What do you do in an average day?
I start work as a zookeeper at about 7:30 in the morning, and I get in and just go through emails, and go through any sort of administrative stuff that I've got to do. And then at 8 o'clock every morning we have a team brief with every zookeeper on the section, and we discuss everything relating to the animals from the day before. Then we go through the plan for the animals and for ourselves as zookeepers on that current day. We'll start work at about quarter past eight, and then we'll be cleaning solidly through until midday. And that's every single day of the year including Christmas Day. There's no letup at all being a zookeeper. We'll then stop for lunch. The afternoons are slightly less structured, and we'll spend a lot of time providing enrichment for the animals. That's basically a way of keeping the animals busy, encouraging them to exhibit their natural behaviors. And with the gorillas, for example, we also work a lot on what we call operant conditioning, which is a form of training. And that's a way of encouraging the animals to do things like presenting their arms, or perhaps opening their mouth, holding their mouth open for a dental check, involving no sedatives whatsoever. And it's really good, because traditionally with a big, dangerous animal like a gorilla, you would have to sedate them, whereas now it's all done consciously with the animal but it also encourages the animal to use their very high level of natural intelligence.
