A Zoo Man's Notebook, 2025

[Aardwolf]

Today’s post is about the two species of spider monkey that I’ve worked with – the black spider monkey, at two non-AZA facilities, and the black-handed spider monkey, at one AZA facility. I’m not really that much of a primate person, but the management of spider monkeys at these three facilities had a tremendous impact on me, and they are perhaps the animals that most clearly colored my impressions of working in AZA vs non-AZA facilities (which is not to say that there are no good non-AZAs or that AZAs are perfect, and I hope that my meaning becomes clear as I go on).

At the non-AZA where I first worked with the species, we had a mated pair and their newborn on a small island habitat, probably about the same footprint as a Behlen cage… which is what those animals were later relocated to after the moat around the island proved too leaky to be a viable containment option. At the other non-AZA facility and the AZA facility, the enclosure was a much larger, much taller construct of wire and wood, each attached to a holding building (though a considerably larger one at the AZA facility). Visitors love island exhibits for primates, but I honestly prefer caging. Our spider monkeys on the little island made a pretty picture, but really they just had one little piece of deadfall stuck in the ground as a tree to climb on. The monkeys at the other zoo not only had their ropes and branches (it’s a lot easier to set up complicated perching when you actually have something to anchor it to), but the caging itself provided a massive climbing structure for them, one giant jungle gym, if you will. And yet some visitors are wrapped up in the idea that the island monkeys are happier because they aren’t in a cage… I’ve had the same opinions voiced to me by visitors about parrots of sticks being free and happy because the lack of bars.


Young spider monkey (and future frost-bite victim) on his island. It looks so green and beautiful. If I'd taken a few steps back before taking the picture, you'd see how stark and limited the actual exhibit was.

Diet at the non-AZA zoos consisted of monkey chow, along with one piece of fruit or vegetable (defined as apple-sized, not watermelon-sized) per day. The diet at the AZA zoo consisted of monkey chow as well, but also canned primate diet, much more produce, lots of lettuce, and occasional enrichment food items, such as peanut butter or eggs. I’ve often seen a divide in zoos where I work between the chow folks (“But it’s a scientifically complete diet! We can quantify everything!”) and the all-natural diet (“If a keeper at London Zoo in 1850 wouldn’t have recognized it as a food item, neither will I.”) Commercial diets do have their advantages, but I really enjoy giving a more natural, varied diet. It’s more enriching for the animal, takes them more time and effort to process, reduces their reliance on a single food item, and they always seem to enjoy it more.

The AZA spider monkeys received daily enrichment, and it was always a challenge to keep them busy with new ideas; we enrolled a local university class to help design and build new feeders with them. At the non-AZA zoos… they got whatever a keeper felt like giving them for enrichment, if that, if ever (and we were forbidden to give them anything that would “trash” the exhibit… as if a Behlen cage looked “natural” or attractive to begin with). When USDA came calling, the curator or director would quickly offer a sheet of falsified enrichment records – the inspector never seemed to suspect it, probably thinking that if they were lying to them, they’d come up with a more impressive lie rather than the sorry, bare minimum paperwork they presented.

Spider monkeys breed very readily in zoos, probably part of the reason that they are so beloved in the private sector. Their reproduction always creates a bit of a headache for zookeepers. The external reproductive organs of the female are very large and easily mistaken for those of the male (which, combined with the fact that males are prone to getting potbellies, and looking pregnant, can lead to some confusion). When I worked with the species, I was also so, so tired of smirking visitors pointing at the females and saying, “Yeah, you can tell HE’S a boy…” only to turn around and tell them no, that’s not what they think it is, and to please leave it at that. I had grown men get angry at me and insist that I was wrong. I had to tell them that I literally watched one of those “boys” give birth and breastfeed “his” baby.


Mother and daughter spider monkeys

One thing I did like about working the non-AZA spider monkeys as opposed to the AZA ones was working free contact with the animals. We went in with the spider monkeys every day (and in the Behlen, it was very close quarters – I got bopped in the face with tails sometimes when the monkeys were turning around near me). It made things a lot easier to clean and service – primates in zoos seem to delight in making shifting difficult for keepers; if you try to bait them with food, they take turns going in to grab good while the others wait outside, making it tough to get everyone. Keepers at the AZA zoo were shocked when I told them I went it with spiders at other zoos; they were convinced that their male was a savage and would tear them to pieces. And it was true he had a temper – one day, I heard a commotion and came running. Some idiot visitors had brought their puppy, a pseudo-service dog, to the zoo, put it over the fence, and were trying to goad it to approach the monkeys. Our male was on the ground, chattering fiercely, arms clawing up through the mesh, ready to shred the face of the dog as soon as it came within arm’s reach. Thankfully we got there in time, rescued the puppy from a mutilation, and banished the idiots from the zoo.

Would we have given us the same treatment if we’d gone in with him? Maybe he would have, but most likely he knew he could talk a big game and act fierce because there was a fence between us. The spider monkeys I worked in an enclosure with kept respectful distances, though sometimes a young male would posture a bit until I moved too close (the director was scolded me for “not beating the monkey enough” – doesn’t that sound dirty? – and letting him get away with sassing me. Honestly, hitting a monkey never crossed my mind). The only unpleasant experience I ever had going in with them was when a new keeper frightened the monkey so badly that the fled to the top of the exhibit and rained with liquid poop down on us. I really wish I wore a hat sometimes…

Winter holding was a major concern for spider monkeys- the ones at the AZA zoo had a decent building, and the ones at the one AZA zoo had a modest one that they could at least cram into, but the ones at the other AZA zoo had some heat lamps and tarps wrapping the cage. In an extreme winter event, we were able to bring the pair and their new baby inside (not easily or comfortably), but their adolescent son was kept out because of the certainty he’d fight with his father (they’d already been sparring, and they cage was too small for them to avoid one another). We were told to put up more heat lamps and hope for the best… but the monkey, so agitated by the disappearance of the family, wouldn’t stay in the nest box, but kept climbing around, looking for them. When I worked at the AZA zoo, immediately after this, a keeper there told me she was worried to let the spider monkeys outside on a 40 degree, sunny day because they might get frostbite. I was able to tell her that, in my experience, spider monkeys get frostbite in the 10s. She looked horrified – and rightly so.

It’s a funny thing I noticed after I went from non-AZA to AZA, but for a while, I began to feel worse about my animal care – a lot more critical of every aspect. The enclosure. The enrichment. The diet. The social grouping. All were inherently better at the AZA zoo (and this wasn’t even a big AZA zoo) than the non-AZA, but I found myself constantly wondering if things were good enough, if maybe zoos weren’t such a good idea at all, if maybe I couldn’t keep the animals as healthy and happy as they deserved. It was the closest I ever came to a crisis of confidence.

Looking back, it all became clear to me. At the non-AZA zoos, all I had to worry about was USDA, and their standards are, quite frankly, pitiful (and, as my director showed when it came to lying about the enrichment, they were easily gulled). If something passed muster with USDA, it was good enough. If it wasn’t, you brought it up to that minimum standard. AZA standards, however, are constantly evolving, and you’re part of a community that’s constantly collaborating and encouraging improvement and innovation. It’s never “good enough” in this model – just the best you can do at the moment, but always with an eye for improvement.

Our commitment to spider monkey husbandry and welfare is going to be increasingly strained in the near future. AZA has been hit with a flood of confiscated spider monkeys being smuggled up from Mexico. Many have been intercepted and redirected to zoos (thanks to the efforts of the new Wildlife Confiscation team at AZA); we’ll have to see how these likely traumatized animals of uncertain socialization fare as they grow up. We also have to face the likelihood that some of the smuggled animals have been missed by inspectors and made it into the country; will we see a stream of adult monkeys surrendered by their owners in a few years’ time?


Male black-handed spider monkey. It was always hard to photograph him, because as soon as he saw you at the mesh, he'd charge to grab at your face.

 

[Aardwolf]

Today, we’ll talk about the world’s largest rodent, the capybara! I’ve worked with capybara at one AZA facility (and very briefly at a non-AZA facility, which double-functioned as a holding facility for the owner, who was also a transporter, so we held some capys there for a few days). At that zoo we had several capybaras over my time there of different ages and sexes, though regrettably never with breeding season.

When talking about capybaras in zoos, the key component I’ve always found is the aquatic element of their lives. In their wild state, capybaras are seldom found far from water, and while they can be kept with a rather minimalistic water feature in zoos, they benefit from the ability to swim and submerge. Our capybara exhibit was vast and spacious, and would have, in retrospect, worked better for other species than capybara. That’s because the pool was rather limited – big enough for three or so to be in it and underwater, but not really enough to facilitate swimming. They had a similar-sized pool in their indoor holding, perhaps a bit smaller. I would have loved to have had the money to build an exhibit with a giant pool that allowed more aquatic behavior.

The capys did get a big water feature on a few occasions when we had extreme rainfall and the (ostensibly dry) moat of their exhibit flooded. I saw the water levels rising all over the zoo and realized that they were out in their yard – with the water so high, they’d be able to swim right up to the edge of the moat, climb out, and escape into the zoo. I rushed into the exhibit, but couldn’t find them. In desperation, I climbed into the moat, where the water was nearly up to my shoulders, to see if I could see any evidence that they’d climbed out. At that moment, the surface of the water broke, and a capybara popped up on either side of me. Relieved, I was able to herd them back inside to their holding, where we kept them until the water receded. They seemed like they were having a great time.

Of course, the problem with having a big pool is that you have to clean it, and capybaras are intensely gross animals. I’m baffled and horrified by the recent trend of people that want them as pets. Have they ever thought about poop? A large capybara is about the size of an adult human, and their poop looks pretty much identical to a large human loaf – and they produce it in great quantities. They don’t always poop in the water, but they do it often enough that there were days when I felt I spent more time taking care of the capybara pool than I did the capybaras themselves. It was a simple dump-fill pool, but it took forever to fill, and I hated having to clean it. Not only was it a lot of work to scrub clean, not only was it shockingly steep and very slippery, but if I was cleaning it and it was empty, or still in the early stages of refilling, it meant that the capybaras couldn’t use it – in fact, they’d often be sitting on the edge of the pool while I worked, glowering at me sternly, wondering how this could possibly be taking so long. I’d say that it would have been ideal to have two outdoor pools for them, but who am I kidding, they’d just fill up both with poop at the same time. (Incidentally, I also would recommend having a smaller drinker, such as Nelson waterer, on hand for capybara and other animals to drink from that doesn’t double-function as a capy toilet.

Capybara can live with a variety of species – I’ve housed them with South American camelids (guanaco, llama, alpaca), rhea, waterfowl, and macaws over the years, and have seen them with several other species, including tapir, anteater, and maned wolf. I’ve never encountered problems with any of the species that I’ve kept them with, though capys do benefit from having a blocked-off area for their food to be placed where other animals can’t access it (they themselves have also shown a fondness for the grains fed to the camelids and rheas). A capy diet at our zoo consisted of grain (we started off with Mazuri Rodent, then switched to Wild Herbivore – had to get the larger biscuit size, since they did not care for the smaller pellets), lettuce, and various produce – apples, pears, sweet potato, carrot. I never chopped anything for them, letting them work on large pieces to use their teeth. I’d often toss produce that floated in their pool to let them bob for apples, and attempted (and never really succeeded) in rigging a feeder that let me keep lettuce heads submerged at the bottom of the pool so they could graze it as if it were aquatic vegetation. Browse was always appreciated.



They aren’t the most cold-tolerant of animals, but capybara are still capable of going out in the snow, provided that they have warm indoor holding available, and places to keep dry. More often than not, however, I’d open the door on a bright winter’s day, they’d take about five steps outside, and then turn around and trot back in. At least I could push them out for a few minutes to clean their building, though, which was always unspeakably befouled.



One thing I had not prepared myself for was the possibility of capybara escape artists. The exhibit did not have secondary confinement. One day, I walked in, shut the gate behind me, secured it with the latch, but did not lock or dummy lock it. I was halfway across the yard when I noticed that the capys were right by the gate. One reached up, bopped the latch with its snout, and pushed the gate open. Then, they calmly walked out. I stood there, dumbfounded, not sure I saw what I just saw, only snapped out of the surprise five seconds later when I heard a visitor (it sounded like a preteen girl) ask her mom, "Are those supposed to be out here?" Thankfully, they were fairly easy to herd back in.

You see capybara portrayed in the media often as they super-sweet animals that get along with every other creature. Perhaps, but there’s one animal that capybara don’t do a great job of getting along with – other capybara. Like many social animals, they can be surprisingly savage towards one another – one female I worked with had a nose that was mostly scar tissue from a bite from a young male, who, in his defense, she had been trying to kill. We tried to reintroduce them months later. They sat on opposite ends of a stack of bamboo browse, munching peaceably, for half an hour, when she suddenly lunged at him. I’d been positioned in the exhibit in preparation for such an event, and was able to rush in, grab her around the midsection, and yank her off, all the while twisting my face away in case she turned on me. Introductions with many rodents can be volatile (perhaps none more so than prairie dogs, in my experience). So great was our fear of capy introductions going bad after that occurrence that, when we obtained two new capybaras from another zoo 14 hours away, my director refused to have the animals sent by air, for fear that the brief separation would cause them to forget each other and have to be reintroduced to one another. Instead, two other keepers and I drove all the way down there in a zoo van, loaded them up, and drove back. The drive back was pleasant enough – we were able to stop a few times, have some leisurely meals, visit another zoo or two, and make it an all-day affair. The drive back was miserable. All of us somehow got food poisoning, and, exacerbated by the smell of capy poop from the back of the van, limped back home after multiple stops at gas station bathrooms for crippling diarrhea. Fun times.

 

[Strathmorezoo]

I got trampled on once by a Capy,was my fault, bent down to put a food tray into a shelter, without first checking that it was empty. A Capy came out of it like a rocket, knocked me backwards and ran over me. Could have been worse, Tapir were sharing the same enclosure at the time.

 

[Aardwolf]

Today will be a twofer, describing my experiences with two species of South American vulture that I worked with, both represented by a single individual. Not only were they at the same non-AZA zoo, but they were in the same enclosure – one was shipped out to another facility, and the other came to take her place.

First came the female king vulture. She was an absolutely lovely bird, representing a species that I’d always been desperate to work with. That love of the species perhaps led me to overlook the fact that she had a rotten personality, and she was an absolute ankle-biter. I’ve always maintained that aggressive animals are a lot easier to work with in some cases than fearful ones – an aggressive animal at least wants to interact with you, and you can redirect the aggression into some other outlet (kind of like in a movie, when the two characters who hate each other the most at the beginning of the movie will, inevitably, get together by the end of it). I’d worked with non-releasable native raptors before coming to this facility, and had rehabbed a few birds for release, including flight training, so I thought I could try to get this bird glove trained, maybe use her for programming. I think I might have succeeded if I had more time with her, but as was often the way at the zoo, one day I came in, and she wasn’t there anymore.

My fondness for king vultures continues to this day. Years later, at a zoo conference, I bought a painting made by a pair of king vultures at the San Antonio Zoo. I hope to make it over some day to see that pair in person, and thank them and their keeper for the artwork.

Her exhibit was part of a series of enclosures in the lower part of the zoo, in which there would be sets of two paired exhibits, each maybe 16 x 8, on either side of small wooden building that was divided into two stalls, one providing indoor holding for each exhibit. There were a few branches, a stump, and some mulch substrate. The indoor holding area was the same, but with dirt instead of mulch, with the perch directly under a heat lamp. It was by no means large enough for her, and she really should have had an exhibit that allowed full opportunities for flight, but she could at least jump/flap from a perch on one side to one of the other. She was fed one large rat per day (occasionally I’d sneak a piece off of a deer or antelope carcass – a limb, or maybe some offal - that was slated for the big cats and bring it to her for some dietary variation).

Around the same time the king vulture left, the condor arrived. Our director had obtained an elderly male Andean condor from a nearby facility, but I’m not sure he really had a plan for him. He was originally kept in a stall in our quarantine barn, and it was there that we became best friends. Part of it was simply a reflection of the fact that, when we were both in the stall, there wasn’t much room for anything else, and we were basically in direct contact the whole time. I tried to keep clear at first, but as we spent more time together, I began to get bolder and more confident, and soon I was scratching his neck and rubbing his belly. When he’d see me come, he’d fan out his wings and make a thrumming noise, one that reminded me of the spinning rotors of a helicopter. If I was too slow putting out the food for him while I cleaned his water and scrubbed his perches, he’d shove his head into my coat pocket and pull out his rat, then carry it a short distance to feed on. Soon, I was encouraging it.


Another keeper snuggling with the condor in the quarantine barn. She had a rat in her hoodie pocket, which he was investigating.

What an idiot.

When training new keepers, I used to tell them my two rules for animal-inflicted injuries. The second rule was that you were most likely to be hurt by the animal that you didn’t take seriously as a threat – to illustrate that rule, I told the story of my friend who got his hand chomped by the giant tortoise (Post 45). The first was that you were also the most likely to be hurt by the animal you thought of as your friend.

The condor eventually cleared quarantine and was moved to an outdoor enclosure. We still stayed on very friendly terms; when I'd go inside, he'd instantly hop off his perch and run over for a neck scratch. Sure, he was nasty to the other keepers, even chased a few out of the enclosure, but we were buds!

One day I was training a new keeper when we came to the condor exhibit; poor kid, it was his first day. I showed the new guy his duties and introduced him to the bird. As we were leaving, I casually patted the condor on the back saying, "Yeah, he's a good bird." That's when he decided he didn't want to be a good bird anymore.

His neck twisted backwards, his head struck upside down, and his beak - that nasty curved beak so effective in opening up llama carcasses - latched into my left forearm. While still holding onto my arm, he jumped up on me. With a great deal of swearing and swatting, I dislodged him and exited the exhibit... only to realize that the new guy was still inside, with the condor (now eyeing him with keen interest) between him and the door. I had to go in and usher the thoroughly-terrified new guy out to safety. He wouldn't do that exhibit by himself for months.

I don't know what set the condor off that day. Probably it was having two people in close proximity; he probably suspected that we were up to no good, trying to trap him up, for example. I don't hold it against him personally, and we worked together for another year before I left that zoo, without a single other incident. I just didn't give him any more pats on the back. I still have the scar from that bite on my arm; sometimes it stands out clearly, sometimes it seems so faded I can barely notice it.

A major problem, of course, was that the enclosure was too small and the condor had no room to retreat if he felt threatened. If it seemed cramped with a king vulture, I’m sure that you can imagine what it was like with an Andean condor (we did receive a decent number of complaints from the visitors about the cage, and made the construction of a larger flight cage a priority – that being said, things moved surprisingly slowly there for a private facility, and it was still under construction when I left). It’s also very possible that, as a young, inexperienced keeper, he was sending out warning signs that today I’d recognize in a heartbeat, but was blinded by enthusiasm and maybe a little youthful cockiness at the time. Anyway, I can now tell folks that I’ve had blood drawn by 4 out of 7 New World vulture species.

Husbandry for the condor was virtually the same as for the king vulture (larger meals, of course), except for the fact that, unlike the king, the condor did not have a cut-off temperature under which she had to be locked inside the holding area… which is just as well. I don’t know how well he would have physically fit in there.

 

[Aardwolf]

Sometimes in your keeping career, you meet a species – either in the zoo or in the wild – and just know that you have to work with it someday. For me, one such species was the roadrunner. Unlike many animals, this is a species that I first encountered in the wild, boldly perched on the ruins of a burned out shed on the side of the road in west Texas. It was just so strikingly handsome, so plucky, so confident and inquisitive, that it was love at first sight, and I was determined to get to know the species better.

My opportunity presented itself, unexpectedly, year later when a fallen tree damaged the burrowing owl exhibit at an AZA facility where I was working (no animals were harmed/escaped). We took the opportunity to completely rebuild the exhibit, which resulted in a size increase of several times and the addition of an indoor holding component, both of which allowed us to look at adding additional species to the exhibit (to be fair, my first choice was thick-billed parrot, but at the time – and possibly still so now – the SSP was trying to concentrate the birds into a smaller number of zoos to facilitate breeding, so they weren’t seeking to recruit new members). Instead, we got roadrunners.

The male and female came from different facilities; one was a former ambassador, the other an over-represented genetic line (it’s not uncommon for newer participants in SSPs to be given non-breeding animals so staff can hone their husbandry). The birds excelled in the exhibit, and were just as charismatic and charming as I remembered from the wild. They were very eager to interact with keepers, and would readily hope onto the outstretched palm of your hand, then greedily peck up mealworms from the cup of your other hands. The remainder of their diet was Mazuri insectivore, rodents or chicks, a bit of Nebraska Bird of Prey diet (ground horsemeat with vitamins and minerals), and a little bit of produce.



The carnivorous nature of roadrunners might make them seem like a poor candidate for a mixed exhibit, and their acquisition forced me to drop plans of adding a few other species that I’d thought of bringing in to make a more complete southwestern birds aviary. They did just fine with the burrowing owls, however, which bred readily with the roadrunners in the exhibit. This shouldn’t be a surprise – unlike other birds we might have added, the owls had their eggs in a deep burrow, and owlets didn’t emerge until they were basically full-sized and able to handle themselves, so there were no eggs or little chicks to tempt the roadrunners. The only tricky interactions we ever saw were at feeding time, but then it was simply a matter of keeping the roadrunners occupied while dropping the mice or chicks for the owls (who would then immediately squirrel their caches away in their burrow to consume at their leisure).

The renovated, expanded exhibit was kept largely open to provide lots of floor space for the birds to run around, with a few pieces of deadfall and low perches, stumps, and some live plants, which, compared to be many birds, the roadrunners were fairly gentle with. At one end of the yard was a large mound which covered the burrowing owl nest box. A bison skull in the middle of the habitat was a favored perch of the roadrunners. Water was provided in a shallow pan which was cleaned and refilled daily, sometimes requiring an extra refill on hot summer days, more due to evaporation than consumption. It would have been large enough for a roadrunner to enter and splash around in it, but I never saw them do so. The exhibit was in a fairly open space so it caught a decent amount of sun, and the birds enjoyed sunbathing and dustbathing. Primarily ground birds, they would also sometimes perch in branches, especially if you were in the exhibit with them and it let them get at eye level with you.



It can get cold on desert nights, and the roadrunners were fairly tolerant of most weather we had. On days when it was below freezing, we’d lock them into their adjacent holding stall, a little cubicle of about 6 x 6 x 8 feet tall, with a heater in it, which kept them comfortable for the usually brief amounts of time they were in there. When it was warm enough to be outside, we always left the door open so that they could have access, but I never saw them go in of their choice, and we’d have to herd them inside on days that they were locked in. I’d been told that the species doesn’t do well in areas of high humidity, which our area was, but our birds seemed healthy and active. Perhaps the open, sunny nature of the yard kept things dry enough for them. Interestingly, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another outdoor roadrunner exhibit outside the natural range of the species.

The birds were favorites of both the keepers and the visitors; their presence, highly visible and active, encouraged guests to stay and watch long enough to notice the much more secretive owls, which they had often previously missed. A lot of visitors seemed to have previously been under the impression that they were a fictitious animal made up for the cartoons (I've heard visitors express similar surprise that Tasmanian devils are real). Years after I worked with the species, I recall visiting the Living Desert in California, where I saw a zoo roadrunner passing part of its diet to a wild counterpart on the outside of its aviary. Roadrunners respond well to training and enrichment; had we been in a situation to breed, I could easily have seen us trying a chick out as an ambassador.

 

[pachyderm pro]

The birds were favorites of both the keepers and the visitors; their presence, highly visible and active, encouraged guests to stay and watch long enough to notice the much more secretive owls, which they had often previously missed.

I can absolutely attest to this from personal experience. One of my favorite enclosures at Brookfield is a Sonoran Desert centric aviary with roadrunners, Gambel's quails and white-winged doves. With the quails on the ground, the doves perched above, and the roadrunners literally bouncing off the walls, it's an incredibly dynamic exhibit that I always linger at longer than most aviaries. It's as if each species has their own role to play in filling out the space, but the roadrunners really tie everything together with their liveliness. They add so much kinetic energy to any exhibit they're in.

This thread continues to be one of my favorites ever produced on this site. As an aspiring keeper, it's also been immensely informative and has me thinking about my own future career path. I have a few general questions if you don't mind me asking:

-What titles have you held over the years? Did you have to start out as a seasonal keeper and gradually work your way up to a full-time position?
-Piggybacking off of that, was there any point where your job focused around a specific group of species or were you always more of a broad, jack of all trades keeper?
-Whenever there was incident of some sort, such as the near cheetah escape or the deadly tortoise attack, did you have to file an incident report or did you just carry on like nothing happened? I imagine protocol may vary depending on the severity of the situation.

Keep up the excellent work!

 

[A.L. Gardner]

Years after I worked with the species, I recall visiting the Living Desert in California, where I saw a zoo roadrunner passing part of its diet to a wild counterpart on the outside of its aviary.

They've been one of my favourite birds for a long time although I've never been fortunate enough to see one for real. I loved that little anecdote of the captive bird passing food to a wild one.
I hope one day you will put all this in a book as this thread is absolutely fascinating as well as being highly entertaining.

 

[Aardwolf]

@pachyderm pro I’ve had several roles over the year, starting off as a volunteer keeper aid in my early teens, then as an educator, research intern, keeper (temp at one zoo, seasonal at another), keeper, senior keeper, acting curator, collection manager. A lot of my experience has been at smaller zoos, though I have worked as a reptile keeper at one large zoo, a commissary keeper at another. While I’ve enjoyed being a jack of all trades, it is true what they say about being a master of none. I’ve worked with a crazy variety of species, from chambered nautilus to white rhino, and worked on a lot of different aspects of animal care – training, enrichment, exhibit design, animal transport, population management – but the lack of specialization has been a bit of a challenge at times, especially when I’ve had to change zoos in the past and am looking for openings. It means I’m qualified for almost every job I see on the AZA job boards – but there’s often someone else who has more specialized experience for that specific role. Personally, I do think specialization is a good thing, and moving away from that has been deleterious for the profession – I just have a hard time doing that because I want to have my hands in everything and can’t pick! And strangely enough, in response to your last question, I don’t think I’ve ever actually had to fill out an incident report… there really has been a tendency to act like nothing happened (the rules about reporting are tightening up these days, though, especially for AZA facilities). If you have more questions about trying to break into the field, I’m happy to help if I can, either on here or in private message if you prefer.

@A.L. Gardner, I’ve actually been thinking of making these into a little book for myself at some point so I can keep the memories, complete with pictures and details that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing in the forum. One of my biggest regrets as a keeper over the years has been that I didn’t take more pics, right down more stories while they were fresh in my head, etc.

Back to the species of the day!

For a non-herp person, there’s a tendency to view the various turtles, tortoises, and terrapins as somewhat interchangeable – to a non-specialist, they all sort of run together into one shelled amalgamation. There’s a few species that truly stand out as unforgettable and unique, perhaps none more so than the matamata. No one who sees (or works with) one of these big guys is ever going to mistake it for another turtle.

I’ve worked with matamatas at three facilities, all AZA. They were actually one of the first herps that I got to work with as a volunteer keeper aide in the reptile house of my local zoos; twice more I worked with them as paid keepers at other facilities. They can be a bit of a psychological challenge for a keeper – they are so inactive by nature, and their physical appearance always seems so sickly, what with little tendrils of skin flapping about them – that when I worked with them I was always paralyzed by the near obsessive fear that they were sick or that something was otherwise wrong with them. The turtles proved fairly hardy, though, which in my experience is fairly typical of chelonians. They’ll live, sometimes seemingly forever, in whatever conditions you throw at them with nary a complaint. The challenge is, will they breed?

In the case of matas, the answer is almost certainly, “No they will not.” At the time I first started working with the species, I don’t know if anyone had yet truly bred them in captivity, and to this day they still have the reputation of being one of the more challenging species to breed. I was obsessed with trying as a volunteer, however, and, with the blessings of the staff, took it upon myself to build massive nest boxes with ramps leading down into the water to encourage the turtles to breed. It never happened, which makes sense – if experienced herpetologists hadn’t cracked the code at that point, you wouldn’t expect a high schooler with delusions of grandeur to do it either.

The mata exhibit was about six feet by six feet, home to three matas as well as a pair of red-headed side-necked turtles (which, to the visitors, were the stars of the exhibit. Even when the matas were pressed up against the glass, I don’t think a lot of visitors realized that they were actually animals). The exhibit was almost exclusively water, with a slim lip of land on one side – I never saw a matamata at any zoo I worked at willingly go on land. The water was stained brown with tannins, as the species is accustomed to in the wild. I’ve seen some matas in crystal clear water at some facilities, and have wondered if that proves problematic for their skin and eyes. In addition to darker water, I like to put floating plant matter on top of the water to provide additional cover and privacy. For turtles in holding in the back of the buildings, I liked to wrap most of the sides of the tank with black trash bags to limit visual disturbances and provide the turtles with a bit more privacy.


Matamata in a trash can while I clean the tank

The real treat with working with matamatas is feeding them. As a volunteer I fed them skinned rats, at the other zoos, fish. The matas I worked with as a volunteer were the biggest of them all, which made their feeding a special treat. I’d lower the rat on the tongs, waving it front of them, watching as they slowly turned their heads, regarding it with tiny, pinpoint eyes. Then, suddenly, you’d hear a sudden woosh, their head would lung forward, their neck would inflate like an enormous balloon – all of this at the same second – and the rat would be gone. Later, the water would be expelled, and the turtle would settle back into lethargy at the bottom on the tank. It always put me in the mind of a shop vac suddenly being turned on, and shut off just as quickly.

The matamatas at my second paid zoo were new arrivals, just shipped to us from another zoo as part of a new exhibit, and they went off feed when they arrived, as is not atypical for reptiles. For a while, I had to constantly go to the pet store to buy live feeder fish for them to tickle their appetites. Even after they started eating, they would only eat chopped fish I left in the tank for them, preferring to eat in privacy under cover of darkness, rather than take fish from the tongs. I felt like a bit of a liar, as I’d regaled the other keepers with stories of how fun matamatas were to feed before we got this batch. I feel like my colleagues were fairly unimpressed.



Just as the matas in my volunteer days shared their exhibit with turtles, so did the matas at the other two zoos share exhibits with other species. At one, it was with emerald tree boa, at the other, northern caiman lizard and plumed basilisk. I never noticed any interaction between the species, even when caiman lizards entered the water with the turtles.

Matamatas always remind me a lot of alligator snapping turtles in many ways, especially in terms of exhibitry. They are large but inactive turtles, ambush predators, and as such are often given enclosures of fairly limited size, with the understanding that they won’t move. Years ago, however, I remember visiting Zoo Atlanta for the first time and being startled by the sight of an alligator snapper actually swimming the length of its decently large tank, and ever since have found myself wondering if matamatas would benefit from much larger enclosures (they are most active by night in the wild, so even if we didn’t see them do anything by day, perhaps they’d surprise us under cover of darkness). The challenge is that the turtles generally prefer water of a certain depth – just deep enough that they can stretch up and take a breath through their snorkel-like nose while remaining on the bottom – and not many zoo or aquarium tanks are very large and yet so shallow, but I have seen tanks of such a size and shape for rays in many rainforest buildings, so why not try something like that for matamatas?

 

[Strathmorezoo]

@pachyderm pro I’ve had several roles over the year, starting off as a volunteer keeper aid in my early teens, then as an educator, research intern, keeper (temp at one zoo, seasonal at another), keeper, senior keeper, acting curator, collection manager. A lot of my experience has been at smaller zoos, though I have worked as a reptile keeper at one large zoo, a commissary keeper at another. While I’ve enjoyed being a jack of all trades, it is true what they say about being a master of none. I’ve worked with a crazy variety of species, from chambered nautilus to white rhino, and worked on a lot of different aspects of animal care – training, enrichment, exhibit design, animal transport, population management – but the lack of specialization has been a bit of a challenge at times, especially when I’ve had to change zoos in the past and am looking for openings. It means I’m qualified for almost every job I see on the AZA job boards – but there’s often someone else who has more specialized experience for that specific role. Personally, I do think specialization is a good thing, and moving away from that has been deleterious for the profession – I just have a hard time doing that because I want to have my hands in everything and can’t pick! And strangely enough, in response to your last question, I don’t think I’ve ever actually had to fill out an incident report… there really has been a tendency to act like nothing happened (the rules about reporting are tightening up these days, though, especially for AZA facilities). If you have more questions about trying to break into the field, I’m happy to help if I can, either on here or in private message if you prefer.

@A.L. Gardner, I’ve actually been thinking of making these into a little book for myself at some point so I can keep the memories, complete with pictures and details that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing in the forum. One of my biggest regrets as a keeper over the years has been that I didn’t take more pics, right down more stories while they were fresh in my head, etc.

Back to the species of the day!

For a non-herp person, there’s a tendency to view the various turtles, tortoises, and terrapins as somewhat interchangeable – to a non-specialist, they all sort of run together into one shelled amalgamation. There’s a few species that truly stand out as unforgettable and unique, perhaps none more so than the matamata. No one who sees (or works with) one of these big guys is ever going to mistake it for another turtle.

I’ve worked with matamatas at three facilities, all AZA. They were actually one of the first herps that I got to work with as a volunteer keeper aide in the reptile house of my local zoos; twice more I worked with them as paid keepers at other facilities. They can be a bit of a psychological challenge for a keeper – they are so inactive by nature, and their physical appearance always seems so sickly, what with little tendrils of skin flapping about them – that when I worked with them I was always paralyzed by the near obsessive fear that they were sick or that something was otherwise wrong with them. The turtles proved fairly hardy, though, which in my experience is fairly typical of chelonians. They’ll live, sometimes seemingly forever, in whatever conditions you throw at them with nary a complaint. The challenge is, will they breed?

In the case of matas, the answer is almost certainly, “No they will not.” At the time I first started working with the species, I don’t know if anyone had yet truly bred them in captivity, and to this day they still have the reputation of being one of the more challenging species to breed. I was obsessed with trying as a volunteer, however, and, with the blessings of the staff, took it upon myself to build massive nest boxes with ramps leading down into the water to encourage the turtles to breed. It never happened, which makes sense – if experienced herpetologists hadn’t cracked the code at that point, you wouldn’t expect a high schooler with delusions of grandeur to do it either.

The mata exhibit was about six feet by six feet, home to three matas as well as a pair of red-headed side-necked turtles (which, to the visitors, were the stars of the exhibit. Even when the matas were pressed up against the glass, I don’t think a lot of visitors realized that they were actually animals). The exhibit was almost exclusively water, with a slim lip of land on one side – I never saw a matamata at any zoo I worked at willingly go on land. The water was stained brown with tannins, as the species is accustomed to in the wild. I’ve seen some matas in crystal clear water at some facilities, and have wondered if that proves problematic for their skin and eyes. In addition to darker water, I like to put floating plant matter on top of the water to provide additional cover and privacy. For turtles in holding in the back of the buildings, I liked to wrap most of the sides of the tank with black trash bags to limit visual disturbances and provide the turtles with a bit more privacy.

View attachment 767496
Matamata in a trash can while I clean the tank

The real treat with working with matamatas is feeding them. As a volunteer I fed them skinned rats, at the other zoos, fish. The matas I worked with as a volunteer were the biggest of them all, which made their feeding a special treat. I’d lower the rat on the tongs, waving it front of them, watching as they slowly turned their heads, regarding it with tiny, pinpoint eyes. Then, suddenly, you’d hear a sudden woosh, their head would lung forward, their neck would inflate like an enormous balloon – all of this at the same second – and the rat would be gone. Later, the water would be expelled, and the turtle would settle back into lethargy at the bottom on the tank. It always put me in the mind of a shop vac suddenly being turned on, and shut off just as quickly.

The matamatas at my second paid zoo were new arrivals, just shipped to us from another zoo as part of a new exhibit, and they went off feed when they arrived, as is not atypical for reptiles. For a while, I had to constantly go to the pet store to buy live feeder fish for them to tickle their appetites. Even after they started eating, they would only eat chopped fish I left in the tank for them, preferring to eat in privacy under cover of darkness, rather than take fish from the tongs. I felt like a bit of a liar, as I’d regaled the other keepers with stories of how fun matamatas were to feed before we got this batch. I feel like my colleagues were fairly unimpressed.

View attachment 767497

Just as the matas in my volunteer days shared their exhibit with turtles, so did the matas at the other two zoos share exhibits with other species. At one, it was with emerald tree boa, at the other, northern caiman lizard and plumed basilisk. I never noticed any interaction between the species, even when caiman lizards entered the water with the turtles.

Matamatas always remind me a lot of alligator snapping turtles in many ways, especially in terms of exhibitry. They are large but inactive turtles, ambush predators, and as such are often given enclosures of fairly limited size, with the understanding that they won’t move. Years ago, however, I remember visiting Zoo Atlanta for the first time and being startled by the sight of an alligator snapper actually swimming the length of its decently large tank, and ever since have found myself wondering if matamatas would benefit from much larger enclosures (they are most active by night in the wild, so even if we didn’t see them do anything by day, perhaps they’d surprise us under cover of darkness). The challenge is that the turtles generally prefer water of a certain depth – just deep enough that they can stretch up and take a breath through their snorkel-like nose while remaining on the bottom – and not many zoo or aquarium tanks are very large and yet so shallow, but I have seen tanks of such a size and shape for rays in many rainforest buildings, so why not try something like that for matamatas?

Like yourself, over the many years that I have been working with animals, both in zoos, research and my own collection, I have worked with very specialised species, such as Antarctic Cod and both Rainbow and Brown Trout. These required incredibly specialised aquariums which I personally setup, and yet I was more content working with alot of different bird and small primate species .So I agree that to specialise is a very important part of working with animals, I can also see that having a broader experience can play its part. Many years ago ,zoos in England used to have what was called " relief keepers" keepers who had experience in other sections that could be called upon to fill in during illness/holidays. Also, most head keepers had a vast amount of animal experience because of working in other sections. Keep up the good work with this thread, I'm really enjoying it

 

[A.L. Gardner]

@pachyderm pro I’ve had several roles over the year, starting off as a volunteer keeper aid in my early teens, then as an educator, research intern, keeper (temp at one zoo, seasonal at another), keeper, senior keeper, acting curator, collection manager. A lot of my experience has been at smaller zoos, though I have worked as a reptile keeper at one large zoo, a commissary keeper at another. While I’ve enjoyed being a jack of all trades, it is true what they say about being a master of none. I’ve worked with a crazy variety of species, from chambered nautilus to white rhino, and worked on a lot of different aspects of animal care – training, enrichment, exhibit design, animal transport, population management – but the lack of specialization has been a bit of a challenge at times, especially when I’ve had to change zoos in the past and am looking for openings. It means I’m qualified for almost every job I see on the AZA job boards – but there’s often someone else who has more specialized experience for that specific role. Personally, I do think specialization is a good thing, and moving away from that has been deleterious for the profession – I just have a hard time doing that because I want to have my hands in everything and can’t pick! And strangely enough, in response to your last question, I don’t think I’ve ever actually had to fill out an incident report… there really has been a tendency to act like nothing happened (the rules about reporting are tightening up these days, though, especially for AZA facilities). If you have more questions about trying to break into the field, I’m happy to help if I can, either on here or in private message if you prefer.

@A.L. Gardner, I’ve actually been thinking of making these into a little book for myself at some point so I can keep the memories, complete with pictures and details that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing in the forum. One of my biggest regrets as a keeper over the years has been that I didn’t take more pics, right down more stories while they were fresh in my head, etc.

Back to the species of the day!

For a non-herp person, there’s a tendency to view the various turtles, tortoises, and terrapins as somewhat interchangeable – to a non-specialist, they all sort of run together into one shelled amalgamation. There’s a few species that truly stand out as unforgettable and unique, perhaps none more so than the matamata. No one who sees (or works with) one of these big guys is ever going to mistake it for another turtle.

I’ve worked with matamatas at three facilities, all AZA. They were actually one of the first herps that I got to work with as a volunteer keeper aide in the reptile house of my local zoos; twice more I worked with them as paid keepers at other facilities. They can be a bit of a psychological challenge for a keeper – they are so inactive by nature, and their physical appearance always seems so sickly, what with little tendrils of skin flapping about them – that when I worked with them I was always paralyzed by the near obsessive fear that they were sick or that something was otherwise wrong with them. The turtles proved fairly hardy, though, which in my experience is fairly typical of chelonians. They’ll live, sometimes seemingly forever, in whatever conditions you throw at them with nary a complaint. The challenge is, will they breed?

In the case of matas, the answer is almost certainly, “No they will not.” At the time I first started working with the species, I don’t know if anyone had yet truly bred them in captivity, and to this day they still have the reputation of being one of the more challenging species to breed. I was obsessed with trying as a volunteer, however, and, with the blessings of the staff, took it upon myself to build massive nest boxes with ramps leading down into the water to encourage the turtles to breed. It never happened, which makes sense – if experienced herpetologists hadn’t cracked the code at that point, you wouldn’t expect a high schooler with delusions of grandeur to do it either.

The mata exhibit was about six feet by six feet, home to three matas as well as a pair of red-headed side-necked turtles (which, to the visitors, were the stars of the exhibit. Even when the matas were pressed up against the glass, I don’t think a lot of visitors realized that they were actually animals). The exhibit was almost exclusively water, with a slim lip of land on one side – I never saw a matamata at any zoo I worked at willingly go on land. The water was stained brown with tannins, as the species is accustomed to in the wild. I’ve seen some matas in crystal clear water at some facilities, and have wondered if that proves problematic for their skin and eyes. In addition to darker water, I like to put floating plant matter on top of the water to provide additional cover and privacy. For turtles in holding in the back of the buildings, I liked to wrap most of the sides of the tank with black trash bags to limit visual disturbances and provide the turtles with a bit more privacy.

View attachment 767496
Matamata in a trash can while I clean the tank

The real treat with working with matamatas is feeding them. As a volunteer I fed them skinned rats, at the other zoos, fish. The matas I worked with as a volunteer were the biggest of them all, which made their feeding a special treat. I’d lower the rat on the tongs, waving it front of them, watching as they slowly turned their heads, regarding it with tiny, pinpoint eyes. Then, suddenly, you’d hear a sudden woosh, their head would lung forward, their neck would inflate like an enormous balloon – all of this at the same second – and the rat would be gone. Later, the water would be expelled, and the turtle would settle back into lethargy at the bottom on the tank. It always put me in the mind of a shop vac suddenly being turned on, and shut off just as quickly.

The matamatas at my second paid zoo were new arrivals, just shipped to us from another zoo as part of a new exhibit, and they went off feed when they arrived, as is not atypical for reptiles. For a while, I had to constantly go to the pet store to buy live feeder fish for them to tickle their appetites. Even after they started eating, they would only eat chopped fish I left in the tank for them, preferring to eat in privacy under cover of darkness, rather than take fish from the tongs. I felt like a bit of a liar, as I’d regaled the other keepers with stories of how fun matamatas were to feed before we got this batch. I feel like my colleagues were fairly unimpressed.

View attachment 767497

Just as the matas in my volunteer days shared their exhibit with turtles, so did the matas at the other two zoos share exhibits with other species. At one, it was with emerald tree boa, at the other, northern caiman lizard and plumed basilisk. I never noticed any interaction between the species, even when caiman lizards entered the water with the turtles.

Matamatas always remind me a lot of alligator snapping turtles in many ways, especially in terms of exhibitry. They are large but inactive turtles, ambush predators, and as such are often given enclosures of fairly limited size, with the understanding that they won’t move. Years ago, however, I remember visiting Zoo Atlanta for the first time and being startled by the sight of an alligator snapper actually swimming the length of its decently large tank, and ever since have found myself wondering if matamatas would benefit from much larger enclosures (they are most active by night in the wild, so even if we didn’t see them do anything by day, perhaps they’d surprise us under cover of darkness). The challenge is that the turtles generally prefer water of a certain depth – just deep enough that they can stretch up and take a breath through their snorkel-like nose while remaining on the bottom – and not many zoo or aquarium tanks are very large and yet so shallow, but I have seen tanks of such a size and shape for rays in many rainforest buildings, so why not try something like that for matamatas?

I'm glad you're thinking of putting these fascinating anecdotes in a book, there can't be many people who have worked with such a wide range of animals!

 

[TeaLovingDave]

@A.L. Gardner, I’ve actually been thinking of making these into a little book for myself at some point so I can keep the memories, complete with pictures and details that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing in the forum. One of my biggest regrets as a keeper over the years has been that I didn’t take more pics, right down more stories while they were fresh in my head, etc.

I think you should *definitely* do this.

Resources of this sort are amongst the most valuable for zoo historians and researchers, as they provide an insight into zoos and other such collections from a closer "on the ground" point-of-view rather than the highly-sanitised and more generalised point-of-view which officially-published material such as website articles, newsletters and annual reports give - for the past year or so, I have been fortunate enough to be the custodian of the Bartlett Society archive (the society being an organisation devoted to research into the history of zoological collections and the preservation of primary and secondary sources pertaining to said) and have been slowly sorting and cataloguing the material found within.

Among the material I have found so far are gems such as:

• The manuscript of an unpublished (or possibly self-published?) book comprising a lengthy interview - over 100 pages long - with William G Conway.
• Audio recordings of interviews with Clive Bennett, the former reptile curator at the long-closed Belle Vue Zoo, which took place months before his death in 2002.
• A series of around 30 letters written throughout the 1990s and 2000s by a keeper who worked at Whipsnade Zoo during that timespan, which were sent to a former colleague who had worked in the veterinary department at said collection, providing the latter with regular updates regarding events at the zoo.

....none of which the Society had any record of possessing (to the best of my knowledge) until I started this task!

Even if you feel that certain of your reminisces are too personal or sensitive to post online, I think it would be a very good idea for you to write them down - alongside everything you have posted here thus far and in the future - and to consider leaving copies to the Bartlett Society or any other organisation with similar objectives when enough time has elapsed that the need for circumspection has somewhat passed

 

[Batto]

Raccoon droppings often carry a parasitic roundworm, Baylisascaris (“Baylis”)

Baylisascaris procyonis, to be precise, for those who want to google this vile yet fascinatingly tenacious parasite.

and they were monsters.

Now imagine how Pachystruthio dmanisensis would have appeared to Pleistocene humans.

Even the mute swans, which have a reputation for being utterly savage

Nah, they are all kippers and curtains. Once they realize that you see through their bluff, they leg it.

 

[Steve Robinson]

I think you should *definitely* do this.

Resources of this sort are amongst the most valuable for zoo historians and researchers, as they provide an insight into zoos and other such collections from a closer "on the ground" point-of-view rather than the highly-sanitised and more generalised point-of-view which officially-published material such as website articles, newsletters and annual reports give - for the past year or so, I have been fortunate enough to be the custodian of the Bartlett Society archive (the society being an organisation devoted to research into the history of zoological collections and the preservation of primary and secondary sources pertaining to said) and have been slowly sorting and cataloguing the material found within.

Among the material I have found so far are gems such as:

• The manuscript of an unpublished (or possibly self-published?) book comprising a lengthy interview - over 100 pages long - with William G Conway.
• Audio recordings of interviews with Clive Bennett, the former reptile curator at the long-closed Belle Vue Zoo, which took place months before his death in 2002.
• A series of around 30 letters written throughout the 1990s and 2000s by a keeper who worked at Whipsnade Zoo during that timespan, which were sent to a former colleague who had worked in the veterinary department at said collection, providing the latter with regular updates regarding events at the zoo.

....none of which the Society had any record of possessing (to the best of my knowledge) until I started this task!

Even if you feel that certain of your reminisces are too personal or sensitive to post online, I think it would be a very good idea for you to write them down - alongside everything you have posted here thus far and in the future - and to consider leaving copies to the Bartlett Society or any other organisation with similar objectives when enough time has elapsed that the need for circumspection has somewhat passed

Ditto to this!

Plus it would also be very valuable if you could name names - without inviting lawyers to your door.

 

[Aardwolf]

Thanks for the kind praise, everyone, I’m glad to see that folks are enjoying it.

Today, I’ll share some stories about a species that I’ve worked with for many years, and one which I’m sure many regular zoo visitors are well-acquainted with, the red kangaroo.

My first experience with red kangaroos came in the form of Alice, a geriatric, essentially blind female who lived at an AZA facility where I volunteered during my first year of college. Alice shared her yard with a gray kangaroo (also quite old) and an emu. Alice was a barely-sentient animal at that age, only really moving so that she could move back and forth from her holding barn to the yard, where she would promptly flop down in the sun. She would move inside when it was raining, a fact which her keepers would sometimes use to encourage her to shift inside; I never saw it myself, but I’m told that they’d use a light mist from a hose to convince the blind kangaroo that it was raining, thus causing her to hobble inside. I can’t imagine what guests would have thought – “Look kids, they’re watering the kangaroo!”


Alice, the elderly red kangaroo, in one of her rare moments of being up and about. Interesting that her coat resembles that of a male more than a female.

The other 99% of my red ‘roo experience came from two non-AZA facilities. Though they shared management, they differed very much in exhibit quality. At the first, the exhibit was a bare, sandy plot, fronted with hog panel, with a barn at the back. It held a group of about 2.4. The other facility had a very large grassy paddock, which served as a kangaroo walk-through, housing about 30 animals. The visitors took a looping path lined with a few strands of wire on either side, which allowed the roos to climb under, while at least indicating to visitors that they should stay on the path (and, to their credit, they generally did). The path was fortunately wide enough that visitors would be able to walk around a dozing kangaroo should one plant itself on the path to sunbathe, as seemed to happen so often. In the center of the yard was the barn, an unheated structure thickly bedded with hay. Every day we gradually added more and more hay, covering up the old hay and the dung in the barn (a practice that we called “hot bedding” – not to be confused with the Australian use of that term), with the decomposition of the old dung and bedding heating the barn in the winter. Every spring, we’d drive several pick up trucks into the enclosure and strip the barn bare, then start the process again.


Red kangaroo males (and one female) eating some cauliflower in the less-satisfactory of the two non-AZA enclosures I worked with them at. At least this sad enclosure is gone - shortly before I left, it was replaced with a grassy walk-through habitat.

The ‘roos were fed ad lib horse grain and hay, very occasionally a little bit of produce for enrichment. They seemed to enjoy having ice treats in the hotter months. Their care was very basic – apart from the annual barn stripping – but what I mostly remember about the kangaroos was the seeming omnipresence of lumpy jaw. Also called Macropod Progressive Periodontal Disease, lumpy jaw is the inflammation of the jaw bone (essentially their jaw looks like it has a big lump) and is one of the most common problems in captive macropods. We had over 30 (adult) kangaroos in our mob at any given time, and I don’t know if there was ever a moment when we didn’t have at least one animal with lumpy jaw. Treatment was a pain. We’d work as a team to cut the infected animal from the mob and chase it into the barn, then shut the door behind it (that part was at least easy – kangaroos have never impressed me as being terribly smart animals, and if you get one trying to evade you in an exhibit, they tend to stick to patterns. As big as the yard was, it was often easy enough for just two keepers to catch a kangaroo). Then, we’d catch the animal (immobilizing it by grabbing the tail) and give in an antibiotic injection. A small female can be a handful, and I’ve been bitten in the bicep by a frightened Jill. When the patient in question is a big male, larger and more muscular than you are, it can be quite daunting. I’m not ashamed to say it, a big male ‘roo (called an Old Man or a Boomer) is a very intimidating animal, as you can easily tell if you’re standing right next to two boxing males. When one is squaring off against you, you’re inclined to look around for back up.

Another medical concern with kangaroos, one which I thankfully did not have to deal with – they are very susceptible to toxoplasmosis, which is often shed by feral cats. Worth keeping in mind if your facility has a barn cat problem.

It’s not necessary to have any skill, or a particular nice exhibit in order to breed kangaroos. It’s just necessary to have a male and a female that have five seconds in each other’s company. From the time she is reproductively mature, a female red kangaroo is in an almost constant state of pregnancy. Over the years, you gradually develop a bit of experience and practice in eyeing the pouches of your females, noting when they start to sag a little more and look a bit heavier, and it’s always satisfying when you see that little face pop out for the first time (our rule of thumb was that the first person to spot the joey’s head was the one who got to name it, so we all really made a point of keeping our eyes peeled for babies). Many of those babies were used for trade credit with other zoos and dealers.

It’s about one of those babies – my very first, actually, from the first of the two non-AZA zoos, where I first worked with red kangaroos – that I’ll share now.

Boomer did not have a particularly original name for a kangaroo. I should be embarrassed about that, seeing as I'm the one who named him, but I was barely out of school, he was my first kangaroo, and I was in love with him. Being a kangaroo, he started life off as something about the size and shape of a jellybean, gradually recognizable by the expansion of his mom's pouch. His young life took a turn for the worse when one of the senior keepers decided that she wanted a baby kangaroo to raise as an ambassador, and the joey was taken from the pouch. About five seconds later, I heard that keeper exclaim with disgust. For some reason, she hadn't counted on the possibility of the joey that she pulled being a male.

As I mentioned (but didn’t really understand at the time), a big male kangaroo can be a pretty powerful animal, and there was an element in danger in hand-raising one. I didn't really think about it in those terms. I just saw that we had a little joey that was pulled from the pouch and couldn't be put back in. And so I raised him. All of us did, I mean, but I feel like I was the most parental towards him. The senior keeper liked taking him home sometimes to shock the neighbors, or once or twice even to a bar. Still, she lost interest before too many months had passed, and the novelty wore off. With my limited experience, I tried raising him in that awkward in-between of being a kangaroo and a... whatever the plan was for him to be. I'll admit, I did get a lot of pleasure out of calling his name and watching him bounce over to me, sidle up to me, and tug at my pant leg, looking up expectedly. He was able to live with the other kangaroos, so he had some socialization skills, but you could tell he never quite fit in.

Boomer grew up - physically, as well as behaviorally. I was stuck working there for longer than I liked, and I professionally grew up with him. Soon, not many staff members felt comfortable going in with Boomer. He was pushy and domineering, and would shove keepers up against the walls. Some of the female keepers got... cues... from him that he wanted to be more than friends. None of the other male red kangaroos behaved like that - we assumed it's because Boomer, raised by people, wanted to interact with us, but still didn't know how. At any rate, he certainly wasn't afraid of people. I tried working with him, sometimes in the enclosure, sometimes on the other side of the fence. The zoo's owner just saw him as a liability. And one day, he was gone. I really do wish things had gone differently for him on so many levels, but I hope he had a happy ending – maybe as a breeder of his own mob? – wherever he went.


Boomer

 

[Osedax]

Interesting that her coat resembles that of a male more than a female.

Not as uncommon as you might think! Three out of the five adult female red roos at Taronga have male colouration. Also, approximately 30% of males have female colouration!

 

[Aardwolf]

Today, one of the most iconic and well-represented of American zoo animals, the American bison!

I’ve worked with this species at three facilities – one AZA, two non-AZA. This is one of those situations where the AZA facility failed to really shine compared to the non-AZA ones (I feel this happens more with hoofstock than with many other taxa). The bison in the AZA facility were in a modestly sized, but rather dull, habitat that started off as sand (we called it the Great Bison Desert) before we finally had it changed to soil, a process that took several days and an endless parade of dump trucks. Why was it sand in the first place? It wasn’t supposed to be – but it was a city zoo, and the trucks that were supposed to have brought dirt years ago brought sand again, and our curator was too afraid of upsetting the good ol’ boys down in Public Works and didn’t correct the mistake. It certainly wasn’t the easiest substrate for a giant hoofed mammal to walk on… or to push a wheelbarrow through. After she left, we asked for dirt instead and got it. Periodically, I’d see tiny blades of grass poke through the soil and cheer that it was finally going to turn green, but it never really materialized.

One of the non-AZA zoos kept their bison in a large field, which actually looked very attractive, but, I came to realize, wasn’t that much better than the Bison Desert I worked with years later. It was extremely boggy, and while the yard was fine in dry weather, my tenure at that zoo was an extremely rainy one, and I constantly expected to see the bison engaged in their own recreation of the La Brea tar pits. The second non-AZA kept their bison in an enclosure of several acres, shared with zebra and various camelids, ratites, cervids, and antelope, as well as domestic cattle, as a safari that we’d drive wagonloads of visitors through (visitors could not drive their own cars through). This was the superior bison habitat, with lots of space, varied terrain, and plenty of grass – which made it a little vexing to me that we only kept a pair in it. I’d have loved to have worked with a large herd and been able to observe those dynamics (the AZA zoo had a pair, later three females after the male passed and two young females were brought in. The other AZA zoo had five or so. It was years ago, and I didn’t stay at that place for long).


Some of our bison in the swampy meadow, during a rare period of light drizzle instead of torrential downpour

Bison were fed a combination of grain and hay. They’re remarkably hardy animals – a major part of their appeal – and perhaps the only animal that I’ve kept outside year round and never, ever worried about in the slightest, no matter the weather. Each zoo had a barn for shelter – a more enclosed one at the AZA facility, just a roof on poles at the safari situation – which I think the animals and I both valued more as a place to put the hay and grain and keep it out of the rain than we did as an actual shelter for the animals.

Bison are pretty hardy animals. The only medical condition I really ever associated with them was joint trouble. They’re big animals, and that’s a lot of weight on their joints when they get older. At the same time, you notice a marked decrease in muscle mass as the animals age.

The level of work that went into cleaning up after the bison varied considerably between the three zoos. At the AZA zoo, a keeper would climb down into the moat of the bison exhibit in the morning and put out the grain for the bison from inside the moat. While the bison were thus distracted, a second keeper would open the gate at the back of the exhibit and push in the wheelbarrow. The first keeper would climb out of the moat and meet the second, and together they’d clean up the dung and uneaten hay from yesterday, keeping an eye on the bison at the other end of the exhibit as they cleaned. Occasionally, the bison would finish their grain early and come over to investigate – in those cases, we’d simply pack up and leave as soon as they started walking over. I’d heard a few stories from keepers who had been there longer about the bison actually charging them and keepers needing to flee (there were two fenced-in islands of trees in the middle of the exhibit which could be used as an emergency refuge), but never experienced any aggression from them.

At the safari-setting zoo, we drove around the exhibit in a John Deere gator, tossing poop and old hay into the bed as we found it. Periodically, someone would hitch a chainlink gate to the back of a tractor and drag the exhibit, breaking up the dung into more compostable pieces (a piece of buffalo dung, a chip as they’re sometimes called, is about the size of your head. I toyed with the idea of bronzing one as a paperweight. Sometimes I’d give them to other animals as enrichment, as I would the shed from their coats in the spring).

I don’t even remember cleaning the bison yard at the other non-AZA zoo. Partially because it wasn’t my primary run there. Partially because I don’t think it stopped raining the entire time I was there.

As with a lot of hoofstock, people don’t really think much about providing bison with enrichment, though in my experience they certainly are receptive to it. The old bull bison at the AZA was extremely attached to an enormous boomer ball. It had been purchased for the big cats, but they ignored it, so it was eventually given to him. He loved it, so much that we would sleep next to it at night, protectively nestled against his side. When he played with it, he was as giddy as a calf, frolicking after it, arthritis forgotten, and on the not-infrequent occasions when he accidentally rolled it into the moat or knocked it out of the exhibit, he was a nervous wreck until we got it back to him. The most dangerous place in the zoo was in between him and his ball, and I was once bowled over when he hit it and it ricocheted off a fence post and knocked me over. Some visitors asked us if it was a bison egg.


Rescuing the bison ball after it had been knocked out of the exhibit, while the male looks on worriedly. Note the giant clumps of shed coming off of him as spring progresses. This was the Great Bison Desert before we replaced the sand with soil. Behind the bison is one of the tree islands that we could use as shelter if charged.

As mentioned in my description of cleaning the bison at the AZA zoo, at every facility, we worked free contact with them. Bison are big animals, and not terribly careful with their heads – when I’d be down in the moat getting the grain ready, there was more than one occasion when I had to move carefully and quickly, as a bison innocently turning its head suddenly could knock you off your feet. There was only one time I ever actually felt afraid working around the species, however.

On the Fourth of July (Independence Day in the US), the parking lot of the safari non-AZA zoo was an excellent place to see fireworks. Our owner, knowing this, charged folks to park their cars in the lot so they could watch them from a prime location, and two or three of us would work late to take the money and keep an eye on things. Afterwards, when the show was over and the visitors had left, we’d inspect the zoo to make sure all of the animals were ok – no one had startled and broken their necks running into a fence or anything. None of them ever did (at least not because of July 4th fireworks), but it always paid to check. Having checked the rest of the zoo, I climbed into the John Deere gator and drove into the safari field to inspect and count the animals.

I don’t know how much of it was the excitement from the fireworks, how much was the novelty of me driving in their after dark (the headlights on the gator were crud, so I was holding a flashlight in one hand and the steering wheel in the other), and how much of it was that they associated the gator with being fed, but the animals all went crazy. I didn’t see a single one until I was about a third of the way through driving the loop (so far enough in that I was committed), when then the stampede hit. I soon found myself being swarmed by deer and antelope and zebras and camels on all sides (a gator is an open-top vehicle, not much more than an all-terrain golf cart, if you aren’t familiar with it), and they weren’t taking no for an answer. Soon, I was driving for my life, again holding the flashlight in one hand and trying to evade the zebras which were nipping at the side of the cart. Soon, however, I heard the clomping of heavy hooves, and in the darkness on either side could make out the forms of the bison, running alongside me, trying to head me off. I’m pretty sure I drove that vehicle up vertical surfaces while trying to evade them.

 

[Coelacanth18]

The challenge is, will they breed?

In the case of matas, the answer is almost certainly, “No they will not.” At the time I first started working with the species, I don’t know if anyone had yet truly bred them in captivity, and to this day they still have the reputation of being one of the more challenging species to breed.

Is the private trade better at breeding them, or are they mostly wild-caught animals? It seems odd to me that they'd be fairly common if it's so difficult to captive-breed the species.

They’ll follow you around, get in the way, and constantly pull things out of your wheelbarrow to investigate.

When I volunteered at an animal sanctuary I sometimes cleaned an enclosure with an emu pair, and working around them reminds me of your description working with ostriches. The emus had a bad habit of quietly lurking right behind me, as if they were about to try something... they were never aggressive, but when you're not used to being around larger animals it can be very disconcerting to have human-sized birds silently creeping five feet behind you!

 

[Aardwolf]

@Coelacanth18, oof, that’s a can of worms question right there. Speaking generally (as in, not matamatas), I’d say most private breeders aren’t better than zoos – and plenty are much worse – but a private breeder who really devotes himself to a certain species or a handful of species can greatly excel what most zoos can do with breeding a species. There’s a few reasons. One, they’re more likely to keep multiple pairs/groups of the species, which gives them more options and more flexibility (this pair of cockatoos isn’t mating? Switch partners with the ones in the next aviary and try that!). Secondly, there’s usually more consistency and specialization in the personnel involved. I’m convinced that one of the biggest weaknesses that zoos suffer from is the constant turnover in staff, largely driven by the wages; with the high turnover, you’re constantly having to retrain staff, and not building expertise among your keepers. That and more zoos are moving away from specialized keepers. Whereas it used to be you might have a reptile keeper that really specialized in keeping and breeding turtles, and might be up to the challenge of matamatas, now you have a keeper who has matamatas in a rainforest building along with parrots, marmosets, agoutis, etc – maybe they took that job because they were mostly interested in the monkeys in the building, and taking care of the turtles in the building is just part of their job, a chore they do so that they can work with the animals that they’re more passionate about. Not having to work around the demands and distractions of the public also helps.

One advantage zoos do have over private breeders is better collaboration – whereas a private breeder might guard their secrets

I like to think that there’s a lesson I can glean from every species that I work with – and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is how variable different animals of the same species can be – even if they’re the same sex, same age, and have nearly-identical husbandry. To that lesson, I owe a tip of the hat to the great curassow.

I’ve worked with two great curassows in my career, both at the same AZA facility (this not being one of the curassow species that was selected to be an SSP, its numbers were declining in AZA. I’d planned to eventually swap them out for helmeted, wattled, or blue-billed, but as it turned out, I left the facility before they did). Both were males, both somewhat on the older side, and both in exhibits that were nearly identical in size and shape to one another, being about 10 yards apart. Both were the lone members of their species in their exhibit, great curassows not being a species that was in plentiful supply at that point, so neither was able to have a harem, and due to concerns about aggression, each was housed apart from the other. Both were in mixed species exhibits.

Both aviaries were similar in size, maybe 40’ x 15’, with one perhaps being a little longer and thinner (to facilitate the flight of the conures and cuckoos), the other a little more square-shaped. Both had hard-packed dirt floors covered with pine needles, various live plants, especially shrubs and ground-cover vines, and stumps and deadfall for perches. In each exhibit, water was provided by a pool of about 5-10 gallons sunk into the ground. The diet for each bird consisted of a combination of dog kibble and Mazuri insectivore, diced produce, and Nebraska Bird of Prey diet (ground horse), with some mealworms sprinkled in.

There the similarities ended.



One curassow was the sweetest, if goofiest and most hapless, bird I’ve known. He was incapable of hurting a fly – intentionally, anyway. Ironically, he may have been the bird who injured me the most over the course of my career (condor bite excluded – see Post 64) by virtue of me tripping over him. He was always underfoot. For purposes of this post, we’ll call him “Good Boy.”

The other bird was unpredictable. Sometimes he was fairly aloof. Other times, he was the living embodiment of all that was evil. He never made you guess which he was going to be on a given day – on days in which he was feeling feisty, he’d be waiting for you at the door, pecking angrily, waiting for a go at your shins. Sometimes, he’d fly to the highest perch in the exhibit, and then hurl himself down at you. Nor was his aggression limited to keepers – I can’t prove it, but I suspect him in deaths of Orinoco geese and elegant-crested tinamou that he shared an aviary with – the sun conures and guira cuckoos were too small, too fast, and too arboreal to attract his notice (the remaining birds were moved in with “Good Boy,” who also lived with sloths, amazons, iguanas, and tortoises). We’ll call this one “Bad Boy.”

Bad Boy’s level of aggression varied by keeper. He had a go at all of us at least some of the time, but he was much more hostile towards some keepers than others. He probably tolerated me more generously than he did many of the other staff; there were some keepers (especially the older men) who he never let enter the aviary without attacking. I think this had more to do with attitude and the way they responded than it did their sex – like I said, he left me alone usually, and he really hated our old-school, older female curator. They all tended to respond much more defensively to him, creating a feedback loop of fighting.

(Side note: I’ve had several older keepers over the years tell me that you have to fight back against aggressive animals to show them who’s boss, otherwise they’ll always be aggressive to you. The problem with that mindset is that, in the eyes of the animal, they actually are the winners of these daily fights. The exhibit is their territory, they want you out of it, and, since you inevitably leave after finishing the servicing, in their mind, they succeeded in driving you off. So, when you show up to clean the next morning, the animal is thinking, “Ok wise guy, I chased you off before, and I can do it again!”).

Another interesting difference between the two birds was their response to winter weather. Good Boy was perhaps the most cold-sensitive bird we had – at the time of my arrival, he was missing a few toes from past frostbite – and as a result, as soon as things began to dip below 40, he was bundled by inside. He was such a good bird that he was no trouble to keep indoors, and, while it never happened, I could easily imagine him swaddled in blankets, sitting on a hot water bottle, with an attending keeper holding out a mug of hot chocolate for him to sip from. Having once been affected by the cold, staff were determined to keep him warm and safe – I think there were reptiles that stayed out later in the year than this curassow did.

Bad Boy, on the other hand, seemed completely immune to the cold. I’d see him out in the worst of the weather, ignoring his nearby shelter (a Plexiglas-enclosed room with a space heat), perched on a log with cold wind ruffling his feathers, seeming not to notice. I always put his food and water inside the well-bedded holding stall to encourage him to stay in there. He always ate it, then went back out into the cold. It was like he had a furnace fueled by hate inside of him, and he was unwilling to accept our charity in the form of a warm shelter lest me mistake it for weakness on his part. I’d glad it wasn’t the other way around. I’d have worried sick about Good Boy in the cold. Bad Boy, if indoors, would have probably killed us all.

 

[Strathmorezoo]

@Coelacanth18, oof, that’s a can of worms question right there. Speaking generally (as in, not matamatas), I’d say most private breeders aren’t better than zoos – and plenty are much worse – but a private breeder who really devotes himself to a certain species or a handful of species can greatly excel what most zoos can do with breeding a species. There’s a few reasons. One, they’re more likely to keep multiple pairs/groups of the species, which gives them more options and more flexibility (this pair of cockatoos isn’t mating? Switch partners with the ones in the next aviary and try that!). Secondly, there’s usually more consistency and specialization in the personnel involved. I’m convinced that one of the biggest weaknesses that zoos suffer from is the constant turnover in staff, largely driven by the wages; with the high turnover, you’re constantly having to retrain staff, and not building expertise among your keepers. That and more zoos are moving away from specialized keepers. Whereas it used to be you might have a reptile keeper that really specialized in keeping and breeding turtles, and might be up to the challenge of matamatas, now you have a keeper who has matamatas in a rainforest building along with parrots, marmosets, agoutis, etc – maybe they took that job because they were mostly interested in the monkeys in the building, and taking care of the turtles in the building is just part of their job, a chore they do so that they can work with the animals that they’re more passionate about. Not having to work around the demands and distractions of the public also helps.

One advantage zoos do have over private breeders is better collaboration – whereas a private breeder might guard their secrets

I like to think that there’s a lesson I can glean from every species that I work with – and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is how variable different animals of the same species can be – even if they’re the same sex, same age, and have nearly-identical husbandry. To that lesson, I owe a tip of the hat to the great curassow.

I’ve worked with two great curassows in my career, both at the same AZA facility (this not being one of the curassow species that was selected to be an SSP, its numbers were declining in AZA. I’d planned to eventually swap them out for helmeted, wattled, or blue-billed, but as it turned out, I left the facility before they did). Both were males, both somewhat on the older side, and both in exhibits that were nearly identical in size and shape to one another, being about 10 yards apart. Both were the lone members of their species in their exhibit, great curassows not being a species that was in plentiful supply at that point, so neither was able to have a harem, and due to concerns about aggression, each was housed apart from the other. Both were in mixed species exhibits.

Both aviaries were similar in size, maybe 40’ x 15’, with one perhaps being a little longer and thinner (to facilitate the flight of the conures and cuckoos), the other a little more square-shaped. Both had hard-packed dirt floors covered with pine needles, various live plants, especially shrubs and ground-cover vines, and stumps and deadfall for perches. In each exhibit, water was provided by a pool of about 5-10 gallons sunk into the ground. The diet for each bird consisted of a combination of dog kibble and Mazuri insectivore, diced produce, and Nebraska Bird of Prey diet (ground horse), with some mealworms sprinkled in.

There the similarities ended.

View attachment 767954

One curassow was the sweetest, if goofiest and most hapless, bird I’ve known. He was incapable of hurting a fly – intentionally, anyway. Ironically, he may have been the bird who injured me the most over the course of my career (condor bite excluded – see Post 64) by virtue of me tripping over him. He was always underfoot. For purposes of this post, we’ll call him “Good Boy.”

The other bird was unpredictable. Sometimes he was fairly aloof. Other times, he was the living embodiment of all that was evil. He never made you guess which he was going to be on a given day – on days in which he was feeling feisty, he’d be waiting for you at the door, pecking angrily, waiting for a go at your shins. Sometimes, he’d fly to the highest perch in the exhibit, and then hurl himself down at you. Nor was his aggression limited to keepers – I can’t prove it, but I suspect him in deaths of Orinoco geese and elegant-crested tinamou that he shared an aviary with – the sun conures and guira cuckoos were too small, too fast, and too arboreal to attract his notice (the remaining birds were moved in with “Good Boy,” who also lived with sloths, amazons, iguanas, and tortoises). We’ll call this one “Bad Boy.”

Bad Boy’s level of aggression varied by keeper. He had a go at all of us at least some of the time, but he was much more hostile towards some keepers than others. He probably tolerated me more generously than he did many of the other staff; there were some keepers (especially the older men) who he never let enter the aviary without attacking. I think this had more to do with attitude and the way they responded than it did their sex – like I said, he left me alone usually, and he really hated our old-school, older female curator. They all tended to respond much more defensively to him, creating a feedback loop of fighting.

(Side note: I’ve had several older keepers over the years tell me that you have to fight back against aggressive animals to show them who’s boss, otherwise they’ll always be aggressive to you. The problem with that mindset is that, in the eyes of the animal, they actually are the winners of these daily fights. The exhibit is their territory, they want you out of it, and, since you inevitably leave after finishing the servicing, in their mind, they succeeded in driving you off. So, when you show up to clean the next morning, the animal is thinking, “Ok wise guy, I chased you off before, and I can do it again!”).

Another interesting difference between the two birds was their response to winter weather. Good Boy was perhaps the most cold-sensitive bird we had – at the time of my arrival, he was missing a few toes from past frostbite – and as a result, as soon as things began to dip below 40, he was bundled by inside. He was such a good bird that he was no trouble to keep indoors, and, while it never happened, I could easily imagine him swaddled in blankets, sitting on a hot water bottle, with an attending keeper holding out a mug of hot chocolate for him to sip from. Having once been affected by the cold, staff were determined to keep him warm and safe – I think there were reptiles that stayed out later in the year than this curassow did.

Bad Boy, on the other hand, seemed completely immune to the cold. I’d see him out in the worst of the weather, ignoring his nearby shelter (a Plexiglas-enclosed room with a space heat), perched on a log with cold wind ruffling his feathers, seeming not to notice. I always put his food and water inside the well-bedded holding stall to encourage him to stay in there. He always ate it, then went back out into the cold. It was like he had a furnace fueled by hate inside of him, and he was unwilling to accept our charity in the form of a warm shelter lest me mistake it for weakness on his part. I’d glad it wasn’t the other way around. I’d have worried sick about Good Boy in the cold. Bad Boy, if indoors, would have probably killed us all.

I agree that wages for keepers have been/are a problem though in the UK they better these days. I can remember when I first started looking for employment in zoos in the early 1970s, wages were truly awful. With regard to older keepers saying that you should fight back against aggressive animals, its not something that I have ever advised because, I think that it would be detrimental in as much it could make the animals even more aggressive or it would make them scared of you, either way not good keeping practice. I've always found that animals are more likely to respond more to a kindly, caring attitude towards them(which can take along time)but is so rewarding when the animal becomes less aggressive.

 

[Aardwolf]

I’ve only had the opportunity to work with two species of crane over the course of my career, both probably the two most common zoo cranes.

Firstly, there was the gray crowned crane, worked with at two facilities – one an AZA zoo as a volunteer, the other as a keeper at a non-AZA zoo. Strangely, I really don’t have many memories of the species at either zoo. In each they were in a mixed-species exhibit with gazelles (a trend that I’ve since come to dislike – I feel like crowned cranes, as the most arboreal of cranes, are the species which would benefit the most from being in enclosed aviaries to allow them to perch in trees). Mostly, I just remember that the crane at the AZA facility zoo had lost its mate before I arrived, and had been given a mirror for companionship, enrichment – and I mostly remember that because that exhibit was home to a very spunky gazelle, and I appreciated having the mirror so I could keep an eye behind me as I raked. In appearance, behavior, anatomy, crowned cranes strike me as the least-crane-like of the cranes – at the very least, they have short beaks less-adept at stabbing people, which is certainly something I’ve come to appreciate in a crane following my experiences with the other species.

I’ve worked with sandhill cranes at two zoos as well, one AZA, one non-AZA (different from the crowned crane facilities). They’re a ubiquitous bird in zoos, hardy, easily cared for, and, seeing as they are native to so much of the country, easily incorporated into native wildlife exhibits. The non-AZA zoo kept their pair in a grassy yard; the AZA zoo kept their pair on a marshy yard with a natural creek running through it. Both provided the birds with some opportunities for natural foraging of small prey, though obviously more-so with the birds that had a more natural habitat with fish, frogs, crayfish, etc. swimming through all the time. The majority of the diet at both facilities was Mazuri Crane, served ad lib in a metal hanging feeder, similar to those I’ve used for swans. At the AZA zoo, I usually tossed one or two capelin, or a handful of superworms, every day as a supplemental treat.

What I mostly remember about sandhill cranes is their aggression. I’ve heard it said that if you put all of the world’s cranes together in one massive flock, the majority of them would be sandhills. The truth is, if you put all of the world’s cranes in one flock, depending on the time of year, you’d soon just have two cranes left. While they can gather in enormous congregations in the wild for migration (if you haven’t seen the sandhill crane migration, make a point of doing so before you die – it’s breathtaking), when breeding season comes the cranes become savagely aggressive. At the non-AZA zoo, we shifted the pair into a chicken-wire side pen to service their yard. At the AZA zoo, we worked freely with them – but I never went into that yard without a rake to keep the male crane at bay.


Stormin' Norman, coming up for an inspection

That aggression extended to any bird that even resembled a sandhill crane. Ducks and geese were tolerated. Other birds might not be. The AZA zoo was home to a large, natural rookery of great blue herons, and in the nesting season the trees were full of big birds flying overhead, resembling pterosaurs more than birds. Every year, we’d see lots of recently fledged juveniles walking around the zoo, just booted from the nest and trying to learn how to be herons. And every year, one of those poor sods would wander into the sandhill crane exhibit – and wouldn’t wander out. The brutal execution of the interloper, who usually had no idea he was in danger until our male unleashed his fury upon him, would inevitably take place in front of a large group of schoolchildren. Kind of amazed we never had a YouTube moment…

School groups were fascinated by the cranes, especially their bugling calls and dances (the pair at the AZA zoo was a mother and son. The female was unnamed. I called the male Norman, after Norman Bates. Not only was he a bit of a psycho but… let’s just say he loved his mother). The male especially loved to do his dance right next to the fence, leaping up and calling. Sometimes, he came down on the wrong side of the fence. He was probably our most common animal escape at that facility. If he got loose on the creek side of the habitat, we’d often just keep an eye on him and catch him up after we closed for the day – his desire to remain close to the female kept him from going far, and he sometimes even jumped back in on his own. Once in a while, however, he’d land in the public area. Then, I’d turn around to see what the commotion was, only to see a horde of children running for their lives, while Norman would run after them, making his manic, laughing call, his mother calling back with encouragement from her side of the fence.

At the time I worked at that AZA zoo, the other (usual) North American crane, the whooping crane, was quite a rarity in zoos – I’d only seen one once before. While I was there, however, the whooping crane breeding project at Patuxent NWR was halted by the Federal government, which led to a flood of facilities taking on whooping cranes. Now, whoopers are among the most common cranes in zoos. While I was still at that zoo, we made tentative plans to phase our sandhills out for whooping cranes after Norman and his mother passed away. I did, however, make sure to note we’d need a taller fence.