Read the accompanying story, “Encounters with Keepers at the Sacramento Zoo.”
Primate keeper Janine Steele trains black and white ruffed lemurs at the Sacramento Zoo, where she has worked for 14 years.
Primate keeper Janine Steele uses treats for black and white ruffed lemur training. She usually trains the primates twice a week. “However, every interaction you have with an animal is a training opportunity.”
Zookeeper Celina Barbero prepares food in the kitchen of the Sacramento Zoo, where she got a job after earning a degree in animal science from UC Davis. “I didn’t want to be a vet. I went into animal science hoping to explore more about animal care and found the zoo and really started loving it.”
Christa Klein, a roving zookeeper, sprinkles Chinese Five Spice on a ball used for enrichment in the jaguar exhibit.
Bird keeper Carolyn Volpe does crate training with fruit bats, using a smashed banana in a syringe to entice the bats onto the wand, which she uses to get them into crates. “Nobody else loves the bats like I do,” Volpe says.
Bird keeper Sebastian Schaad hand feeds fish to Zamboni, an American white pelican. Schaad says birds are the “coolest” animals. “They evolved from dinosaurs and they can fly. There are like 5,400 species of mammals and 10,000 species of birds.”
Comments
Pics