• Question: Do you enjoy looking after animals

    Asked by deed520jeer on 19 Dec 2024.
    • Photo: Heather Thompson

      Heather Thompson answered on 19 Dec 2024:

      In my role, I don’t actually spend much of my time working directly with the animals. Depending on which education sessions I am leading, I sometimes get to take students on tours behind the scenes, and during outreach and engagement activities with visitors, I sometimes assist animal keepers during their public talks and encounters.
      Recently, due to the development of a festive themed reindeer adaptations session, I have been spending time working with keepers to muck out and feed three beautiful young reindeer. This is my only experience actually working with animals at the zoo and I have really enjoyed it!
      Usually, my day to day role is mostly concerned with more familiar animals: humans.

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 20 Dec 2024:

      I love animals and would love to work with them (minus the pooper-scooper roles).
      But my work generally doesn’t involve animals directly, though we do sometimes have to put protections in place for nesting birds who have found a nice place to start a family in one of the buildings.

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    As a vet I enjoy looking after animals – I became a vet because I wanted to improve animal welfare. As a vet I spend a lot of time interacting with people too – that includes animal owners, animal carers, other people who work in the veterinary practice to make the vet’s work possible, such as vet nurses, animal care assistants, reception staff, admin team members as well as other people who support animals such as physiotherapists, behaviourists, horse dentists, farriers (who ensure that the horse’s feet are healthy and have the correct shoes for the work that they do). So for a vet ‘looking after animals’ isn’t just about the time when I’m actually handling an animal, doing surgery or giving a treatment – sometimes working with people is more complicated than working with the animals themselves as people get stressed when the animal is unwell, so it’s a balancing act to make sure that everybody works together to help animals.