I'm such an animal lover that as a child, I loved going to the zoo. It was my time to see all the wonderful creatures of the world. But there's a darker side of this business that we as visitors never know about.
So when a Reddit user asked, "Zookeepers of Reddit, what's the low-down, dirty, inside scoop on zoos?" I just had to find out what they had to say. Not surprisingly, some of their responses shocked and even saddened me. Read up all about it below.
"I had to draft the zoo's contingency plan for all sorts of emergencies. Flood, tornado, extreme heat, war or attacks, you name it. The plan included a prioritized list of which animals in the collection we would have to sacrifice to feed to the other animals in extreme situations. I literally created a zoo food chain. Humans were left off the list entirely."
OMG, what?
"If you work with the animals, there's a good chance you'll not be able to have any kind of social life, between the long hours/weekends and the stench. I've been kicked out of stores after work because I apparently stank way worse than I thought I did — even after scrubbing off!"
There goes the idea of working at the zoo, haha.
"Some people like to bring fruit and stuff to throw into the animal's cages, even though they're not supposed to. If you're around and someone throws a pineapple into the gorilla or chimpanzee dens, GTFO. They will throw that thing full blast at someone. I saw a man get hit full force right in the side of the head and he was lights out. Pineapple exploded on impact. Paramedics came and everything."
Holy moly!
"Monkeys will, in fact, try to have sex with a female human if there is an opportunity to. The more you know."
Don't say you never thought about that. I hope I'll never encounter a male monkey, that's all.
"I volunteer at an aquarium and the people always ask about whether the sharks that are in with the fish ever eat the fish officially we say, 'we keep them well fed enough that they don’t,' but on more than one morning on my initial walk around I have found remains of fish that definitely didn’t feed fish. On a particularly memorable occasion, I found the head of a large porgy just sitting on the bottom. A diver went in and got it before guests arrived."
Yikes!
"Dead zoo animals are sometimes fed to carnivores."
Well, it makes sense, no? After all, what are they going to do with the carcass, huh? At least somebody gets a meal out of it. That's the way it would go in the wild, too.
"Rhinos may look super intimidating, and they can hurt you, but really they just act like big dogs. They love being scratched and will eat all the fruit out of your hand!"
Aww, that's so sweet. And now I want to feed a rhino, haha.
"Last time I visited our local-ish zoo we were able to chat to the keeper after the apes talk/enrichment session. She mentioned that separate from the main enclosure were the last 2 chimps from the tea party era."
"They were in a minimal enrichment enclosure as they were freaked out by the addition of a lot of enrichment materials. They were pretty sure there was a degree of 'chimp Alzheimers' creeping in so they did what they could to give these chimps what the chimps saw as their best life, even if it was very different from was is seen as modern best practice. That really reminded me that it really should be about the best interest of the animal."
That's so sad.
"If you have to choose between cleaning the poop from a flamingo enclosure or an elephant enclosure, choose the elephants. The flamingos were by far the smelliest exhibit, and elephant poop is heavy but comparatively odorless."
There's something about bird poop. It really does smell the worst.
"I work with dolphins, these creatures are sexual AF. We have 2 smaller boys together and they’ve been seen stimulating each other. Our 3 female dolphins have freshwater hoses that lead into the pool to play with, they flip themselves upside down, lay on the surface, and let the water do its thing. We also have another male dolphin separate from the others that likes to show his [expletive] to families, pretty funny to watch tbh. Dolphins are weird."
Wow, I had no idea about that.
"The dolphin trainers are stuck up. They are like the jocks in high school. They usually try to stay in shape because wetsuits aren’t flattering. They perform daily and people love them, so they have an ego."
Again, you learn something new every day.
"Be careful walking by the open-air monkey enclosures, because poop isn't the only thing they'll fling at you — they'll also throw semen."
Ewww, gross! I guess I'm going to avoid these areas from now on, haha.
"The number of dumbasses who complain to management about paying to go to the zoo, then not seeing any animals, is unreal! Like, what do you want us to do? Go in there with sticks and chase them out of their hidey-hole?! Sorry, buddy, not going to happen."
I bet the zookeepers hear this all too often.
"Witnessed a silverback gorilla having a bad day. He seemed tired of the crowd and put a box on his head to make the world go away. People kept watching, he kept getting annoyed and finally threw the box off, charged us, and pounded on the glass. I'm well aware that glass can take several shots from a .50 cal. rifle. But the explosive bang from the gorilla hitting the glass was insane, and terrified everyone."
I feel so bad for this gorilla.
"The most dangerous and feared animal in case of an escape is not, as you may think, lions, tigers, or other large carnivores. It's the chimps. Those things will rip your arm off and beat you to death with the bloody end as soon as they look at you."
And now I'm scared.
"Partner was a zookeeper in Dallas. Safety protocols for when a large, dangerous animal escapes its enclosure dictate that you lock yourself in whatever room you can get to quickest and grab the nearest weapon, which, for most zookeepers, was a broom or rake for cleaning up the animal poop."
Somehow I don't think that will suffice.
"There was one particularly traumatic event with the lions on a very warm and very packed spring day. The zoo was inside a large park, so various wild animals wandered through the zoo all day. One unfortunate day, a large deer fell into the lion enclosure. The adolescent male stalked it and ran it down within about 30 seconds and tore the deer to shreds. In front of dozens of horrified adults and screaming kids. I felt kind of bad that so many people saw, but, like, circle of life."
I bet those kids were horrified.
"Used to work at a zoo a few years ago. An elephant died while I was there and to transport the body out of its enclosure they had to chop him up. RIP Toto."
Oh, no! I didn't want to picture that in my head.
This stuff got real and fast, no? I hope whoever wanted to work at the zoo one day didn't get totally turned off. I mean, it is what it is, huh? I guess every job comes with pros and cons.
However, when you work at the zoo, the stakes are much higher. I think I'll have more respect for zoo staff after writing this article. How about you?
