Interview 12083 – Caption Index: 252
And where are we and what are we doing?… Read More
And where are we and what are we doing?… Read More
And what happens if this happens?… Read More
He was, started a business, but I, we contacted him and say, “Listen, would you grow eucalyptus for us?… Read More
And we’ll pay for it, but we need a steady,” and he thought about it. And he said, “You know, I’ll do it.” And it turned out very positively and he now has a business called Koala Browse. And he sends eucalyptus literally around the world for koalas. But that… Read More
Well, I can tell you two instances. He really was a hands off guy. I mean, he really was. “You’re being hired to do a job, do your job. And I allow you to do that,” which I thought was a wonderful thing. The only times he micromanaged really and… Read More
Sure. We kind of consulting before we do it, you know, no surprises. And that worked out really, really well. The only times he micromanaged in a positive way, not a negative way was when we wanted to get koalas for our exhibit. And we weren’t getting them from Australia,… Read More
And he had left the St. Louis Zoo and was now raising ficus in a nursery in Florida. Read More
Can you talk a little bit more about how you manage them?… Read More
Well, when I was curator, we did have a very big collection of great apes. We’re very fortunate. A lot of the babies that had been born were females. We had new males. So we really had some nice troops being formed. The management, as it turned out, again, I’d… Read More
So I kind of had the philosophy of, I will tell Dr. Fisher what I’d like to do. I’m not gonna ask his permission. I’m gonna tell him though, ahead of time, “I wanna take this gorilla male and put it with this one. And we’ll have, we’ll do this… Read More
Do you feel he had a tendency to micromanage at all?… Read More
It was, somebody discovered it and it’s around. These basic principles, now, you can massage them and do a lot of things with them. They don’t change. As excitement increases, barriers weaken. That’s a tenant of one of the things that Heini Hediger talks about. What does that mean? If… Read More
When you build things, you have to be aware of the jumping of animals, of the burrowing of that, what are you dealing with?… Read More
These are just basic tenants. You gotta be a student of the game. If you said to somebody, “What’s the international zoo yearbook?” What is it? It’s been around for like 45 years and they have papers. Now, they’re now online. So you know, it goes with the new age. Read More
There’s a lot of stuff. So to me, these types of publications, the zoo publications are so important for people in the profession to be students of the game, understand the history of your profession, understand the tenants of your profession. And you become a much more valuable keeper, valuable… Read More
What are the building blocks of your profession?… Read More
What should you know? Basic stuff. It’s, I don’t wanna make a baseball analogy here, but the bottom line is you gotta know how to pitch. You got these fundamentals, the fundamentals of your business. And I found that a lot of people who are in the profession don’t know… Read More
When you’re a new animal keeper, that should be the, here’s this, read this. And I don’t find that people do. Heini Hediger who is called the father of zoo biology, that’s a pretty good title. It is a big title. Who wrote books, “Man and Animal in the Zoo,”… Read More
But all of a sudden, it was so powerful a lesson ’cause he discovered it. Sure. And that was important. And so that’s something he’s gonna do. The rest of his life. Absolutely. Well done. Well done. And he’s gonna teach that to somebody. “Yeah. That day I found the… Read More
So maybe this ties into, you often say that a professional zoo person needs to be a student of the game. What do you mean by that?… Read More