Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, I'm still here LOL. Meant to ask, do you think Ocelot is the smelliest cat that you have worked with ? It certainly is in my experience.
A Zoo Man's Notebook, 2025
- Thread starter Aardwolf
- Start date
I, for one, am really enjoying reading your posts, but as someone who's never worked as a keeper, I find it generally hard to contribute to discussion here.
Black-crowned Night-Heron range in North America is fascinatingly patchy. Like they're super common in some areas and then completely absent from others, so I wouldn't call them local to "pretty much everywhere". Like in my area they're pretty common, but my friend who lives in Minnesota (one state over) doesn't seem them at all. Look at the eBird Status and Trends map to see what I mean:
Night-herons do seem to be way more common in zoos than any other habitat, I've noticed. I have no idea why.
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The lack of replies may just have to do with the fact that a majority of readers here are not keepers themselves and don't always feel they have anything of value to add to the conversation (speaking for myself, anyway). I have continued to thoroughly enjoy this thread as I'm sure many others have as well. You could probably go for another year and I'd still be engaged, or at the very least when you feel you've covered all of your more interesting stories.
Do not confuse the lack of reply with a lack of interest @Aardwolf !
Many of us here aren't or weren't keepers themselves as already said before, so not many of us can contribute or feel they should reply without adding something to the discussion.
I read your every single post even though I didn't put a like to everyone of them (which may be a good thing to do to endorse posting and let you know there's an interest!).
Many of us here aren't or weren't keepers themselves as already said before, so not many of us can contribute or feel they should reply without adding something to the discussion.
I read your every single post even though I didn't put a like to everyone of them (which may be a good thing to do to endorse posting and let you know there's an interest!).
Nile Hippo Expert
Well-Known Member
@Aardwolf I just want to say that this is my favorite ZC thread of all time and would love for you to keep going! I will never lose interest in reading your posts even though I don't reply to this thread really, they are just really insane and helpful and it feels impossible for me to lose interest.
Wanderer
Well-Known Member
I really like this thread, it gives me a completely different perspective on zoos as a whole and how the animals are managed. It is all at once sweet, sad, funny and a little bit horrifying at times.
Your description of neurotic parrots and monkeys is hilarious (and also perfectly highlights the issues with keeping them as pets). On the other hand, the reptile hoarding practices you described early on in this thread are probably what I found the most upsetting, and can only be described as just plain wrong. The gap between AZA zoos and non-accredited zoo culture is also very striking, I wonder if this is something specific to the US or if it exists to the same extent here in Europe.
Your description of neurotic parrots and monkeys is hilarious (and also perfectly highlights the issues with keeping them as pets). On the other hand, the reptile hoarding practices you described early on in this thread are probably what I found the most upsetting, and can only be described as just plain wrong. The gap between AZA zoos and non-accredited zoo culture is also very striking, I wonder if this is something specific to the US or if it exists to the same extent here in Europe.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
@Strathmorezoo, I can’t say that I ever noticed that, though cats certainly are pungent as a whole. I don’t know what the situation is like in the UK, but in the states I feel that ocelots are exhibited inside more often than many of the mid-sized cats, which perhaps makes their fragrance a bit more prominent, whereas my experience with these guys has been outdoors.
@Wanderer, I can only speak from the perspective of someone who has been under the umbrella of AZA and ZAA (the American, not the Australian). AZA has definitely been getting stricter in recent years, with several zoos that had comfortably been members for many years getting the boot, and even some very prominent zoos being tabled/told off. Among the non-AZA facilities in America, they range in quality from truly excellent to heart-breakingly bad. The reptile hoarding that you mentioned is something that has long been the practice at many zoos and was very pronounced at the beginning of my career, but I’ve definitely seen a cultural shift towards the better on that front, and across herp husbandry in general, both in zoos and the private sector.
@birdsandbats, and not just the US, but the world! I remember being very amused when I visited John Ball Zoo and saw the species in an exhibit space with Magellanic penguins, whereas we’d kept them with alligators. The juxtaposition of the two exhibits really drove home for me how broad the species range is
Thank you all very much for the kind words, I promise that wasn’t me fishing for compliments! I wanted to make sure I wasn’t boring folks with the rambles. I’ve got a few more of these left in me, and I saved some of the heavy-hitters towards the end.
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with three species of crocodile.
My first exposure to the crocodiles was in the form of a female Australian freshwater crocodile, Eleanor. Prior to coming to our zoo, Eleanor had been privately owned, kept in a cattle tank, and as such she was fairly small for an adult of her species (maybe five feet long). Not saying that I think we were doing her a lot of favors in terms of her exhibit – she was kept in our reptile house, in one of a series of exhibits that were meant for aquatic turtles (matamatas, snake-necks, those size of turtles), about 6 feet by 6 feet, with a ledge of land and then the pool. What I mostly remember about Eleanor were two things. One was her general demeanor. She was so very shy. She had not been mistreated or anything at her previous home, but she was still so nervous around keepers. When I’d open the door to the exhibit, she’d close her eyes and scrunch up, trying to look small.
The other was her diet. She was mostly fed rats, and due to the wonky filtration system of our building, it was decided that all rats would be skinned before being given to her, as that the hair wouldn’t mess with the filter (seeing as how she swallowed her prey whole I’m not sure about the logic of this, but I was a dumb young kid and it wasn’t my place to question). On rodent delivery days, I’d open the rat bins, quickly kill the rats, and then skin them, moving quickly and methodically. Sometimes too quickly. I remember one day whacking a rat, skinning it, dropping it in the bucket… and then watching it get back up and start to walk.
That sort of thing leaves an impression on a young keeper.
My next species was the West African slender snouted crocodile. This was my first introduction to large crocodilians, as we had a big male and a big female in an indoor exhibit. I’ll admit I was a little weak in the knees the first time I walked into their exhibit – but I needn’t have worried. The pair were perfectly gentle animals. When we were about to enter their exhibit for feeding, we’d always turn off their waterfall – that made the water still, so it would be a lot easier to see them and track their movements under the surface. Shutting off the waterfall told them, before we even entered the exhibit, that it was chow time, so by the time we entered, they would be lined up at the edge of the pool, waiting for us (they were conditioned to understand that they only got fed when they were in the water, so as to keep them from trying to rush the door). They’d patiently open their mouths and allow us to deposit fish or rodents in their jaws with tongs.
The crocodiles were housed with cichlids, which were too small to be of any interest to them as prey, as well as turtles... which if you read the Nile softshell entry of this thread, enough said.
For my third experience, I worked with a group of Nile crocodiles, a big male and three females, which came from a crocodile farm. This exhibit was unique for me in that it was outdoors. We were in the south, which helped, but even there it can get chilly, so the pool had supplemental heaters. Attached to the exhibit yard was a holding building; the supervisor and curator each had the life support system set to alarm them if the outdoor pool’s temperature failed to maintain and it got too cold, so that they could come and bring the crocs into holding, though to my knowledge this never happened.
Feeding these crocodiles was my first exposure to Mazuri crocodilian chow, and I remember how shocked I was that these giant predators – our male was close to 14 feet, the biggest croc I’d ever seen until I met Maximo the saltwater croc years later at St. Augustine – would not only eat, but go crazy over greasy black lumps that kind of resembled their poop. This diet was supplemented with occasional large prey items – there is a tendency of zoo crocodilians to have somewhat weaker jaws than their wild counterparts, the result of the muscles not been exercised as much – such as large fish, which were fed from a small balcony overlooking the pool (which was also used to impress potential donors).
Visitors will ask a lot about the differences between alligators and crocodiles, which can sometimes be tricky to really explain (besides a few things like the dentition). I feel that’s because the crocodiles are such a diverse group, physically, ecologically, and behaviorally. From a keeper perspective, one of the most relevant observations is that crocodiles are much less cold tolerant. They also tend to be more active, more inquisitive, and, in some species, more aggressive (not just towards keepers, but towards each other. Some species, such as the Philippine crocodile, are very antisocial, whereas gators love to lounge in groups). Both of these factors (combined with the appeal of it being a native species, easily available) help explain the near omnipresence of American alligators in US zoos; when I see that a zoo has an actual crocodile, that immediately makes me think it’s likely to be a bit more impressive.
This is a group of animals for which husbandry has changed markedly in recent years, with much more emphasis on training and enrichment. (St. Augustine’s Croc School, which I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, is an excellent resource for keepers who want to know all-things crocodilian). When you work with these animals, you’re regularly impressed by how much smarter and more complex they are than you might have previously suspected from old jungle movies. Unfortunately, as reptiles, these animals are not regulated by the Animal Welfare Act, which means that there are still a lot of crocodiles out there lounging in squalid, inappropriate living conditions.
I’d never felt unsafe in the company of our crocodiles. I’ve explained it as crocodiles are dangerous if you are within a certain distance of them, or if you don’t know that they are there/where they are. As with alligators, I feel that one of the biggest risks is that their usual indolent behavior encourages complacency among keepers, or, even worse, a cocky desire to show off and play Steve Irwin. That being said, every monitor lizard keeper I know has been bitten at least once, and I know several alligator keepers who have been bitten. I’ve never met a croc keeper who’s taken a bite.
@Wanderer, I can only speak from the perspective of someone who has been under the umbrella of AZA and ZAA (the American, not the Australian). AZA has definitely been getting stricter in recent years, with several zoos that had comfortably been members for many years getting the boot, and even some very prominent zoos being tabled/told off. Among the non-AZA facilities in America, they range in quality from truly excellent to heart-breakingly bad. The reptile hoarding that you mentioned is something that has long been the practice at many zoos and was very pronounced at the beginning of my career, but I’ve definitely seen a cultural shift towards the better on that front, and across herp husbandry in general, both in zoos and the private sector.
@birdsandbats, and not just the US, but the world! I remember being very amused when I visited John Ball Zoo and saw the species in an exhibit space with Magellanic penguins, whereas we’d kept them with alligators. The juxtaposition of the two exhibits really drove home for me how broad the species range is
Thank you all very much for the kind words, I promise that wasn’t me fishing for compliments! I wanted to make sure I wasn’t boring folks with the rambles. I’ve got a few more of these left in me, and I saved some of the heavy-hitters towards the end.
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with three species of crocodile.
My first exposure to the crocodiles was in the form of a female Australian freshwater crocodile, Eleanor. Prior to coming to our zoo, Eleanor had been privately owned, kept in a cattle tank, and as such she was fairly small for an adult of her species (maybe five feet long). Not saying that I think we were doing her a lot of favors in terms of her exhibit – she was kept in our reptile house, in one of a series of exhibits that were meant for aquatic turtles (matamatas, snake-necks, those size of turtles), about 6 feet by 6 feet, with a ledge of land and then the pool. What I mostly remember about Eleanor were two things. One was her general demeanor. She was so very shy. She had not been mistreated or anything at her previous home, but she was still so nervous around keepers. When I’d open the door to the exhibit, she’d close her eyes and scrunch up, trying to look small.
The other was her diet. She was mostly fed rats, and due to the wonky filtration system of our building, it was decided that all rats would be skinned before being given to her, as that the hair wouldn’t mess with the filter (seeing as how she swallowed her prey whole I’m not sure about the logic of this, but I was a dumb young kid and it wasn’t my place to question). On rodent delivery days, I’d open the rat bins, quickly kill the rats, and then skin them, moving quickly and methodically. Sometimes too quickly. I remember one day whacking a rat, skinning it, dropping it in the bucket… and then watching it get back up and start to walk.
That sort of thing leaves an impression on a young keeper.
My next species was the West African slender snouted crocodile. This was my first introduction to large crocodilians, as we had a big male and a big female in an indoor exhibit. I’ll admit I was a little weak in the knees the first time I walked into their exhibit – but I needn’t have worried. The pair were perfectly gentle animals. When we were about to enter their exhibit for feeding, we’d always turn off their waterfall – that made the water still, so it would be a lot easier to see them and track their movements under the surface. Shutting off the waterfall told them, before we even entered the exhibit, that it was chow time, so by the time we entered, they would be lined up at the edge of the pool, waiting for us (they were conditioned to understand that they only got fed when they were in the water, so as to keep them from trying to rush the door). They’d patiently open their mouths and allow us to deposit fish or rodents in their jaws with tongs.
The crocodiles were housed with cichlids, which were too small to be of any interest to them as prey, as well as turtles... which if you read the Nile softshell entry of this thread, enough said.
For my third experience, I worked with a group of Nile crocodiles, a big male and three females, which came from a crocodile farm. This exhibit was unique for me in that it was outdoors. We were in the south, which helped, but even there it can get chilly, so the pool had supplemental heaters. Attached to the exhibit yard was a holding building; the supervisor and curator each had the life support system set to alarm them if the outdoor pool’s temperature failed to maintain and it got too cold, so that they could come and bring the crocs into holding, though to my knowledge this never happened.
Feeding these crocodiles was my first exposure to Mazuri crocodilian chow, and I remember how shocked I was that these giant predators – our male was close to 14 feet, the biggest croc I’d ever seen until I met Maximo the saltwater croc years later at St. Augustine – would not only eat, but go crazy over greasy black lumps that kind of resembled their poop. This diet was supplemented with occasional large prey items – there is a tendency of zoo crocodilians to have somewhat weaker jaws than their wild counterparts, the result of the muscles not been exercised as much – such as large fish, which were fed from a small balcony overlooking the pool (which was also used to impress potential donors).
Visitors will ask a lot about the differences between alligators and crocodiles, which can sometimes be tricky to really explain (besides a few things like the dentition). I feel that’s because the crocodiles are such a diverse group, physically, ecologically, and behaviorally. From a keeper perspective, one of the most relevant observations is that crocodiles are much less cold tolerant. They also tend to be more active, more inquisitive, and, in some species, more aggressive (not just towards keepers, but towards each other. Some species, such as the Philippine crocodile, are very antisocial, whereas gators love to lounge in groups). Both of these factors (combined with the appeal of it being a native species, easily available) help explain the near omnipresence of American alligators in US zoos; when I see that a zoo has an actual crocodile, that immediately makes me think it’s likely to be a bit more impressive.
This is a group of animals for which husbandry has changed markedly in recent years, with much more emphasis on training and enrichment. (St. Augustine’s Croc School, which I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, is an excellent resource for keepers who want to know all-things crocodilian). When you work with these animals, you’re regularly impressed by how much smarter and more complex they are than you might have previously suspected from old jungle movies. Unfortunately, as reptiles, these animals are not regulated by the Animal Welfare Act, which means that there are still a lot of crocodiles out there lounging in squalid, inappropriate living conditions.
I’d never felt unsafe in the company of our crocodiles. I’ve explained it as crocodiles are dangerous if you are within a certain distance of them, or if you don’t know that they are there/where they are. As with alligators, I feel that one of the biggest risks is that their usual indolent behavior encourages complacency among keepers, or, even worse, a cocky desire to show off and play Steve Irwin. That being said, every monitor lizard keeper I know has been bitten at least once, and I know several alligator keepers who have been bitten. I’ve never met a croc keeper who’s taken a bite.
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Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, I applaud you for mentioning the unpleasant task of killing prey animals, a very difficult thing to do, both physically and and for some, morally.
Interesting what you say about your Bongo being restricted to the wooded area of his paddock. I have seen similar behaviour in UK groups. Or hiding behind the shelter if no better cover is available. Behaviour that might be expected for a forest-dwelling species perhaps.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
Folks on the forum often bemoan the status of species that were once common in zoos, but are now very rare. Sometimes (not often, but sometimes), the reverse happens as well, and a species that was rare is now plentiful. One such animal is the okapi. When I first entered the field, you could count the US zoos that had okapi on two hands, and have a few fingers left at the end. Now, they’re widely seen, even in some smaller zoos, with a few individuals even popping up outside of AZA.
Okapis were still something of a rarity when, as a youngster in the field, I got my chance to work with my first two, a father-son duo. I think my jaw actually dropped when I was told the zoo was getting okapi – if you told me that we were getting koala, I wouldn’t have found it less believable (in fact, at the time there might have been more zoos with koala than okapi…).
The pair were housed in separate but adjacent yards attached to a hoofstock building. Each animal had a grassy yard (one thing I’ve noticed about okapis is that their hooves are nowhere near as hard on grass as those of other ungulates, with a few large trees, and some smaller ones protected by wire. It’s difficult to really do okapis and other forest ungulates justice in zoos by providing lushly planted exhibits – White Oak is probably the best I’ve seen in this respect. The exhibit was largely flat, sloping downwards on the public side as ha-ha (like their close relatives, the giraffes, okapis seem to dislike/mistrust steep slopes, though they have struck me as being much more sure-footed than giraffes… not that that’s a particularly high bar. As a result, the okapis could go outside on days when the grass was wet, whereas the giraffes were kept in). The okapis struck me as less cold-tolerant than the giraffes, but with their smaller size easier to keep warm with heaters.
One thing I did not like about the exhibit was that viewing was possible from multiple sides (this was an older exhibit that was retrofitted for okapi), which not only reduced hiding opportunities, but also made the exhibit seem smaller (it also distracts from the animals – humans are evolutionarily hard-wired to look at other humans, so if you’re looking at an animal and see people in a viewing area on the opposite side of the exhibit, you’re going to end up focusing on those people more than you might want to). The exhibits were arranged such that only one of the two really had public viewing, with one more tucked away than the other and distant from all viewing areas. This allowed animals to be rotated on and off public view (or at least with reduced proximity to the public).
Indoor holding consisted on concrete-floor stalls with rubber mats, covered with a layer of wood shavings. Such holding areas have a tendency to allow loud noises to reverberate, so it was a challenge to keep volume at a reasonable level. This is an opinion that some keepers have disagreed with me on over the years, but I often liked to keep a radio turned on to provide some soft, constant background noise. That way, when an unexpected noise does occur, it’s not as jarring and startling as if it happened against a backdrop of pure silence. Likewise, when I’d approach the stall, I tried to make a little noise – maybe lightly jangle my keys, or hum, so that the animals knew I was coming and weren’t startled.
The diet consisted of herbivore pellets and hay, supplemented with browse and produce (carrots, apples, etc). Hay was provided in a puzzle feeder that encouraged the animals to use their long, prehensile tongues to snake out the food. Branches were stuck in the ground like mini-trees, or hung from up high. Water was provided in a lixit. High value food items, such as apples, were often fed by staff as part of training; when working with large, skittish animals, it’s good to invest a lot of time and energy in building positive relationships between animals and keepers so that they’ll allow you to work closely.
This was especially valuable in the summer months, because if our okapis had one bane to their existence, it was flies. They hated, hated, hated flies, but as I’ve discovered many times over the years, fly spray does little good if the animal doesn’t allow you to apply it. These days there’s fancy misters with motion sensors and such, but back then we had a spray bottle, and the only way we were able to spray the legs of the okapis was if they allowed us within squirt range.
Okapi are very skittish animals, so there was a lot of time spent sitting on your hands or hiding around a corner, wondering why they wouldn’t shift. You’d generally spend a lot of time trying to look at things from their perspective, ideally their vantage points, trying to figure out what was causing them alarm – was a big, scary rake left leaning against a wall instead of back on its rack? Was a hose left uncoiled and therefore worrying the animal? Was a tarp flapping in the breeze, and the animals wouldn’t move unless it was secured? As skittish as they were – and as asocial as they were with one another, rarely acknowledging each other through the fence – they were surprisingly friendly towards the keepers, and would cheerfully lick us all over our hands and faces. Some zoos now even offer okapi encounters, not with the scale of giraffe feeding stations, but still something I would have thought of as impossible given the rarity and perceived fragility of the species when we first got them.
I think we had high hopes at some point of transitioning to 1.1 holding and breeding, but that never came to be. This was probably due in part to the lopsided sex ratio of the population, and the desire to concentrate breeding in successful institutions; no sense sending a valuable female potential breeder to a place where, given the set up, I doubt she would have been successful. With so many surplus males, it ended up being beneficial to have places where lone males could go for holding. This taught me a valuable lesson as a young keeper – I had started off with the mindset that if a zoo isn’t breeding, they are doing something wrong, or not helpful. I came to realize that the actual breeding animals only represent a small slice of a species population at any given time, and that for a population to be successful, there needs to be accommodation for animals of all life stages.
On a final note, I was in non-AZA zoos at the time when okapi first began to make their tentative appearances in the private sector, and my boss at the time was determined to get them. He had a long history with giraffes, and was doubtlessly convinced that he could pump out okapis with just as much ease. I’m glad that this theory was never put to the test – with our poor results with cassowary (based on his past success with ostrich, rhea, and emu) and bongo (based on eland), I think we’d have been setting ourselves up for a major failure.
Okapis were still something of a rarity when, as a youngster in the field, I got my chance to work with my first two, a father-son duo. I think my jaw actually dropped when I was told the zoo was getting okapi – if you told me that we were getting koala, I wouldn’t have found it less believable (in fact, at the time there might have been more zoos with koala than okapi…).
The pair were housed in separate but adjacent yards attached to a hoofstock building. Each animal had a grassy yard (one thing I’ve noticed about okapis is that their hooves are nowhere near as hard on grass as those of other ungulates, with a few large trees, and some smaller ones protected by wire. It’s difficult to really do okapis and other forest ungulates justice in zoos by providing lushly planted exhibits – White Oak is probably the best I’ve seen in this respect. The exhibit was largely flat, sloping downwards on the public side as ha-ha (like their close relatives, the giraffes, okapis seem to dislike/mistrust steep slopes, though they have struck me as being much more sure-footed than giraffes… not that that’s a particularly high bar. As a result, the okapis could go outside on days when the grass was wet, whereas the giraffes were kept in). The okapis struck me as less cold-tolerant than the giraffes, but with their smaller size easier to keep warm with heaters.
One thing I did not like about the exhibit was that viewing was possible from multiple sides (this was an older exhibit that was retrofitted for okapi), which not only reduced hiding opportunities, but also made the exhibit seem smaller (it also distracts from the animals – humans are evolutionarily hard-wired to look at other humans, so if you’re looking at an animal and see people in a viewing area on the opposite side of the exhibit, you’re going to end up focusing on those people more than you might want to). The exhibits were arranged such that only one of the two really had public viewing, with one more tucked away than the other and distant from all viewing areas. This allowed animals to be rotated on and off public view (or at least with reduced proximity to the public).
Indoor holding consisted on concrete-floor stalls with rubber mats, covered with a layer of wood shavings. Such holding areas have a tendency to allow loud noises to reverberate, so it was a challenge to keep volume at a reasonable level. This is an opinion that some keepers have disagreed with me on over the years, but I often liked to keep a radio turned on to provide some soft, constant background noise. That way, when an unexpected noise does occur, it’s not as jarring and startling as if it happened against a backdrop of pure silence. Likewise, when I’d approach the stall, I tried to make a little noise – maybe lightly jangle my keys, or hum, so that the animals knew I was coming and weren’t startled.
The diet consisted of herbivore pellets and hay, supplemented with browse and produce (carrots, apples, etc). Hay was provided in a puzzle feeder that encouraged the animals to use their long, prehensile tongues to snake out the food. Branches were stuck in the ground like mini-trees, or hung from up high. Water was provided in a lixit. High value food items, such as apples, were often fed by staff as part of training; when working with large, skittish animals, it’s good to invest a lot of time and energy in building positive relationships between animals and keepers so that they’ll allow you to work closely.
This was especially valuable in the summer months, because if our okapis had one bane to their existence, it was flies. They hated, hated, hated flies, but as I’ve discovered many times over the years, fly spray does little good if the animal doesn’t allow you to apply it. These days there’s fancy misters with motion sensors and such, but back then we had a spray bottle, and the only way we were able to spray the legs of the okapis was if they allowed us within squirt range.
Okapi are very skittish animals, so there was a lot of time spent sitting on your hands or hiding around a corner, wondering why they wouldn’t shift. You’d generally spend a lot of time trying to look at things from their perspective, ideally their vantage points, trying to figure out what was causing them alarm – was a big, scary rake left leaning against a wall instead of back on its rack? Was a hose left uncoiled and therefore worrying the animal? Was a tarp flapping in the breeze, and the animals wouldn’t move unless it was secured? As skittish as they were – and as asocial as they were with one another, rarely acknowledging each other through the fence – they were surprisingly friendly towards the keepers, and would cheerfully lick us all over our hands and faces. Some zoos now even offer okapi encounters, not with the scale of giraffe feeding stations, but still something I would have thought of as impossible given the rarity and perceived fragility of the species when we first got them.
I think we had high hopes at some point of transitioning to 1.1 holding and breeding, but that never came to be. This was probably due in part to the lopsided sex ratio of the population, and the desire to concentrate breeding in successful institutions; no sense sending a valuable female potential breeder to a place where, given the set up, I doubt she would have been successful. With so many surplus males, it ended up being beneficial to have places where lone males could go for holding. This taught me a valuable lesson as a young keeper – I had started off with the mindset that if a zoo isn’t breeding, they are doing something wrong, or not helpful. I came to realize that the actual breeding animals only represent a small slice of a species population at any given time, and that for a population to be successful, there needs to be accommodation for animals of all life stages.
On a final note, I was in non-AZA zoos at the time when okapi first began to make their tentative appearances in the private sector, and my boss at the time was determined to get them. He had a long history with giraffes, and was doubtlessly convinced that he could pump out okapis with just as much ease. I’m glad that this theory was never put to the test – with our poor results with cassowary (based on his past success with ostrich, rhea, and emu) and bongo (based on eland), I think we’d have been setting ourselves up for a major failure.
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Okapi are really lovely animals to work with
I worked with a handful of okapi for several years at the start of my career, and I very much miss working with them! They tend to have very engaging personalities (some positive and some negative 
), and they just have very interesting natural histories. They are definitely very similar to bongo in the camp of being very tractable to work with and around, but very nervous and reactive to any and all external stimuli 
I think it is interesting that you bring up just how fragile and valuable okapi have been viewed by zoos, historically. I mean, it makes sense, as they were initially very rare and very little was known about them... But it is interesting when that ideal has clung on to the modern day, when we know they are hardier than they were given credit for... I have worked adjacent to okapi in more recent years at facilities where the okapi are still, very much, treated as glass figurines (no outdoor access overnight, no outdoor access in the rain, very restrictive low and high temperature guidelines, being very controlling of breeding introductions (okapi courtship is not polite! They will beat each other up, but that is what they do), etc.), and have had to help their keepers push for allowing the animals to be animals, having worked with okapi that were very much managed like the wild animals that they are. That is not to say that they are not less cold tolerant than similar species (they lose a lot of heat through those big ears, and the calves are infamous for not being able to regulate their own body temperatures), but they do not need to have every aspect of their lives bubble wrapped to survive
Okapi are, definitely, easier on foliage than a lot of similarly sized ungulates. Being native to naturally wet environments, their hooves are very soft, so they do not churn the soil quite as much as the harder hooves of animals from dryer climates. With that though, okapi do need a certain level of moisture in their environment/substrate to prevent hoof problems. Their soft hooves are prone to overgrowth and malformation if the ground is too dry.
Okapi are a very good example for explaining the importance of holding facilities for the sustainability of populations. All of the facilities popping up over the past decade or so and being willing to hold one or two excess males has been what has allowed facilities to keep breeding these animals, given just how skewed the population has been towards males...
Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, I fully endorse your comments about about radio background noise, I've been using one for years, especially for newly arrived animals, particularly for small primates and some bird species. I also announce my presence before entering indoor enclosures, either by whistling or talking (used to sing,until colleagues pleaded with me to stop ). Also, got into some heated discussions, in the past, with some colleagues, about banging slides too loudly.
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Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
The cat-dog divide in zoos has always interested me. The big cats are typically very well represented in zoos, with several facilities having multiple species, whereas the larger canids aren’t represented nearly as well. Also, whereas the big cats tend to be confident and self-assured, and the small cats tend to be shy and fretful, I’ve noticed the opposite in canids. Unlike my experiences with large canids, the small canids I’ve worked with have been much more outgoing and engaging. I’m especially thinking of my experience working with arctic foxes.
I’ve worked with arctic fox at two zoos, one AZA, one non-AZA. At both zoos, the foxes were born at private fox ranches – though whether these particular ranches produced foxes for fur or for the pet trade, I do not know, and I’d rather not think about.
At the AZA zoo, the foxes were kept in a former large carnivore exhibit, similar to those described for bobcat and caracal in recent posts, with a few additional animals kept off-exhibit in a smaller holding area behind the scenes. This area wasn’t anything special – a concrete floor covered with mulch, with some tree stumps and small cut pine trees (think former Christmas trees) and a plastic dog igloo. The non-AZA zoo arctic foxes lived in a wood and wire cage, maybe 200 square feet, with dirt substrate and some furniture. At both facilities the foxes were outdoors year round. At the AZA zoo, they had the dens to go into, which, being stone and concrete and having a high ceiling, stayed fairly cool, even in the summer; misters and fans could also be provided. I often saw the foxes dig themselves down a bit in the dirt outside, forming little hollows to lie day in. The foxes at the non-AZA zoo had no indoor area, and I’m not sure their igloo really did much for them in terms of protection from the sun, but at least their exhibit was in a shady area.
The foxes never seemed too uncomfortably in summer heat – I mean, no more so than the bobcats or caracals – and it interested me that creatures of the high arctic, like polar bear and arctic fox, seem to adjust better to summers in the temperate zone than do animals of the boreal forest, like moose and wolverine. In preparation for each winter, the foxes would shed their thick winter coats; twenty-five years after first working with arctic fox, I have a big clump of their fur in a specimen jar on my shelf, as white and fluffy as the day it was shed.
Diet consisted of ground horsemeat, with some dog kibble, supplemented (at the AZA zoo) with small prey items. I’d often take part of their diet and put it in cardboard boxes or paper bags (I was a younger keeper and inclined to be a little silly back then, so I'd often write little notes on the bags, like a parent packing a lunch for their kid) and then bury it, sometimes dragging bits of meat around to create a scent trail. Other times, I’d wrap the bag with animal hide, to give the foxes the experience of pulling apart a carcass to access the meat inside. At the approach of feeding time, foxes at both zoos would get very excited and make a high pitch call, sort of a chirpy yap, that reminded me of gulls on a beach descending upon an unattended bucket of French fries. It's the call that I remember most about these guys, and whenever I go to a beach, I think of arctic foxes.
The foxes were highly energetic, very playful, like terriers. I’d usually go in with the foxes at the AZA zoo, only locking them up if I needed the door to be open for an extended period of time (such as bringing in new furniture) or hiding their food. At the non-AZA zoo, I had no choice but to go in with them every time, as there was no place to shift them to. Probably because they had a larger space and knew they could get away if they wanted to, the AZA foxes were a bit more confident and playful, but that also might have been because the enrichment and more varied diet we offered made our visits more exciting. They’d scamper along behind us, bobbing down into a crouch, tails wagging, and especially like to be on top of things – logs, rocks, etc- to be closer to eye-level when we were present. If I tossed something, they’d chase after it. I never tried to touch one (except for petting one of the behind-the-scenes foxes, who I was especially fond of, through the fence once or twice), and have a sneaking suspicion that I would have gotten bitten if I’d tried, but they certainly seemed like they wanted to interact. Training wasn’t nearly as widespread back then as it is today, but I think that they would have been prime candidates.
I’ve worked with arctic fox at two zoos, one AZA, one non-AZA. At both zoos, the foxes were born at private fox ranches – though whether these particular ranches produced foxes for fur or for the pet trade, I do not know, and I’d rather not think about.
At the AZA zoo, the foxes were kept in a former large carnivore exhibit, similar to those described for bobcat and caracal in recent posts, with a few additional animals kept off-exhibit in a smaller holding area behind the scenes. This area wasn’t anything special – a concrete floor covered with mulch, with some tree stumps and small cut pine trees (think former Christmas trees) and a plastic dog igloo. The non-AZA zoo arctic foxes lived in a wood and wire cage, maybe 200 square feet, with dirt substrate and some furniture. At both facilities the foxes were outdoors year round. At the AZA zoo, they had the dens to go into, which, being stone and concrete and having a high ceiling, stayed fairly cool, even in the summer; misters and fans could also be provided. I often saw the foxes dig themselves down a bit in the dirt outside, forming little hollows to lie day in. The foxes at the non-AZA zoo had no indoor area, and I’m not sure their igloo really did much for them in terms of protection from the sun, but at least their exhibit was in a shady area.
The foxes never seemed too uncomfortably in summer heat – I mean, no more so than the bobcats or caracals – and it interested me that creatures of the high arctic, like polar bear and arctic fox, seem to adjust better to summers in the temperate zone than do animals of the boreal forest, like moose and wolverine. In preparation for each winter, the foxes would shed their thick winter coats; twenty-five years after first working with arctic fox, I have a big clump of their fur in a specimen jar on my shelf, as white and fluffy as the day it was shed.
Diet consisted of ground horsemeat, with some dog kibble, supplemented (at the AZA zoo) with small prey items. I’d often take part of their diet and put it in cardboard boxes or paper bags (I was a younger keeper and inclined to be a little silly back then, so I'd often write little notes on the bags, like a parent packing a lunch for their kid) and then bury it, sometimes dragging bits of meat around to create a scent trail. Other times, I’d wrap the bag with animal hide, to give the foxes the experience of pulling apart a carcass to access the meat inside. At the approach of feeding time, foxes at both zoos would get very excited and make a high pitch call, sort of a chirpy yap, that reminded me of gulls on a beach descending upon an unattended bucket of French fries. It's the call that I remember most about these guys, and whenever I go to a beach, I think of arctic foxes.
The foxes were highly energetic, very playful, like terriers. I’d usually go in with the foxes at the AZA zoo, only locking them up if I needed the door to be open for an extended period of time (such as bringing in new furniture) or hiding their food. At the non-AZA zoo, I had no choice but to go in with them every time, as there was no place to shift them to. Probably because they had a larger space and knew they could get away if they wanted to, the AZA foxes were a bit more confident and playful, but that also might have been because the enrichment and more varied diet we offered made our visits more exciting. They’d scamper along behind us, bobbing down into a crouch, tails wagging, and especially like to be on top of things – logs, rocks, etc- to be closer to eye-level when we were present. If I tossed something, they’d chase after it. I never tried to touch one (except for petting one of the behind-the-scenes foxes, who I was especially fond of, through the fence once or twice), and have a sneaking suspicion that I would have gotten bitten if I’d tried, but they certainly seemed like they wanted to interact. Training wasn’t nearly as widespread back then as it is today, but I think that they would have been prime candidates.
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Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
Hi Aardwolf, over the years, I have been gifted two pairs of Arctic Fox, from two different zoos. In your post, it wasn't clear if the foxes were male/female pairs. The reason why I'm interested is because one of my pairs not only made similar vocal sounds,but also during breeding the sound was very intense to the point of very loud screaming. Also, it became apparent to me that the foxes, if you gave them an adequate climbing frame they were very happy to use it and climb to a height of 2 mtrs and stretch out on top of a platform to view the fields at the rear of my garden. Interestingly, one of the males, during his time at the zoo ,developed a sympathy limp.As soon as there were people about ,he would develope a limp and as soon as he thought that he wasn't being watched the limp would disappear. That was why the zoo offered me the pair,because the visitors were concerned for him. During his time with me he did exactly the same and when he thought that no one was about he would climb up to the platform . They say that foxes are crafty,I think he proved that perfectly! Their diet was similar to the one that you offered.
Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
@Strathmorezoo, at the AZA zoo, they were all females. I don’t remember at the non-AZA zoo
On the other side of the small canid coin, we’ll take a look at the fennec fox. I’ve worked with fennecs at two zoos – one, an AZA zoo, where the lone male was an educational ambassador, housed off-exhibit in modular caging. The other, and the one I’ll primarily be talking about, was at a non-AZA zoo.
We’ve already met this fox, named Fennecus (the genus name for this species, before it was folded back into Vulpes), early on in this thread. He was the fox that lived with the aardvark that I described at the very beginning, the very first species post. At the time I started working at that zoo, however, Fennecus didn’t live with the aardvark – because the aardvark wasn’t there yet. Instead, he lived in our keeper office. Crated at night, he’d be let loose in the day, first peering down at you from atop a bookshelf, then darting between your legs as you sat and had lunch, and later (and to my intense irritation), frequently relieving his bladder on your paperwork. I actually have no idea why we even had him – he wasn’t on exhibit, he wasn’t breeding (being alone at the time), and he wasn’t even really an ambassador, though that’s nominally what he was there for (he never seemed to go out). He was basically a pet. When we acquired the aardvark and fixed up an exhibit for him, I saw a chance to improve things, and persuaded the director to let me move the fox in with the aardvark (not bad for a new keeper two weeks on the job).
Fenencus, preparing to dart down and snag some aardvark chow
Fennecus did very well with the aardvark, as was mentioned in that post, even licking the aardvark’s face clean after meals. More importantly, he did well with a space that was larger and more complex, and we did better without having a fox peeing all over the office, contaminating our lunchroom, and threatening to dash outside every time we opened the door.
Besides left over aardvark slop, Fennecus ate a mixture of dog and cat kibble, along with some cooked veggies (those diced carrots and peas that you always see in school cafeterias), supplemented with some mice or bugs. It wasn’t what I would have called the most desirable diet for the fox, but then again, the aardvark was getting cat food and monkey chow in a blender, so it was one of those kinds of places. He was fed in a small ceramic bowl positioned towards the top of the exhibit, where the aardvark couldn’t reach it.
The fox was very friendly towards us, constantly getting in our faces or underfoot, scurrying back and forth like he couldn’t decide if we wanted to be close to us or not. At about this time, we decided to try him out as an ambassador, and got a little harness for him. HE absolutely hated wearing it, and soon we gave up; whenever he was outside, he wriggled so much and was so obviously displeased with the experience that we didn’t have the heart to try. Not to say that I haven’t seen fennecs used successfully as ambassadors at other zoos, but those animals are set up for success better, with more time, more choice, more training – not just plucked up and put in a harness. Also, I hated handling him because, no matter how dry my hands were (and I’m someone who barely sweats, even in extreme heat), his fur always seemed so matted and gross afterwards.
The aardvark was eventually sent out, but the fox remained, and it seemed a shame to deprive him of the exhibit space that he seemed to do so well in – so we got ourselves another fox, a female. Her name, like approximately 75% of all other female foxes in the world, was Vixen, and we had hopes, unrealized, that they would breed.
This zoo was a fairly mediocre affair taken as a whole, but I will say, the fennec exhibit was not just the best exhibit in the zoo (apart from the large hoofstock exhibit), but probably one of the best exhibits I’d seen for this species. It was large (about the size of a good-sized bedroom), well-furnished, with multiple layers adding more space and complexity, and, unique among the mammal exhibits at that zoo, indoors, which meant that the foxes had ample space all year round, rather than being crammed up in the winter, forced to huddle in their nest box up against a flickering heat lamp. If I’d had a dozen more rooms like that to move some of our small mammals and birds into (such as the callitrichids), we could’ve had a halfway decent zoo.
Fennecs are one of those small mammal species that, like prehensile-tailed porcupine, have some challenges in the population due to the demand for ambassador animals at the expense of exhibit/breeding animals, though recent changes in management are helping to address this.
Not from one of my zoos, but an educator at an AZA zoo holding an ambassador fennec
On the other side of the small canid coin, we’ll take a look at the fennec fox. I’ve worked with fennecs at two zoos – one, an AZA zoo, where the lone male was an educational ambassador, housed off-exhibit in modular caging. The other, and the one I’ll primarily be talking about, was at a non-AZA zoo.
We’ve already met this fox, named Fennecus (the genus name for this species, before it was folded back into Vulpes), early on in this thread. He was the fox that lived with the aardvark that I described at the very beginning, the very first species post. At the time I started working at that zoo, however, Fennecus didn’t live with the aardvark – because the aardvark wasn’t there yet. Instead, he lived in our keeper office. Crated at night, he’d be let loose in the day, first peering down at you from atop a bookshelf, then darting between your legs as you sat and had lunch, and later (and to my intense irritation), frequently relieving his bladder on your paperwork. I actually have no idea why we even had him – he wasn’t on exhibit, he wasn’t breeding (being alone at the time), and he wasn’t even really an ambassador, though that’s nominally what he was there for (he never seemed to go out). He was basically a pet. When we acquired the aardvark and fixed up an exhibit for him, I saw a chance to improve things, and persuaded the director to let me move the fox in with the aardvark (not bad for a new keeper two weeks on the job).
Fenencus, preparing to dart down and snag some aardvark chow
Fennecus did very well with the aardvark, as was mentioned in that post, even licking the aardvark’s face clean after meals. More importantly, he did well with a space that was larger and more complex, and we did better without having a fox peeing all over the office, contaminating our lunchroom, and threatening to dash outside every time we opened the door.
Besides left over aardvark slop, Fennecus ate a mixture of dog and cat kibble, along with some cooked veggies (those diced carrots and peas that you always see in school cafeterias), supplemented with some mice or bugs. It wasn’t what I would have called the most desirable diet for the fox, but then again, the aardvark was getting cat food and monkey chow in a blender, so it was one of those kinds of places. He was fed in a small ceramic bowl positioned towards the top of the exhibit, where the aardvark couldn’t reach it.
The fox was very friendly towards us, constantly getting in our faces or underfoot, scurrying back and forth like he couldn’t decide if we wanted to be close to us or not. At about this time, we decided to try him out as an ambassador, and got a little harness for him. HE absolutely hated wearing it, and soon we gave up; whenever he was outside, he wriggled so much and was so obviously displeased with the experience that we didn’t have the heart to try. Not to say that I haven’t seen fennecs used successfully as ambassadors at other zoos, but those animals are set up for success better, with more time, more choice, more training – not just plucked up and put in a harness. Also, I hated handling him because, no matter how dry my hands were (and I’m someone who barely sweats, even in extreme heat), his fur always seemed so matted and gross afterwards.
The aardvark was eventually sent out, but the fox remained, and it seemed a shame to deprive him of the exhibit space that he seemed to do so well in – so we got ourselves another fox, a female. Her name, like approximately 75% of all other female foxes in the world, was Vixen, and we had hopes, unrealized, that they would breed.
This zoo was a fairly mediocre affair taken as a whole, but I will say, the fennec exhibit was not just the best exhibit in the zoo (apart from the large hoofstock exhibit), but probably one of the best exhibits I’d seen for this species. It was large (about the size of a good-sized bedroom), well-furnished, with multiple layers adding more space and complexity, and, unique among the mammal exhibits at that zoo, indoors, which meant that the foxes had ample space all year round, rather than being crammed up in the winter, forced to huddle in their nest box up against a flickering heat lamp. If I’d had a dozen more rooms like that to move some of our small mammals and birds into (such as the callitrichids), we could’ve had a halfway decent zoo.
Fennecs are one of those small mammal species that, like prehensile-tailed porcupine, have some challenges in the population due to the demand for ambassador animals at the expense of exhibit/breeding animals, though recent changes in management are helping to address this.
Not from one of my zoos, but an educator at an AZA zoo holding an ambassador fennec
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Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
It’s something I’ve described repeatedly on this thread that often an animal that has zero appeal to the public manages to become a zookeeper favorite. Sometimes, something near to the opposite also happens – an animal that the zookeeper would expect the public to have no interest in will, unexpectedly, become the crowd’s favorite.
I’m specifically thinking of a certain American crow. He had the distinction of being the only passerine I have ever worked with (not even a zebra finch or canary for me), illegally taken from the nest by a member of the public and raised, before being turned over to the zoo (AZA). Given his origins, it made sense to start him off as an education bird and he was initially housed in the mews, but never responded to training and handling. Dissatisfied with the housing situation for him, I eventually suggested that we make him an exhibit bird – and that’s when the crow found stardom.
The crow in his mews, in education holding - I wasn't usually able to get this close to him when he was moved into the exhibit.
I’ve described the beaver exhibit in a few other posts – it was a largish exhibit with two pools, some deadfall and trees, rocks – which was also shared with night herons, turtles, and ducks. We’d recently moved out the screech owl because the herons were stealing the food, and so we introduced the crow to take its place. The bird seemed to thrive in the large space, able to fly the length of the exhibit. It was here that his personality really shone. When we were in the exhibit with him, he was still wary, seldom letting us approach close. With visitors on the outside of the exhibit, he became extremely personable.
The beaver exhibit had a fake lodge built into it with a window, so visitors could peak inside and see the beavers. The crow liked to sit on top of the lodge, where he could be right next to visitors with just mesh between them – the lack of an additional barrier at the one spot had never been a problem before. There, he would talk to visitors, sometimes even croaking a rough “Hello.” (He was probably a more reliable talker than any of our parrots). They would, inevitably, stick fingers in, which he would gently nibble, and they would scratch him on the back of the head. We probably should have put up another barrier, some finer mesh over that spot, sooner, but I think we were all so dumbfounded. Besides, we might have been worried that the visitors would riot. That crow quickly became the most popular animal in the zoo.
It's just as well, probably, that he accepted so many snack items from the public, no matter how much we begged for people not to feed him, because the crow never seemed to eat his actual diet. This I slightly resented, not only for animal health reasons, but because his diet was an intricate one that took a while to make. It consisted of dry dog food, Mazuri insectivore, bird of prey diet, diced produce, and mealworms. For animals that are supposed to be the ultimate omnivores, this crow was never a good eater and frequently left everything. The exception seemed to be grapes. He loved his grapes. I like feeding variety, but considering how much food we wasted on this crow, we probably could have simplified the diet some.
An enormous number of visitors refused to believe that the crow was an actual zoo animal, instead assuming that he was a wild bird that had gotten in. Once a week, I’d have someone run up to me in a panic to let me know that a crow had gotten into the beaver exhibit. Yes, starlings, cardinals, finches, etc frequently flew into zoo exhibits (and, in the case of tamarins, they didn’t fly out) – but a hole big enough to admit the crow would have allowed the ducks and probably herons to get out too. Once or twice I even had visitors who seemed almost offended by the bird’s presence – what kind of zoo puts a crow on display? For the most part, people loved that bird, and he was easily the bird in the collection for which the most visitors knew his name (come to think of it, he was one of the only non-parrot birds that was named).
I’m specifically thinking of a certain American crow. He had the distinction of being the only passerine I have ever worked with (not even a zebra finch or canary for me), illegally taken from the nest by a member of the public and raised, before being turned over to the zoo (AZA). Given his origins, it made sense to start him off as an education bird and he was initially housed in the mews, but never responded to training and handling. Dissatisfied with the housing situation for him, I eventually suggested that we make him an exhibit bird – and that’s when the crow found stardom.
The crow in his mews, in education holding - I wasn't usually able to get this close to him when he was moved into the exhibit.
I’ve described the beaver exhibit in a few other posts – it was a largish exhibit with two pools, some deadfall and trees, rocks – which was also shared with night herons, turtles, and ducks. We’d recently moved out the screech owl because the herons were stealing the food, and so we introduced the crow to take its place. The bird seemed to thrive in the large space, able to fly the length of the exhibit. It was here that his personality really shone. When we were in the exhibit with him, he was still wary, seldom letting us approach close. With visitors on the outside of the exhibit, he became extremely personable.
The beaver exhibit had a fake lodge built into it with a window, so visitors could peak inside and see the beavers. The crow liked to sit on top of the lodge, where he could be right next to visitors with just mesh between them – the lack of an additional barrier at the one spot had never been a problem before. There, he would talk to visitors, sometimes even croaking a rough “Hello.” (He was probably a more reliable talker than any of our parrots). They would, inevitably, stick fingers in, which he would gently nibble, and they would scratch him on the back of the head. We probably should have put up another barrier, some finer mesh over that spot, sooner, but I think we were all so dumbfounded. Besides, we might have been worried that the visitors would riot. That crow quickly became the most popular animal in the zoo.
It's just as well, probably, that he accepted so many snack items from the public, no matter how much we begged for people not to feed him, because the crow never seemed to eat his actual diet. This I slightly resented, not only for animal health reasons, but because his diet was an intricate one that took a while to make. It consisted of dry dog food, Mazuri insectivore, bird of prey diet, diced produce, and mealworms. For animals that are supposed to be the ultimate omnivores, this crow was never a good eater and frequently left everything. The exception seemed to be grapes. He loved his grapes. I like feeding variety, but considering how much food we wasted on this crow, we probably could have simplified the diet some.
An enormous number of visitors refused to believe that the crow was an actual zoo animal, instead assuming that he was a wild bird that had gotten in. Once a week, I’d have someone run up to me in a panic to let me know that a crow had gotten into the beaver exhibit. Yes, starlings, cardinals, finches, etc frequently flew into zoo exhibits (and, in the case of tamarins, they didn’t fly out) – but a hole big enough to admit the crow would have allowed the ducks and probably herons to get out too. Once or twice I even had visitors who seemed almost offended by the bird’s presence – what kind of zoo puts a crow on display? For the most part, people loved that bird, and he was easily the bird in the collection for which the most visitors knew his name (come to think of it, he was one of the only non-parrot birds that was named).
