I mean, Haney, I mean, he was director of Burn Basel and Zurich in that order in Switzerland, hugely influential. I read his original work, wild Animals in Captivity, I think when I was 16 or 17 I think. And Man and Animal in the Zoo not long after. And… Read More
So, so important. And again, that we talked about wheels being reinvented, you know, a lot of those wheels were initially invented by Heger. Read More
So he is vitally important and it pains me when it was one of the questions that I always had on my, when I was doing keeper interviews, right?… Read More
What pains me?… Read More
I mean, one of my great regrets in life is I never actually met the man. Heine Heger is basically the individual who defined zoo biology. The, the science of managing a zoo and managing the animals in a zoo. I’ve his, you know, his seminal text man and animal… Read More
And two, why do you say Heine Heger is an idol of yours?… Read More
Number one, can you tell us who Heine Heger was?… Read More
And Joe and I, and Joe had a degree, Joe and I were arguing the toss for a good two hours. I was pleased with myself being able to hold a conversation with the zoo professional for that long. And the fact that he was willing to appeared, willing to… Read More
All of them had some sort of biological qualification in one way, shape, or form, which does not prepare you a jot for being a zookeeper. Let’s, let’s continue on zookeeper. You can. Read More
And I went in and a lot of the conversation that I had with Joe was, do I go to university or to go straight into the job?… Read More
Naturally, bill didn’t respond to a 16 or 15, 16-year-old, whatever it was. And Joe Davis, who was former curator of mammals there, and at that time he was scientific assistant to the director. And Joe wrote to me, he said, look, come on in. And my guidance counselor at… Read More
And it was, I want to work in zoos. And he was just like, oh, wow. I said, yeah, I’m sure that’s unusual. He said, no, what’s really unusual is you know what you want to do. He said, all of us never hear that. But I said, he said,… Read More
There’s a few places that are still managing to train their staff, but it’s increasingly few. So I think zoos used to hire people from farms. You had guys working on hoofstock collections who maybe grew up on a farm and, you know, knew their way around dealing with big… Read More
You know, we had the, the, the first career interview and it was Right, what do you want to do?… Read More
There is a, with a, a lot of zookeepers today, there’s a disregard for, you know, historical husbandry techniques, but in many cases they might be actually the best approach for dealing with this animal or that animal. And a good example is, okay, the training of animals seems to… Read More
I mean, you know, it goes for any walk of life, you know, how do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been that understanding of, of how, how did we learn how to look after this species properly?… Read More
Absolutely. A love of animals is not one of them. People who are effusive in their love of animals usually make really bad zookeepers. They usually make really bad pet keepers as well. Actually having an interest in animals, having a real interest in zoos, you know, like me having,… Read More
And I appreciate that, you know, we were not exactly in a major metropolis, but I wasn’t seeing those kids anymore. There’s been a shift and I, I, I can’t explain it and I’ve, I’ve spoken to, to long-term colleagues about it, you know, are you seeing these people and… Read More
Are there traits that you would say an animal keeper needs to work in a zoo?… Read More
So I think in a modern context, instead of, okay, right, we’ll have a relationship with this zoo because we want, we’d love to have, you know, zebra dyker or you know, some other obscure species and we want a sister relationship so we can help our sister zoo raise… Read More