I think curator must have a sound understanding of the biology of the animals that they’re curating. And they need to also have people skills. And I’ve harped on that throughout this interview with the need for people skills, because each of us have our wants and needs and our hopes and aspirations, and these all need to be addressed in some manner. But that curator is a professional position that is really looking out for the well-being of an animal. And just as everybody in the zoo should be concerned about animal welfare, the curators need that if they have college training, that’s a plus, but they also need to get some experience. And don’t come into the zoo world with the idea that I’ve got a college degree in biology, and I know what the they need. I’m reminded I was visiting the Berlin zoo and they just hired a new ornithologist to be the curator of birds. This girl had graduated as a PhD in ornithology, but the person that was the keeper, the head keeper in the bird division had been working for the zoo for 40 years, and her daddy had worked at the zoo for umpteen years before that.
