I did my PhD on social behavior of colored peccaries and only in Zurich Zoo. And I discovered some quite interesting things. For example, there is an inhibition in inbreeding in the species, so the father isn’t mating with the daughters. Or the other thing is helpers. That the elder… Read More
So as a scientific assistant, you were working on your PhD. Yes, mainly. And Heini Hediger, he hold in winter a lecture at the university and in summer he usually had to repeat the lecture twice because there were over 150 students attending his lectures at the zoo. And here… Read More
Whatever the director wanted them to do?… Read More
I was scientific assistant of a department with a huge name. It was Animal Psychology Department of the University of Zurich at Zurich Zoo. And we have had, since Heini Hediger was such a famous zoo biologist, we have had a lot of famous animal psychologists visiting us and they… Read More
What kind of projects did you work on?… Read More
Whereas in Germany, the profession of zookeeper started with an official training just after World War II. It is a three-year training with a final examination. And it even is possible nowadays to do a further training as master keeper. So in Germany, it’s a long, long tradition of training… Read More
What did the scientific assistant do?… Read More
And you have some experience in the United States, where maybe they’re looked upon differently, the position of animal keeper. Read More
What’s it like in Europe?… Read More
You cannot say how the keeper position is in Europe. You have to separate from country to country. In Switzerland, we were only three recognized zoos, at that time. And so the market for zookeepers was very, very small. And so we didn’t have an official training but we accepted… Read More
Nothing happened. And it was easier to capture them in this small compartment than in the outside. The question I have about, you mentioned the keepers. Read More
In Zurich and maybe other European countries, is the keeper profession thought of more as something that’s passed on from father to son?… Read More
Is it more of a formal thing?… Read More
Or was there any situations where the public did something bad and you had to be part of it?… Read More
Or a most unusual bird that you were so excited about?… Read More
We, besides the chaos, we haven’t had many escapes. But we have had two or even three times escape of our wolf pack. And that was a very difficult thing for me because the female wolf, for unknown reasons, hated me. And when the wolf packs roam free through the… Read More
How did the keepers, they knew you, did they accept you in this higher position?… Read More
Well, that’s quite different from America. I remember being probably just about 20 years when the director of Detroit Zoo asked me to call him by his first name. For us Europeans, that was something very special. With Heini Hediger, I was Mr. Professor until maybe 10 years before his… Read More
Were there any situations in the zoo where, as curator, an animal you’ve mentioned the keas getting out, where an animal escaped and you had to do things to get them back in?… Read More
Do you have any memorable stories of the time that you were the curator?… Read More