Tide pooling in La Jolla, singing while playing the piano, and working out in the dojo are a few of the things that I do to relax. A great Saturday night is a foreign film with my friends and ice cream, or an evening spent at a Poetry Slam. My name is Natalie and I support the idea that you are what you eat. I say this philosophy should be taken well past food consumption. So, I surround myself with people I admire, classes that challenge, and exercise that is good for the body and soul so that I develop into an individual that is always ready for the next thing to learn.

Life fascinates me. Life is always changing to adapt to the now. While snorkeling in my pool a few years ago, I found a pill bug crawling underwater along the concrete wall. This phenomenon left me bewildered and full of huge questions about this tiny critter that usually stays burrowed in the soil. How could the pill bug survive underwater? When had it adapted this trait? Does it regularly use this trait today? I was, to say the least, wholly impressed. Today, with the expansion of human urbanization, the pill bug’s underwater adaptation allows it to survive. My interaction with the pill bug humbled me to the sheer brilliance of everything alive. There is nothing more exciting for me than the study of life: biology.

Conservation Corps at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park is the major catalyst to my passion for wildlife conservation. I have been an avid and enthusiastic member of the program since freshman year. Considering the Wild Animal Park my home, I ventured into foreign territory here at the Zoo with Zoo InternQuest in the hopes of enriching my understanding of how conservation is supported and handled in zoos and other facilities like the center for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES). Biology has always been the rapture of my soul. Unique experiences in wildlife conservation and biology through Conservation Corps and Zoo InternQuest have concentrated my interests to animal behavior, ecology, and evolutionary biology. I aspire to learn more about the ways animals interact with each other and their environment for the preservation of animal diversity. By studying animal behavior, I also expect to gather a greater wisdom of the intricate and sometimes primitive behavior between people. Aren’t we just another animal walking this planet?

I am on the Zoo InternQuest Real World Team.

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