Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Nutrition is an important aspect of overall health. This is true for humans and animals. This week, Dr. Michael Schlegel and Dr. Debra Schmidt enlightened us about nutrition and how complex their jobs as exotic animal nutritionists actually are. The connections to conservation that we discovered in this meeting were surprising and critical to the Zoo animals. The job of the Nutritional Services Department is the prevention of diseases and unhealthy animals. They go to great lengths to protect their animals. For example, the forage warehouse where they store the fruits and vegetables, meat and fish for all the animals, has restricted access to only the food preparers and nutritionists. This is to prevent anyone from bringing diseases from their own animals at home, or keepers tracking pathogens from an animal area into the food storage area. If the food area is contaminated, that could then infect the rest of the collection.

As consumers of food products, the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park have the challenge of making conservation-minded choices, just like the rest of us consumers do. In purchasing whole fish for animals like the sea lions, that require fish in their diet, the Zoo tries to buy species that are not being overfished or caught using harmful fishing practices. Some of these “good fish” include trout, herring, and mackerel. Part of being a group of interns interested in conservation is to be informed consumers. The San Diego Zoo is a partner in the Seafood Watch Program that provides fish eaters like us with an easy list that tells you which fish are good choices, or fishes to avoid buying. Our intern boss, Kathy Myers, gave us “fish cards” which are little wallet-sized charts that list the fish on the Seafood Watch program and those that are okay to eat. You can learn more about this program and get your own Seafood Watch card by checking out this conservation issue page of the San Diego Zoo’s Web site.

-Keesha, Conservation Team

What’s on the Menu, Drs. Schlegel and Schmidt?
As an animal nutritionist you must be able to work with a wide variety of different foods. You must also be good with numbers; there is a lot of math involved in making the right mixtures of foods. Nutritionists work closely with many departments throughout the Zoological Society of San Diego, including the Horticulture Department, which grows some food for the animals, and the Curators Department, which provides information about the needs of each animal. Dr. Michael Schlegel has a bachelor’s degree in animal production from Penn State. He then got his master’s and Ph.D. in animal science at Michigan State University. He did most of his work on ruminant nutrition, primarily on beef cattle. He now works at the Zoo as an animal nutritionist, which requires knowledge of more than just what cows eat!

Dr. Schlegel is not a one-man show. The Nutritional Services Department includes an associate nutritionist, Dr. Debra Schmidt, as well as forage warehouse food preparers at the Zoo and Wild Animal Park. This team of people is responsible for ordering, selecting and sorting, and distributing the food to the animal keepers who prepare the diets and give the food to the animals. The nutritionists are challenged to monitor each animal’s diet to meet their specific needs, and there are over 400 species of animals at the Zoo alone. These two are responsible for the animals at both the Zoo and Wild Animal Park. It is their job to make sure that the animals in the collection are getting the proper nutrients to be able to breed, raise young, and lead a healthy life.

-Justin, Animal Careers Team

Did You Have Your High Calcium Insects this Morning?
My cats have had teeth problems since they were kittens. For the first couple of years, we took them to the vet every six months to have their teeth cleaned. Later, I tried to brush their teeth myself, and the scars on my arms will attest to the fact that they didn’t really like that very much. Then we stumbled upon a godsend at our vet’s office: my dad tripped over a bag of extra crunchy dental-care cat food, and when we inquired about it, we were ecstatic to hear that for a mere extra three dollars a bag, we might never have to brush our cats’ teeth again.

The nutritionists at the Zoo, Dr. Mark Schlegel and Dr. Debra Schmidt, have discovered a similar way of keeping the big cats’ teeth clean: once a week, the lions, tigers, and leopards (oh, my!) get to chow down on a raw cow femur bone. All of that gnawing scrapes the plaque off their teeth, and consequently, they get a beautiful, white smile (and as long as you don’t get too close to smell the cat breath, you’ll appreciate it). My housecats would probably prefer to use a beef bone to clean their teeth but, since my mom probably wouldn’t like bloodstains and bone fragments on the couch, I think my cats will just have to stick to kibble.

Besides bad teeth, there are many other health conditions keepers must look out for. Since the animals at the Zoo are not as active as they would be in the wild, they are susceptible to gaining weight. There are many parallels between the situation of zoo animals and the situations of Americans. Because Americans no longer work hard to get our food, we have grown inactive. I, for one, probably watch too much TV when I should be out on a run. If an animal is overweight, the Zoo nutritionists will develop a new diet for the animal. Maintaining the animals’ health through good diet is such an important part of the care of the exotic species that occupy the Zoo. The fact that the Zoo employs two full-time nutrition Ph.D.s to make sure the animals are eating well should be a clue to us. The animals have favorite foods, too, like crunchy, fatty mealworms and crickets, or corn on the cob, but since their diets are portioned out, they can’t overdo it on the animal equivalent of brownies and ice cream.

Since we live in a world where supermarkets and cars have taken over from farming, hunting, and walking, we human Americans must be mindful to stay active and healthy. If we don’t, we might have to have our mealworms taken away until we have slimmed down enough to treat ourselves.

- Sarah, Real World Team

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