Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal. To meet the Interns, read the Intern Profiles.

When walking through the Wild Animal Park, you never really think about what’s behind all that open space. We assume that the animals are just there for the public to enjoy, but in reality, the scientists at the Wild Animal Park conduct a lot of research with the animals that live there. At the Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) center at the Wild Animal Park, behavioral biologists like Caroline Pitt and Jennifer Tobey go out and study the animals.

The Wild Animal Park is on 1,800 acres, 900 of which are dedicated to preservation. These 900 acres are for animals to live in, where they will not be disturbed by people staring at them all day. Behavioral biologists prefer to study animals in non-invasive, natural settings. When there are people around, wild animals often do not behave in natural ways.

Caroline Pitt, a behavioral biologist at CRES, observes antelope each and every day. She studies the behavior of the animals, how many offspring they have, and their hormonal changes. Because she does not want to interfere with the animals, she collects her information through observation and with feces and urine samples. This way she can study the animals without being invasive and interfering with their natural behavior. She also studies communication between animals, whether by acoustic communication or through hormones.

Jennifer Tobey is also a behavioral biologist; she does koala studies. (Read Jennifer’s blog, Male Koalas Smell like Goats?!) She told us about different ways to study animals, including focal sampling and scan sampling. Focal sampling is when you pick just one animal and study it for a set period of time and you write down what the animal does during the period. Scan sampling is used for herds of animals, where it is more difficult to focus on only one animal. This technique involves observing the entire herd and recording what they do as a whole.

Going behind the scenes at the Wild Animal Park was amazing. Off exhibit, scientists study the animals without the complications and disturbances of visitors. We observed four young cheetahs and many Geoffrey’s marmosets. (Read a blog about the four young cheetahs, Cheetahs in the Trees.) We tried our hand at being behavioral biologists. We watched the animals for ten minutes and described each of their behaviors. Ms. Pitt and Ms. Tobey told us to describe everything with great detail. It was extremely hard to describe an action such as sleeping without using the word sleeping! When studying the Geoffrey’s marmosets, it seemed that they were as interested in us as we were in them. The moment that we arrived, they were up against the exhibit watching our every move. Sometimes they would even mimic what we were doing.

Behavioral biology requires patience, keen observation skills, and the ability to clearly articulate the actions and activities of the animals being studied.

-Hayley, Real World Team, Zoo InternQuest

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