To talk about the curatorial staff then, and the curatorial staff now, and degrees of freedom or the ability to shape one’s own future it’s the difference, it’s 180 degrees from where it was during the time that I was at Lincoln Park. I think our philosophy, what the curatorial… Read More
It became very clear to me, that we needed to have significant numbers of animals in order to do reproduction, that we needed significant number of animals to know something about their behavior, their activity cycle, their nutrition. I look for an off-display area. The lion house was perfect. It… Read More
And essentially I was given free rein, I was on one hand, not discouraged. Let’s just see how this plays out. Read More
And it also interacted with a pathologist that we had on staff who had an interest in, what are the pathology, what are the disease processes related to these animals?… Read More
Knowing that you’ve done this work with edentates do you think there needs to be more work done on the edentate group in zoos now, or has it all been done?… Read More
I think the one of the, one of the sadnesses of my life in terms of reflection is that the significant edentate collection that was at Lincoln Park, when we made the decision to divest ourselves of that collection, to disperse it to other zoos, for one reason or another. Read More
You can use them in interpretive programs, you can use them in all kinds of conservation efforts and regrettably tragically, it comes at a time when the animals simply are not available from nature, because there are no more, or essentially are no more commercial animal dealers, but there’s a… Read More
What was your general philosophy about the sharing of knowledge?… Read More
It’s an interesting question about the sharing of knowledge. During my first job, my first job at the Rochester General Hospital, the pathologist, Milton Borod, believed very strongly in, that if you study something, if you find results that you should publish. He also believes in a kind of a… Read More
And that’s been my general philosophy, I’ve added a kind of an additional thought, and that is that you should publish where it’s going to do the most good. Many people publish in journals that will in peer review journals that will give them prestige because they published in this… Read More
And a number of other animals came to the zoo, that the zoo had a potential interest in, both in terms of birds and reptiles, largely out of Paraguay. For instance, the importation of green anacondas that occurred at Lincoln Park in that 72 through 74 period of time were… Read More
And so when the shipment, when the consignment arrived in Chicago, it included all three major groups of animals, a significant number of animals, all of which had been acclimated prior to shipping, they had been hand acclimated part of my responsibilities in Paraguay while I was there at the… Read More
I think my contribution was that I did several things. I introduced the zoo world to animals they already knew, but hadn’t done much with, I worked on their nutrition, on their behavior and on their reproduction. And I had a lot of help along the way from the veterinary… Read More
It was a title change and a title change necessitated by the need for additional salary. And the salary could only come if there was a new job title. So now you’re the curator of mammals and you are interested in edentates, you’ve been to South America. Read More
Did you have a goal plan that you wanted to do with this, this group of animals and were you free to do whatever you wanted?… Read More
I didn’t, I don’t, I think in the beginning with regard to the edentates, I didn’t have a plan. I had a loose plan, the loose plan would have been, I’ve got to understand these animals. The way to understand them is either look at them in nature or the… Read More
Was this a title change?… Read More
Was there another zoologist coming up and you became, there was a new position created for you. Did that affect all the zoologists or part of them. Zoologist to curator occurred for all of us simultaneously. It occurred because there was a pressure, Les primarily, Jean to a lesser extent… Read More
We all simultaneously put pressure on Les to do something for us. Remarkably, Les always got raises, but his staff didn’t and it got to a point where he realized that he needed to do something. And I think what they decided downtown was, in order to give us additional… Read More
Was this as you were a zoologist in that position, and why?… Read More