As animal care professionals we talk a lot about the relationships we have with the animals we care for. All of us would say that we have strong positive relationships with certain animals. Many keepers value the relationships they have with those animals and draw parallels with close friends, family Read more…
Kolmårdens Wildlife Park is a zoo located south of Stockholm on the rocks of Sweden. Covering 370 acres they can call themselves the biggest zoo in Scandinavia. The zoo doesn’t have many species but the species they have are either housed in quite big groups or in mixed species exhibits. Read more…
Positive reinforcement is not just applying an object or food source what helps increase the behaviour you want. It actually goes a lot further than this. Working in a zoo setting gives a whole different perspective to reinforcement for the animals. A go to at first is 9 out of Read more…
Cover Photo: Female chimp, Medina, is photographed at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Lake Victoria, Uganda. She is fond of clapping and swinging her hands when asking for food or anything of her interest and also complains when given less food. Whenever she sees anything from a point where she cannot Read more…
The need to discover new things and the curiosity to explain the unknown has led us to where we are now. It was the curious nature of man and the desire to acquire knowledge that allowed evolution in the first place and drove us to seek information about what we Read more…
The Human Specie is an interesting specie to work with. They have strong social bonds and detailed complex thinking. Some are extraordinary smart and some are super fit. I think its very interesting how people respond to situations and there for I can just look at people for a long Read more…
We all meet these myths almost every day. Lets just bust them once and for all, ok? Feel free to share and use, as you please. *These myths are busted with facts and general standards from modern western zoos (members of EAZA or AZA). Differences can occur between facilities. See Read more…
Over the years in my career I had the privilege to learn many new ways of training. My killer whale path took me to different views while going back to pinnipeds gave me completely new thoughts about training those animals. I also learned working animals in groups what is not Read more…
Conservation plays a big role in zoos today. Some of the work we do is long term and it can be hard be hard for the public to understand the value of. Here are 5 examples that are the exact opposite – animals that would already be extinct without zoos. 1. Read more…
Discussing Motivation We all have moments where we want to learn something new, but where does our desire to learn come from? It’s certainly true that we retain more knowledge when learning about a subject that interests us in a positive way. It’s much harder to remain attentive and absorb Read more…
