because it surprised me a great deal to look back and realize that, though I’ve been in the presence of giraffes for so many years, I’ve only worked with them at two zoos – two very different zoos, with very different experiences.
The AZA zoo had a herd of five giraffes, all females. Four were what we’d today call reticulated (and this was twenty years ago, so these animals may very well have been pure reticulated) and a single Masai. The only real difference I noticed was that the Masai was much shier than the retics (for sake of argument we’ll just call them that), though the fact that she was a) much younger and b) a newcomer to this facility probably had more to do with that than any genetic traits. The giraffes had a decent-sized grassy yard, which was adjacent to a house with indoor viewing (in my zoo nomenclature, I consider it a “house” if the public has access to the indoor area, a “barn” or “den” if they do not).
As popular as they are, I feel like I’ve rarely seen a truly great giraffe exhibit. Most of them tend to look alike – flat, plain, and relatively uninteresting, like a scaled-up version of the sort of pen we keep the domestics in the farmyard areas in. I feel like the only really remarkable exhibits I’ve seen for these animals have been ones that are exceptionally large and a bit more varied, such as Living Desert, White Oak (I was tickled pink to see a giraffe exhibit with trees taller than the giraffes), and, of course, San Diego Wild Animal Park. Giraffes do not get water features, except an occasional wet moat. The terrain in their habitat is very flat – no commanding mountains for caprids, for example. There tend to be minimal obstructions. It’s usually just… an open space. Sometimes with a feeder pole, or a tall shade structure… and these days, inevitably, a feeding platform at one end of the yard.
The flatness is by design, because giraffes are notoriously poor of footing (you’d think a species with a name that translates to “one who walks quickly” would have a bit surer of footing, but here we are). They do not do well on steep terrain, and they don’t do well on wet, slippery ground, with the result that many zoos don’t let their animals out on days when it is even moderately rainy. The cold they can handle moderately well – but the wet, no, and it’s frustrating to have one of those beautiful winter days when the sun is out and it’s the first warm day in weeks, but you can’t let the giraffes enjoy it because it’s too muddy from the rapidly-melting snow, and they’d be likely to slip and fall.
I can understand this logic, because if there is one thing zoo vets fear (actually, in my experience, there are a lot of things they fear – they tend to be a neurotic bunch), it’s a giraffe that requires medical treatment, and especially anesthesia. That impressive neck and respiratory system that they species is famous for makes them the devil to sedate, and you typically only knock down a giraffe if you have zero other options. The invention of the GRD – giraffe restraint device – was supposed to help reduce the need for such procedures by encouraging more voluntary care, but giraffes are very skittish beasts, and some individuals never agree to use such a device in their entire lives.
Despite the challenges they posed, I really loved our giraffe herd. It didn’t take long to learn to recognize each of the four retics by the quirks of their patterning, and soon I got to know their personalities and past histories. My favorite thing to do was climb up a ladder in the back of their indoor holding to a platform where their hayrack was, and busy myself with filling it while they busied themselves with pulling it out just as quickly. I’d usually pocket a few treats to bring up with me and handfeed them there, enjoying their long, black tongues slipping out to grasp the treat. This was in the days before giraffe feeding experiences were everywhere, and it felt like such a unique opportunity to be so close and so contended with such a massive animal. As boring as I’m sure many users of this forum now find these exhibits, as commonplace as they are, I really am glad that we’ve developed a way to bring visitors (for whom this would be a once in a life opportunity) together with such remarkable animals.
The drinking buckets were also hung from up here, sparing our girls the awkward duty of having to spread their legs and drop into a low position to drink, as they would in the wild.
In addition to the hay that I mentioned, the giraffes were also fed grain, as well as produce (especially lettuce) and lots of leafy browse.
Under usual circumstances, they are easy to clean up after – more raking up spilled hay than cleaning their grape-sized droppings, which often scatter after falling from such a height. I’ve usually found the smell of giraffes – and the barns that they inhabit – to be quite pleasant.
Usually.
My experience with a lone male giraffe at a non-AZA zoo was decidedly less pleasant. For both of us.
He was kept in a cavernous, foul-smelling barn (which, to be fair, was also shared by many other animals, contributing to the smell), almost entirely devoid of light except for a few dim bulbs, and whatever came in naturally when the door to his outdoor yard was open. The outdoor yard was a relatively small plot of stone dust with a wire and wood fence encircling in. I felt like my relatively short tenure at that zoo was a very cold, wet one, so it seemed like he never went out, and as a result, I had to clean around him.
He did not like that. Not one bit.
I’d be raking as quietly and quickly as I could, but his impatience would inevitable boil over and he’d come at me. Once he swung his neck down low in a menacing arc; I’d read Grzimek’s description of how a bull giraffe walloped an adult male eland with his head in such a fashion and sent the antelope flying like a golf ball, and I was very determined not to be on the receiving end. Other times, he’d kick out at me, and I’d scurry to a crevice of the barn until he moved away and I could make it back to the exit. As a result of his bad temper, the barn seldom got cleaned very well. On my first day, I thought I’d had it all swept up – until I noticed a small hole in the floor, about the size of a quarter. I bent down and picked at it (keeping an eye on the giraffe), and was horrified with a chunk came up.
What I’d thought was the floor was actually a solid, compacted layer of giraffe dung.
Our cranky bull on a rare day outside in the sun
That giraffe fortunately moved to a better, newer exhibit at that zoo before he died years later, and even got a female companion. It made me happy to know that his lot improved – as much as he disliked me, I never held any hard feelings towards him.
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Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
I have seen a female rear up and tried to kick a keeper that had his back to her. I shouted a warning to him, he moved in the nick of time and fortunately she missed him. That was scary!
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
When I wrote my post describing my experiences caring for greater roadrunners (Post 65), I also alluded to their exhibit mates, the burrowing owls. Today, I’ll dive a little deeper into my experience with those interesting little raptors.
The burrowing owls lived in a modest-sized enclosure built of wood and wire in the shade of a large pine tree. They shared their living space with a gopher tortoise, with the tortoise and the owls completely ignoring each other. Care for the owls was fairly limited – I’d put out a fresh owl of water every day, not that I ever saw them drink, and gave them one mouse or chick per owl each day. The owls were fairly tolerant of our presence in the exhibit, though made a point of keeping their distance from us (which was just as well because the exhibit lacked a keeper area, and I was always afraid of the tennis ball-sized birds slipping out past me. They didn’t respond to enrichment, there was no plan in place for training them, they never had any health issues, and they were tolerant of all weather conditions. In many ways, they were the ultimate low maintenance animals. I could go days at a time on autopilot, taking care of them but not really thinking about them.
All of this changed when the pine tree fell – and landed on the exhibit.
The exhibit sustained severe damage, but not severe enough as to allow the owls to escape or be harmed. We caught them up and relocated them (and the tortoise) to off-exhibit holding while we set about cleaning up the mess and planning to rebuild. It was following this rebuild that the roadrunners were added to the mix, while the tortoise went on to live elsewhere in the zoo. The renovations included a greatly enlarged footprint, a keeper area, an indoor component (for the roadrunners really, not the owls), and a burrow nest chamber. Upon returning to the exhibit, I noticed that the owls spent a lot more time out and about. I wondered if this was in part due to the tree’s removal, which allowed a lot more sunlight to reach the exhibit.
It was around this time that we also swapped out burrowing owls, sending one bird out to another zoo, bringing in another to form a breeding pair. And boy, did the new pair take too it.
In many cases, population management in birds can be fairly simple, because they all lay eggs. If you want to limit the number of offspring produced, or prevent reproduction altogether, you pull some of the eggs, or put in dummies, or what have you. This only works, of course, if you can access the eggs, As part of our burrowing owl renovations, we built a new burrow nest system – it was above ground, to protect nesting owls from flooding, built beneath a big mound of dirt, accessible with some tubing we covered with dirt and rocks. We did not build keeper access to the nest chamber into the design, which in hindsight was a fairly obvious error, but we hadn’t been able to access burrowing owl nests in the past, so didn’t think of it.
The difference was, this burrowing owl pair went into reproductive overdrive. We were delighted with the first clutch of little owlets. The second was a welcome surprise. After that, it got a little excessive.
You first got your hint that the owls had eggs or chicks in the nest when the parents starting waiting at the door for you with food everyday, grabbing everything you offered and immediately racing into the burrow. We began adding more food, and they continued hoarding. Sometimes, we’d hear a faint buzzing noise from down in the burrow, like the buzz of a rattlesnake. And then, eventually, we’d see the chicks crowding the entrance tube of the burrow, peering out suspiciously at the outside world. Soon, they’d be fully grown and flapping all over the exhibit. They certainly had a way of filling up the habitat and made a delightful exhibit.
This photo was taken while our owls were in parenting mode; this bird is tolerating me getting on the ground for a close up photo because it's expecting me to hand it a mouse in a second. They wouldn't have put up with this close of an approach in the past.
Eventually we built in access to the nest box so we could curtail breeding. Some of the surplus offspring were turned into ambassador animals, as the SSP wouldn’t be able to place them all. Years earlier, in the less-regulated days, this zoo had let its burrowing owls be free-ranging and free-breeding, semi-wild on zoo grounds, something that government agencies would have probably not appreciated these days (we were outside the natural range of the species).
Burrowing owls are, in many ways, the superior exhibit owl. Sure, they’re tiny – but visitors love tiny animals, even if they are convinced that they’re all babies. Unlike many owls, they are social and diurnal, which works well for exhibit purposes, and mix well with a variety of species – roadrunners, tortoises, parrots, prairie dogs. I loved our burrowing owl exhibit post renovation, and considered it one of the finest I’d seen. If there was one thing I wish we could have done differently (and I’m not sure how this would have worked with the existing terrain), it would have been to either have the exhibit elevated or the visitor viewing slightly depressed, putting the small, terrestrial owls more on eye-level with visitors.
The burrowing owls lived in a modest-sized enclosure built of wood and wire in the shade of a large pine tree. They shared their living space with a gopher tortoise, with the tortoise and the owls completely ignoring each other. Care for the owls was fairly limited – I’d put out a fresh owl of water every day, not that I ever saw them drink, and gave them one mouse or chick per owl each day. The owls were fairly tolerant of our presence in the exhibit, though made a point of keeping their distance from us (which was just as well because the exhibit lacked a keeper area, and I was always afraid of the tennis ball-sized birds slipping out past me. They didn’t respond to enrichment, there was no plan in place for training them, they never had any health issues, and they were tolerant of all weather conditions. In many ways, they were the ultimate low maintenance animals. I could go days at a time on autopilot, taking care of them but not really thinking about them.
All of this changed when the pine tree fell – and landed on the exhibit.
The exhibit sustained severe damage, but not severe enough as to allow the owls to escape or be harmed. We caught them up and relocated them (and the tortoise) to off-exhibit holding while we set about cleaning up the mess and planning to rebuild. It was following this rebuild that the roadrunners were added to the mix, while the tortoise went on to live elsewhere in the zoo. The renovations included a greatly enlarged footprint, a keeper area, an indoor component (for the roadrunners really, not the owls), and a burrow nest chamber. Upon returning to the exhibit, I noticed that the owls spent a lot more time out and about. I wondered if this was in part due to the tree’s removal, which allowed a lot more sunlight to reach the exhibit.
It was around this time that we also swapped out burrowing owls, sending one bird out to another zoo, bringing in another to form a breeding pair. And boy, did the new pair take too it.
In many cases, population management in birds can be fairly simple, because they all lay eggs. If you want to limit the number of offspring produced, or prevent reproduction altogether, you pull some of the eggs, or put in dummies, or what have you. This only works, of course, if you can access the eggs, As part of our burrowing owl renovations, we built a new burrow nest system – it was above ground, to protect nesting owls from flooding, built beneath a big mound of dirt, accessible with some tubing we covered with dirt and rocks. We did not build keeper access to the nest chamber into the design, which in hindsight was a fairly obvious error, but we hadn’t been able to access burrowing owl nests in the past, so didn’t think of it.
The difference was, this burrowing owl pair went into reproductive overdrive. We were delighted with the first clutch of little owlets. The second was a welcome surprise. After that, it got a little excessive.
You first got your hint that the owls had eggs or chicks in the nest when the parents starting waiting at the door for you with food everyday, grabbing everything you offered and immediately racing into the burrow. We began adding more food, and they continued hoarding. Sometimes, we’d hear a faint buzzing noise from down in the burrow, like the buzz of a rattlesnake. And then, eventually, we’d see the chicks crowding the entrance tube of the burrow, peering out suspiciously at the outside world. Soon, they’d be fully grown and flapping all over the exhibit. They certainly had a way of filling up the habitat and made a delightful exhibit.
This photo was taken while our owls were in parenting mode; this bird is tolerating me getting on the ground for a close up photo because it's expecting me to hand it a mouse in a second. They wouldn't have put up with this close of an approach in the past.
Eventually we built in access to the nest box so we could curtail breeding. Some of the surplus offspring were turned into ambassador animals, as the SSP wouldn’t be able to place them all. Years earlier, in the less-regulated days, this zoo had let its burrowing owls be free-ranging and free-breeding, semi-wild on zoo grounds, something that government agencies would have probably not appreciated these days (we were outside the natural range of the species).
Burrowing owls are, in many ways, the superior exhibit owl. Sure, they’re tiny – but visitors love tiny animals, even if they are convinced that they’re all babies. Unlike many owls, they are social and diurnal, which works well for exhibit purposes, and mix well with a variety of species – roadrunners, tortoises, parrots, prairie dogs. I loved our burrowing owl exhibit post renovation, and considered it one of the finest I’d seen. If there was one thing I wish we could have done differently (and I’m not sure how this would have worked with the existing terrain), it would have been to either have the exhibit elevated or the visitor viewing slightly depressed, putting the small, terrestrial owls more on eye-level with visitors.
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As a fellow keeper, I have very much enjoyed reading over these personal anecdotes of some of the assorted species you have worked with over the years! I always enjoy getting to hear other keepers’s stories, and I appreciate the glimpse into our world that you are providing for everyone here
Of all of the species you have covered thus far, giraffe are by and large the animals I am most familiar with. I have worked with nearly 40 individuals across my career, and there has only been a year-and-a-half span where I have not worked with them at all!
It is interesting to me that you mention the personality different between Masai and generic giraffe, as that is something that I and others that have worked with both types have noted as well! I have worked with two herds of each, and the Masai herds were by and large much more skittish and aloof than their generic counterparts.
I have been a part of my fair share of giraffe immobilizations, and they are certainly no small feats! They are always massive team efforts, and certainly not without great risks! Fortunately, every immobilization I have been a part of thus far has been successful in the end!
In my opinion, GRDs are largely not worth the effort, in most cases. I have found it easier and the giraffe more willing to comply when they are trained for these voluntary maintenance behaviors at fire hoses or bars in a stall or yard where they have more freedom of choice to participate or walk away. GRDs can sometimes be useful in gently letting a giraffe down for an anesthetic event, but they also pose their own host of risks and dangers with their assorted moving parts and the more intense human involvement to the point where I prefer to just let them go down in a a padded or bedded stall or yard.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Besides the ever-present Indian peafowl, I’ve worked with five species of pheasant, all of them within two non-AZA facilities. The pheasants as a whole are a group that I’ve tended to see with much better representation in non-AZA facilities, though there are a small number of species which I’ve only seen within AZA. Most species of pheasants seem to have a strong presence in the private/hobbyist sector, which certainly makes them more readily available to non-AZA facilities. As a group, they also have a lot to recommend themselves. They are easy to house and inexpensive to care for; they do not require heated quarters, like parrots do, or water features, such as ducks do. Being large and colorful, they can easily be seen and appreciate by visitors, and if they aren’t the most popular of zoo birds, they certainly are some of the lowest-maintenance ones.
Like many young keepers, my first introduction to pheasants came in the form of the two species that I consider the classic starter pheasants, the golden pheasant and Lady Amherst’s pheasant. These two closely related species (I’ve also worked with a hybrid individual) are hardy, visually striking birds which do well in mixed species aviaries. In both cases where I worked with the species, there were multiple males of both species (both the red and yellow varieties of golden) housed in an walk-in aviary with various other species – flamingos, doves, parrots, sloths – with nary a female. The rationale behind this was to keep the much more attractive males on exhibit without having females for them to fight over. The logic didn’t pan out entirely and we still saw some fighting, though rather than spur or peck wounds, I feel like we would occasionally see a bird that was just haggard from too much chasing, squabbling (I especially associated weak, closed eyes with these kerfuffles). The pheasants were fed the standard grain (a house blend) that most of our ungulates and ratites ate, but seemed to have a special fondness for the flamingo diet, and we had to try various strategies to keep them out of the flamingo bowls.
Visitors and pheasants had access to shared spaces in the exhibit, and while I frequently cleaned pheasant poop off the walkway in the mornings when I came in, or saw them perching on the railings, I rarely saw them in the public space when we were open, even on the slower days with fewer guests. Even though the males of these species grew long tail coverts, I never saw visitors try to grab or collect any, as I frequently did with Indian peafowl.
The three other Asian pheasants were kept in separate exhibits, each housed as a pair. The Himalayan monals struck me as the shyest, most delicate of the five species, which I in turn attribute to their inferior exhibit. They were in a Behlen with viewing all around; I would have liked to have planted a few shrubs or maybe a small pine tree or two in the exhibit to provide more cover, but the former occupant of that cage was a burrowing animal, so the exhibit was floored with wire just a few inches deep, which limited my abilities to put in furniture other than deadfall. These birds never really seemed to settle in our presence, though I tried to minimize time spent in the exhibit to reduce stress on them.
The Temminck’s tragopans, though the birds I found the most beautiful, left little impression on me in terms of their behavior or personality. I was disappointed that our male never saw fit to show us the spectacular, borderline-grotesque breeding display of this species, and I would have really enjoyed getting some chicks out of the pair. This is another situation in which I feel like an enclosure that was a bit larger, a bit more complex, with more visual barriers and opportunities to avoid sightlines with both keepers and animals in nearby enclosures, would have promoted better breeding.
With this in mind, I drew up plans for development of an unused corner of the grounds as a pheasantry, with the three free-standing pheasant exhibits relocated there to a quiet place, interspersed with trees and shrubs. The exhibits would frame an area that I imagined as a meditation garden, maybe with a small water feature, benches, etc. The zoo owner responded with some harrumphing about hippy bull crap – if the word “woke” was in popular use back then, I suspect that’s what he would have reached for.
My favorite of the pheasants were the blue-eared pheasants. Initially, we had a single male, originally given the name of “Blue.” I’d never heard of the species before seeing him, and I was absolutely enchanted with him the moment I saw him, racing up along the fence line to check me out, making his weird, muttering call. Blue was a bit of a grumpus, and while we got along, he took a special hatred to my supervisor when I started (the same Rhodes scholar who let the cheetahs AND the tigers out), and was merciless in his attacks on her. I never got tired of watching her getting beaten and driven out of the cage by what, to my mind, looked like an angry muppet.
Blue was originally housed with the galahs, but we were considered that his presence was impeding their breeding. At around this time the tragopans were sent to another zoo, so he was relocated to their exhibit, to which I added two pairs of plum-headed parakeets which had been languishing in holding for some time (I grandiosely put up a sign declaring the simple cage, “Birds of Asia”). Later, the owner agreed to allow us to purchase a female, and one was sent for. A few days later, a cardboard carton, sort of what you’d get from Dunkin Donuts if you ordered a box of munchkins, showed up on our doorstep. I took it into the back of the reptile house and opened it carefully, so sure what to expect. To my surprise, an adult female blue eared pheasant unfolded from the interior like a piece of origami – looking at her in one hand and the box in the other, I had no idea how she’d even fit, but there she was, looking no worse for the journey. We placed her in the exhibit, adding a small wooden table to the yard when she could squeeze under to avoid the male, should she need a break from him.
Like many young keepers, my first introduction to pheasants came in the form of the two species that I consider the classic starter pheasants, the golden pheasant and Lady Amherst’s pheasant. These two closely related species (I’ve also worked with a hybrid individual) are hardy, visually striking birds which do well in mixed species aviaries. In both cases where I worked with the species, there were multiple males of both species (both the red and yellow varieties of golden) housed in an walk-in aviary with various other species – flamingos, doves, parrots, sloths – with nary a female. The rationale behind this was to keep the much more attractive males on exhibit without having females for them to fight over. The logic didn’t pan out entirely and we still saw some fighting, though rather than spur or peck wounds, I feel like we would occasionally see a bird that was just haggard from too much chasing, squabbling (I especially associated weak, closed eyes with these kerfuffles). The pheasants were fed the standard grain (a house blend) that most of our ungulates and ratites ate, but seemed to have a special fondness for the flamingo diet, and we had to try various strategies to keep them out of the flamingo bowls.
Visitors and pheasants had access to shared spaces in the exhibit, and while I frequently cleaned pheasant poop off the walkway in the mornings when I came in, or saw them perching on the railings, I rarely saw them in the public space when we were open, even on the slower days with fewer guests. Even though the males of these species grew long tail coverts, I never saw visitors try to grab or collect any, as I frequently did with Indian peafowl.
The three other Asian pheasants were kept in separate exhibits, each housed as a pair. The Himalayan monals struck me as the shyest, most delicate of the five species, which I in turn attribute to their inferior exhibit. They were in a Behlen with viewing all around; I would have liked to have planted a few shrubs or maybe a small pine tree or two in the exhibit to provide more cover, but the former occupant of that cage was a burrowing animal, so the exhibit was floored with wire just a few inches deep, which limited my abilities to put in furniture other than deadfall. These birds never really seemed to settle in our presence, though I tried to minimize time spent in the exhibit to reduce stress on them.
The Temminck’s tragopans, though the birds I found the most beautiful, left little impression on me in terms of their behavior or personality. I was disappointed that our male never saw fit to show us the spectacular, borderline-grotesque breeding display of this species, and I would have really enjoyed getting some chicks out of the pair. This is another situation in which I feel like an enclosure that was a bit larger, a bit more complex, with more visual barriers and opportunities to avoid sightlines with both keepers and animals in nearby enclosures, would have promoted better breeding.
With this in mind, I drew up plans for development of an unused corner of the grounds as a pheasantry, with the three free-standing pheasant exhibits relocated there to a quiet place, interspersed with trees and shrubs. The exhibits would frame an area that I imagined as a meditation garden, maybe with a small water feature, benches, etc. The zoo owner responded with some harrumphing about hippy bull crap – if the word “woke” was in popular use back then, I suspect that’s what he would have reached for.
My favorite of the pheasants were the blue-eared pheasants. Initially, we had a single male, originally given the name of “Blue.” I’d never heard of the species before seeing him, and I was absolutely enchanted with him the moment I saw him, racing up along the fence line to check me out, making his weird, muttering call. Blue was a bit of a grumpus, and while we got along, he took a special hatred to my supervisor when I started (the same Rhodes scholar who let the cheetahs AND the tigers out), and was merciless in his attacks on her. I never got tired of watching her getting beaten and driven out of the cage by what, to my mind, looked like an angry muppet.
Blue was originally housed with the galahs, but we were considered that his presence was impeding their breeding. At around this time the tragopans were sent to another zoo, so he was relocated to their exhibit, to which I added two pairs of plum-headed parakeets which had been languishing in holding for some time (I grandiosely put up a sign declaring the simple cage, “Birds of Asia”). Later, the owner agreed to allow us to purchase a female, and one was sent for. A few days later, a cardboard carton, sort of what you’d get from Dunkin Donuts if you ordered a box of munchkins, showed up on our doorstep. I took it into the back of the reptile house and opened it carefully, so sure what to expect. To my surprise, an adult female blue eared pheasant unfolded from the interior like a piece of origami – looking at her in one hand and the box in the other, I had no idea how she’d even fit, but there she was, looking no worse for the journey. We placed her in the exhibit, adding a small wooden table to the yard when she could squeeze under to avoid the male, should she need a break from him.
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Odds are good most of the Lady Amherst's you worked with were hybrids too - it's believed there's very few truly pure individuals knocking about.
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, did you actually breed the Blue Eared ? Like yourself, I have also worked with both Golden and Lady Amherst and bred both. Unfortunately, on one terrible occasion the female Golden Pheasant had (which I wasn't aware of) made her nest on top of a red ants nest. The first I knew about it was when she deserted her 5 chicks and during inspecting them,found that they had all died from ant stings. I caught up the female and found lots of ants within her feathers. As you can imagine, it was a long job removing them. Although the hen had numerous stings she made a full recovery. I think that male Golden Pheasant is the most beautiful of the pheasants.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
@Strathmorezoo , unfortunately, no, we didn't. There were some species which we bred a lot of at that zoo, particularly ungulates and ratites, but overall our success was poor with a lot of species. Looking back, I feel like the owner was just... impatient. I mentioned this a bit in the flamingo post when talking about his Chilean flock, but I got the sense that if species weren't breeding almost immediately, he'd either reconfigure things quickly to try something else, or he'd get exasperated and send the species out and bring in something new. I feel like we would have benefited from more time to let animals settle into routines, for pairs to become familiar with one another, etc.
What does a zookeeper do on his days off? Go to work at a different facility! After moving to take a zoo job in one town, I decided to also take a position as a volunteer at a small aquarium that was in the vicinity. I had very little experience with aquatic animals, life support systems, etc and I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn how the other half of the profession lives and works. Among the species in my section were leopard sharks, chambered nautilus, American lobster, and moray eels.
At the end of the volunteer experience, I can’t say that I was too enraptured by the life of an aquarist. I think the biggest part of it was that I just didn’t feel the connection with the animals that I did as a zookeeper. Maybe it would have been different if I were a diver, but standing in the back hallway, dropping a mix of cut fish and krill, or trying to pole-feed a pufferfish, just didn’t do much for me. It was like I was still on the other side of the viewing glass – there was a divide between me and the animals.
Except for one species, that is.
I’ve worked with a lot of exciting herps over the course of my career, but there was one group that I never expected to work with – sea turtles. My experience with this group of reptiles is very limited, but it still left quite an impression on me.
The aquarium was home to two young loggerhead turtles, each about six inches in carapace length. Like virtually all sea turtles in the aquariums around the world, they were wild born; unlike most sea turtles, their end goal in life was to be returned to the wild after they’d grown a bit, rather than the non-releasable turtles, with missing flippers and bubble-butt, that you often see in aquariums. All they needed was to grow a bit larger, and I will say they were making great progress towards that goal – apart from monitor lizards, I’ve never seen herps with such voracious appetites. As soon as they saw me approach the back of the tank, they’d practically skim over the surface of the water like skipping rocks, crashing into one another right in front of me and trying to shove each other out of the way as I tried to feed them. Each turtle was fed pieces of fish and squid speared on the edge of a fork; sometimes I tried to work two forks at once to keep both turtles happy, but it never seemed to work out well, especially if one turtle tried to take advantage of my divided attention and rip the fork from my hands.
Each of the young turtles had a dab of coloration on the carapace so that they could be differentiated for recordkeeping and veterinary purposes. The turtles were weighed and measured regularly, and as such got more hands-on contact than I would have suspected an animal slated for release would have received. I also wouldn’t have necessarily expected the animals to be on display, but I suppose there is less likelihood of animals like sea turtles becoming desensitized to humans considering where they spend virtually all of their adult lives. They were certainly more active resisters in hand than most turtles I’ve handled have been – I suppose part of it was that they didn’t have the option of retreating into a shell – and there was lots of being batted with their little flippers. I have no doubt that if I were to have put a finger within reach of their little beaks, I’d have been given reason to regret it.
The little aquarium was a chaotic place with a lot of staff turnover, and largely seemed to be run by volunteers – there were days when I showed up and realized, to my horror, that I was the most “senior” person there… As such, it wasn’t really the best place to learn about keeping marine life – I learned lots of “hows” - how to mix artificial seawater, for instance – but not a lot of the underlying principles, the whys and whens and wheres. Eventually, I felt like the time I wasn’t getting enough educational benefit to justify the amount of time and effort I was putting into the place, and when my six month spree as a volunteer ended, I opted not to renew. The turtles were still there at the time of my departure, but, at the rate they were growing, were probably on the cusp of outgrowing their tank. Looking back, I would have been interested in knowing more about what the exact plan was going to be for their release, and if there was any way for an interested volunteer to tag along.
That aquarium has since closed. As frustrating as it was working there, I still find to be a pity – it was a small place, to be sure, but even a small aquarium can be a magical place for visitors who have never before looked through a window into the marine world, and I feel like the next generation of kids in that town will have no idea what they missed,
What does a zookeeper do on his days off? Go to work at a different facility! After moving to take a zoo job in one town, I decided to also take a position as a volunteer at a small aquarium that was in the vicinity. I had very little experience with aquatic animals, life support systems, etc and I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn how the other half of the profession lives and works. Among the species in my section were leopard sharks, chambered nautilus, American lobster, and moray eels.
At the end of the volunteer experience, I can’t say that I was too enraptured by the life of an aquarist. I think the biggest part of it was that I just didn’t feel the connection with the animals that I did as a zookeeper. Maybe it would have been different if I were a diver, but standing in the back hallway, dropping a mix of cut fish and krill, or trying to pole-feed a pufferfish, just didn’t do much for me. It was like I was still on the other side of the viewing glass – there was a divide between me and the animals.
Except for one species, that is.
I’ve worked with a lot of exciting herps over the course of my career, but there was one group that I never expected to work with – sea turtles. My experience with this group of reptiles is very limited, but it still left quite an impression on me.
The aquarium was home to two young loggerhead turtles, each about six inches in carapace length. Like virtually all sea turtles in the aquariums around the world, they were wild born; unlike most sea turtles, their end goal in life was to be returned to the wild after they’d grown a bit, rather than the non-releasable turtles, with missing flippers and bubble-butt, that you often see in aquariums. All they needed was to grow a bit larger, and I will say they were making great progress towards that goal – apart from monitor lizards, I’ve never seen herps with such voracious appetites. As soon as they saw me approach the back of the tank, they’d practically skim over the surface of the water like skipping rocks, crashing into one another right in front of me and trying to shove each other out of the way as I tried to feed them. Each turtle was fed pieces of fish and squid speared on the edge of a fork; sometimes I tried to work two forks at once to keep both turtles happy, but it never seemed to work out well, especially if one turtle tried to take advantage of my divided attention and rip the fork from my hands.
Each of the young turtles had a dab of coloration on the carapace so that they could be differentiated for recordkeeping and veterinary purposes. The turtles were weighed and measured regularly, and as such got more hands-on contact than I would have suspected an animal slated for release would have received. I also wouldn’t have necessarily expected the animals to be on display, but I suppose there is less likelihood of animals like sea turtles becoming desensitized to humans considering where they spend virtually all of their adult lives. They were certainly more active resisters in hand than most turtles I’ve handled have been – I suppose part of it was that they didn’t have the option of retreating into a shell – and there was lots of being batted with their little flippers. I have no doubt that if I were to have put a finger within reach of their little beaks, I’d have been given reason to regret it.
The little aquarium was a chaotic place with a lot of staff turnover, and largely seemed to be run by volunteers – there were days when I showed up and realized, to my horror, that I was the most “senior” person there… As such, it wasn’t really the best place to learn about keeping marine life – I learned lots of “hows” - how to mix artificial seawater, for instance – but not a lot of the underlying principles, the whys and whens and wheres. Eventually, I felt like the time I wasn’t getting enough educational benefit to justify the amount of time and effort I was putting into the place, and when my six month spree as a volunteer ended, I opted not to renew. The turtles were still there at the time of my departure, but, at the rate they were growing, were probably on the cusp of outgrowing their tank. Looking back, I would have been interested in knowing more about what the exact plan was going to be for their release, and if there was any way for an interested volunteer to tag along.
That aquarium has since closed. As frustrating as it was working there, I still find to be a pity – it was a small place, to be sure, but even a small aquarium can be a magical place for visitors who have never before looked through a window into the marine world, and I feel like the next generation of kids in that town will have no idea what they missed,
