Zookeepers, What's The Low-Down, Dirty, Inside Scoop On Zoos? (r/AskReddit)

the keepers have read it what's the low down dirty inside scoop on zoos some people like to bring fruit and stuff to throw into the animals cages even though they are not supposed to if you're around and someone throws a pineapple into the gorilla or chimpanzee dance dfo they will throw that thingful 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 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 won'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 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 partner was as a keeper in dallas safety protocols for when a large dangerous animal escapes its enclosure dictate that you'll lock yourself in whatever room you can get to quickest and grab the nearest weapon which for most zookeepers was a broom or ache for cleaning up animal poop lion got out of an enclosure when i was at the zoo on a field trip the keepers all used shovels the keepers all used shovels it was good enough for the trenches of ww1 the poor penguin keepers can never quite get rid of the miasma of dead fish that envelopes them as for me the stinkiest job i ever had to do was cleaning out the duck ponds managed to empty a whole train carriage that evening even though i had changed and my work clothes were double bagged as a teen i worked as a janitor at a private school one of my duties was dumping out and rinsing the kiddie pool belonging to the duck the muck on the bottom of that thing especially in summer freaking stank imagine that but a full-size waterfowl exhibit in a zoo that hadn't been drained and cleaned for about three years and waders with holes in them yeah that law lions know fully well that they can't get through the glass they do that just to get attention i worked at a zoo in their museum function not with the animals and there was no glass in the big cat's enclosure there was a giant moat which the tajera were always playing in and a 20-odd foot straight vertical concrete wall you could tell when they were in play mode they'd pace back and forth along the edge of the moat and suddenly jump in surprise and roll around on their backs for the casual visitor they seemed like an oversized house cat while they absolutely had small cat-like behaviors i could never for a second forget what that could do there was one particularly dramatic event with the lions on a very warm and very packed day the zoo was inside a large park so various 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 mean that was probably the best day ever to that line though a long time ago we saw a mallard get eaten by a brown bear at the buffalo zoo a photo i took shows just the little duck feet sticking out of the bear's mouth and then two bears fighting over the duck fortunately this was before our kids came along a friend got dumped on christmas eve so a couple days later we went to the zoo as a distraction there was eight inches of snow on the ground so there were maybe ten visitors in the whole park now our friend had also recently messed up his knee so he was walking with a cane as we approached the tiger exhibit the tiger saw us noticed hims limp and went into stalking mode you know that cute little chirping sound houseguards make when they see a bird or squirrel through a window it's considerably less cute in barcelo profundo fun fact about the local zoo i learned when i worked maintenance there is a wolf enclosure there is info about the wolves it's maintained they are just shine their shelter atm there are no wolves never was dead zoo animals are sometimes fed to carnivores there's a farm zoo in the uk that uses crocodiles to get rid of dead cows the owner once said he'd like the same and when he dies have you seen the price of caskets these days can't blame the guy alligator skin casket very fashionable why not though seems like a nice way to get rid of a dead animal no need to dig a hole or whatever 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 r.i.p toto it's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you toto to his enclosure presumably we closed the baboon exhibit because a baboon had a still birth and the troop was grieving in reality they were throwing parts of the infant corpse around and there was nothing we could do about it i worked with wild macaques for a while and when a baby died the mother would sometimes carry it around for days some females would also steal live babies and carry them around like they were their own except they couldn't nurse them so they'd slowly starve to death a few even stole baby raccoons and that didn't go well either this is now what i think of every time someone says i want my funeral to be a party nature you scary brings a whole new meaning to the term baby shower we'll always carry a little piece of him with us our lions will urinate on guests if they get too close which is always funny to see not so funny to smell i got peed on by a lion once there was two fences in between me and that lion and it still hid my leg the philadelphia zoo has these overhead catwalks no pun intended the tigers and other animals can use to cross over the pedestrian walkway to another part of the exhibit they are kept in i told my family don't walk under one when the animals are crossing don't want to get marked i worked in two completely different departments elephants and neonates but the drama between keepers was insane in both like attempted murder level insane we didn't have mad drama but damn near everyone had slept with everyone there was a girl from birds that cheated on her boyfriend who was also birds with a guy on small primates it turned into a whole thing with everyone having an opinion based on that other comment about the smell never washing off yeah it figures the keepers would all be sleeping together since who else is gonna sleep with them 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 stunk way worse than i thought i did even after scrubbing off and i'm around animals every day but i still can't stand when ottacelian keepers are around me in all hands meetings the rotten fish fairytale to smell combo is a gagger meanwhile i work with apes and they say that i smell like i haven't showed in a decade again even after i shower oh man i remember my first day working with foxes my co-worker was giving a tour of the facility to a family where they got to play with the foxes and she made a big deal to them about make sure you don't touch anything wet in here it might be fox p and it will absolutely not come out of anything including skin and even gave them gloves to wear then they left and she told me to start cleaning i said wait don't we have to protect ourselves from fox pee like you said she sort of laughed and said you work here now get used to your new smell sure enough i inevitably got some fox piss on my hand i washed it several times i smelled it before bed that night and sure enough it smelled exactly like fox pee very strongly washing not only didn't remove it it didn't seem to even diminish it a little bit by now i've stopped noticing but no one else has if you ever get the smell on you after washing scrubbing rub your hands all over stainless steel it is the only thing i found that takes the goat buck in rut smell off not quite as a keeper but in training to be one the zebras and brazilwoolski's horses are ruthless and will tear apart any unfortunate wild kangaroo that dares break into an enclosure they love the thrill of the chase and the subsequent kill when they get bored a large kangaroo won't f around that's be a brutal fight forget godzilla v's khan i wanna see marty v's kangaroo jack in the octagon went on a behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo saw quite a few bunnies come out during the tour the neighbouring park had a problem with people abandoning pet rabbits it was pretty clear the dumb bunnies were getting into predator enclosures tour guide confirmed they were regularly getting eaten tour guide also indicated other urban wildlife raccoons possums squirrels birds were regularly eaten by predators said that when they drained the lion enclosure moat for maintenance it was filled with the bones of small mammals the most amusing stories were about the orangutans who are wicked smart zakipa trained them to give over items in exchange for food in case they needed to get something from them in the enclosure but orangutans are smart and realized if they break things up and hand it back in lots of little pieces they get more food they disassembled the radio that accidentally got left in the enclosure and when there was an opossum in the enclosure the results were a bit more gruesome some zoos intentionally put chickens in enclosures with non-predatory animals as they go around eating pests bugs all day which keeps the other animal happier of all animals i am the most afraid of vapes i hate every ape by c from chimpanae to chimpanzee my wife was as a keeper and i used to volunteer there a lot one most of the keeping is just picking up poop and making delivering food two the animal that was was least scary was a cheater they were pretty cool ignoring everything as long as they had food the most scary to me were the giraffes back then you went into the enclosure with them and they'd sometimes swing their heads around and try to hit you just to be pricks you had to be careful three the job would actually be fantastic if they didn't let people into the zoo i worked at a zoo in a northern country can't say which has it'll give it away which had a white tiger and was quite famous for it one day the zoo announced the tiger had died of natural causes whilst working there a few years after he died i was told by a keeper that there was actually a problem with the electric fencing in his enclosure that the zoo managers refused to pay to get fixed thinking it would be fine he was electrocuted to death a few weeks after they found the problem they covered the whole thing up by saying they weren't sure how he died but that he was old it's still a zoo secret to this day i really respect my local zoo john ball zoo in grand rapids michigan for being honest about an accident that happened a few years ago they had a very very popular stingray and sharp petting tank i loved it and always paid extra to be able to hang out with them and pet them unfortunately one night there was an electrical issue of some kind and i believe they were electrocuted to death everyone was devastated and they haven't replaced the stingrays or sharks and never will even though they were very popular zoo staff are honest with guests about what happened even now years later i respect them for not lying or covering up the accident and instead using it as a conversation to be able to talk to folks about how important it is to properly care for animals and prevent accidents from happening the amount of injuries you can just casually pick up from animals is crazy i've been kicked in the chest by a kangaroo almost are read by an emu attacked by a wombat and a bat bitten by a monitor lizard and a carpet python had a rhino charge at me and been scratched by a macaque my old boss has this bad ace car from a snow leopard attack and this guy i work with now has his entire left forearm mangled from an orangutan attack it also shocks you how dumb people can be there can be a huge sign that says hello i'm an echidna not a porcupine and people will still ask if that's a baby porcupine you get used to the same jokes every day like when you're cleaning up the outside enclosures in view of the guests someone will eventually say oh what a strange animal i wonder what kind it is in regards to seeing a human or the amount of people who scream hump day when they see a camel i have no qualms about picking up animals they're handed i know what my animals have been eating i know what's in their digestive systems and to me that makes it more bearable i can have long discussions about poop consistency with my coworkers and in fact that's what a lot of general health talks are about homer still was a little looser than normal this morning i wonder if something happened overnight to stress him out you get used to being stinky i currently work eight plus hours with primates daily and i feel awful for the people who share a space with me when i go to the gym directly after work primate poop smells very similarly to human poop when i was at the zoo i smelled exclusively of rhino piss and i could not get the smell off of me emu it also shocks you how dumb people can be there can be a huge sign that says hello i'm an echidna not a porcupine and people will still ask if that's a baby porcupine oh my i have a story now and trying to think of something that would be funny to add from my time but nothing amusing or abnormal that hasn't already been mentioned here lots of stinky and poop but this triggered a memory i was in our gator exhibit with two senior keepers i wasn't allowed yet to feed the gatters during the show as i was still training but i was allowed to babysit snappy our giant mean snapping turtle i could distract him with food while the five-minute feeding show goes on anyways we aquarist keepers didn't do the talking that was one of our education staff she's introducing our gatters to the spectators one is your average looking gator the other is lucistic so she's mostly white albino looking but with a few normal color spots and blue eyes after the education staff says she's lucistic and explains what that means i hear a begoli bubba looking type redneck dude with a kid on his shoulders go look boy thieve got an autistic albino gator i about died lol i worked with large tortoises we had these five gallon buckets for cleaning the poop out of enclosures and other buckets for feeding them fresh grass we cut the first day on the job i took both buckets into the pen and started by dumping out the grass then i went around to collect poop i heard this awful loud grunting and something breaking one of the 300-pound males tried to bang the bucket in front of visitors and flattened it he would even follow me around just in case i might leave more innocent buckets unattended our tortoise tries to make babies with a small boulder in his enclosure we get a lot of guests asking if he's okay why is he making those noises tortoise if i see a bucket i'm gonna ref it it's bokeh she's french i spoke to a zookeeper at the national zoo in dc we were watching another keeper inside the cheetah enclosure and i asked him about the danger involved he said a cheater is harmless to an adult human because it only hunts smaller creatures i asked which creature was the worst to go in with expecting hippo elephant or crack as an answer without hesitating he said zebras then lean clothes and whisper they are the biggest a-holes they will bite and kick for no reason i still think it's hilarious that of all the teeth and claws out there it stripped donkey horses that are the worst when you're cleaning underneath the perches parrots will wait for you to look up before taking ish they have a good aim that's how you get in the mouth don't look up i worked at a veterinary office years ago that had a pet african grey in the lobby we would have to keep the chairs a good distance away from the cage because he would do this all the time to clients some would want to interact with him go up to the cage they'd talk baby talk to him he'd cutely climb toward them on the bars as soon as he lulled them into a false sense of security they were doomed especially the kids he would also bark like a dog when there was a high population of cats visa versa he loved to rile the room up or he'd say nice kitty doggy he was known to ring like the telephone mimic us answering it his sound word vocabulary was huge one night i was at the clinic alone finishing up paperwork i was hunkered over the counter concentrating when i hear a deep male voice behind me say hello i froze i knew i should be alone no one had come in or i would have heard the alarm chime did someone hide in the clinic until closing then i hear it again almost in a question i slowly turned realize it's coming from the cage that parrot almost stopped my heart that night my grandfather had an african grey that would mimic both the cats in the telephone then when the real phone rang he would call out hello but also constantly ask visitors for peanuts if you asked him what he was doing he would often respond with either cooking or sewing was a real smart bird did all this with minimal training aerial assault by the parrot pooper paratroopers the bird sanctuary has a bird hospital attached to it full of sick dying birds and smells like satan's anus because their external genitalia looks similar many spotted hyena populations in captivity are facing extinction due to groups being made of the same sex also because they are not seen as fondly as big cats or canines unfortunately fascinating animals from an evolutionary standpoint they are not seen as fondly as big cats pretty sure that's because they helped kill mufasa former co-worker got a job at the aquarium he was basically the night watchman making sure nothing exploded when the aquarium was closed the thing is he can't actually do anything about it array jumped out of the open touch pool so he gently picked it up and set it back in the tank no harm done rey is fine he got chewed the f out for handling an animal policy is to call the expert handler for that department and have them come in to avoid any liability and whatnot by the time you get them to pick up the phone at 3 am get up and drive into the city it'll be like 40 minutes at best assuming they came in at all so his job was really to just stand there staring as the animal suffocated he ended up quitting when he tried to call out sick because he had the flu so bad he literally couldn't stand up straight and part of the job was to walk the narrow hanging walkway over the largest tank in the world which includes sharks alone at night and they told him to come in anyway that's strange i'm an aquarist and we get mad when life support or education calls us on the radio that something in a touch pool just jumped out pls come help put it back in obviously we want to know it happened so we can come check on the animal but put it back in first i could see if there are different holding systems around with different parameters and education or lss might not be reliable to put it in the right place and the wrong temp or if it's fresh sword could kill it but holy [ __ ] if there's a lag time just tell them where to put it or train better this sounds like one of those situations where the on-call staff are like put it the f back in the night watchman is 100 planning to put it back in but the mid-level manager of the third-party contracting firm that employs the night watchman on behalf of the aquarium is quoting paragraph 47 subsection 3c of the liability clauses for why that's not an allowable action at which point any sensible and caring night watchman learns not to tell the management anything anymore used to work at a zoo cold weather makes the animals more active so go on a chilly day or first thing in the morning to see the best show from the animals also those free roaming peacocks are really stupid and sometimes go in the lions exhibit and get torn up you reminded me of magical memory i treasure i also worked at a zoo when i was like 16 and i was the only employee working in a little cabin serving food in front of the sea lions one particular summer they scheduled me to work on my own there every single day because i was dependable the sea lions performed a show at one o'clock on sunny days i was too busy providing food for the humans during the show to see when it rained i was blessed the zookeeper that was in charge of the show had to show up anyways to feed the sea lions and one zookeeper had asked me don't you get lonely there when i just started working there i said kind of ever since when it rained with no people there she would go and perform the whole show specially for me i clapped and cheered and she bowed at the end on those days it was me maybe one parent and a kid that ran by and stood by the cabin to shelter from the rain they would buy ice cream and say i had a nice job i never got to know the name of the zoo keeper but i am grateful to her unrelated i've also witnessed a group of baboons tearing a pigeon to shreds monkeys are savage creatures my aunt lives in a rural area there was a loose peacock in her yard from a neighboring farm property they don't own animals it took the bird a few hours to wander into the street and get run over they find peacock feathers all over the yard now our camels will spit if you piss them off and it's not just saliva like most people think you really really really really don't want to upset our camels if you have any plans the rest of the week please and thank you i spent time with a young battery in cameron a few years back cute little she was always after hugs and scratches and would get stroppy if anyone dared to interrupt my mom worked at a zoo when i was a kid and there were some things that were kept under wraps for one a heiner escaped once and they had to track it down also a pack of dogs got into the zoo and killed most of the wallabies the worst story was that a group of teenagers broke in in the 80s and pulled the legs off of the flamingos that one always really bothered me jesus christ what the f is wrong with people i used to volunteer weekly at a large zoo and at one point management started doing monthly dangerous animal escape drills someone would run around in a lion on ishii and we'd have to react as if one of the large animals had escaped it was hilarious but one of the funniest things i was taught was that if an incident did occur you have to tell the nearby guests to get inside only once if after that they refuse to follow you indoors the protocol was to hole up in the large activity center buildings you're to leave them there go inside yourself and lock the doors it makes sense because people can be very stupid and you don't want to risk everyone's lives because of one karen but it amused me no end that the protocol was to just let them get mauled that is some perfect natural selection not as a keeper but amazologist aquariums have captive breeding programs for some of the dolphins and whales but they are too difficult to transport formating so they have to use artificial insemination which requires cement samples from wales which means that it's someone's job to give hand jobs to dolphins and whales in order to collect the sperm it's part of the animal's training and the whales will roll over and present their genitals on command in dirty jobs mike had to jack a horse off addition to my comment later in the seasons he got to do the same with chickens except instead of a sleeve he used a straw to suck the genetic material from the roosters on saturday i had to jack off a horse [Music] so [Music] you

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Id: 5IudsCiRIwA

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021