Dana, a member of the InternQuest careers team, feeds Indian rhinos their favorite snack: big, crunchy apples!

A giraffe munches on a tasty acacia leaf fed to it out of the back of the keeper truck by the Zoo interns. This is not the luxury Photo Caravan tour; we were sitting on straw bales!

At the San Diego Zoo, a red-crowned crane was one of the many resplendent birds that the Zoo InternQuest interns interacted with on our tour de birds.

Kristi Bruce explains how the birds at the African Bird Pond are trained to get their food at a certain place. This is for their safety and to keep the wild birds that hang around from getting the food of the birds that actually belong in the exhibit.

Amelia Suarez picks up a giant stick whose height in the air confuses and startles the wild, native birds that are not part of the Zoo’s collection. No birds are harmed with the giant stick!

This friendly bowerbird in Owen’s Rain Forest Aviary curiously examines the Zoo InternQuest interns as the group offers meal worms to it.

A male Argus pheasant joins the interns as they learn about all different types of Asian birds!

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It’s one thing to get up close and personal with a giraffe at a zoo, but it’s a whole other world to be feeding it on the back end of a truck and have a munch taken out of your notebook. One of my fellow interns joked, “I wish that could have been MY notebook!” 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.

The giggly experience I had is available to guests of the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park by taking a Photo Caravan tour, and for a good reason. No matter how much I’ve learned about giraffes, nothing has brought me as close to the species as this personal, moving experience. Inside the Park are several donation opportunities, usually sculptures of flamingos or giraffes that guests can feed with money. What persuades people to support wildlife conservation isn’t a random or spur-of-the-moment reaction. Usually, it is after seeing wildlife on television or visiting them at a zoo. But, the greatest way to gather support for conservation is by establishing genuine personal bonds between man and beast.

Natalie, Real World Team

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Ms. Bruce’s long list of experiences started in Santa Barbara where she shadowed the lead trainer at a local aquarium. Then she went to Scotland, which was her first actual internship. She also worked for the Bronx Zoo, which included yet another internship. Later she studied elephant behavior: the grunts, the bellows, and the fights. She volunteered to look for frogs and wolves in Minnesota, and worked for Disney’s Animal Kingdom as a keeper for some of their animals. Now for almost two years, she’s at the World-Famous San Diego Zoo.

Feeding birds, surprisingly, is more complicated than you would think. Ms. Bruce trained the birds to come to a certain spot in their habitat to be fed. That way the wild native birds don’t steal the food. Now Ms. Bruce is training Amelia Suarez to take over her position so she can use the combined skills she has acquired toward her new position in the interpretive division of the San Diego Zoo’s Marketing Department.

P.S. None of the “fat singing birds” at the San Diego Zoo are fat. Just happy and healthy.

Dana, Careers Team

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For example, birds always clean their plates. The birds at the San Diego Zoo have learned that the keepers will only throw them more food if the previously thrown food has been devoured. Ms. Bruce showed this to us as we threw crickets to the red-crowned cranes. One of the crickets started to float away and as the crane looked to us for more, Ms. Bruce pointed the crane in the right direction , “Keep looking, there’s still one cricket there. I still see one.” And the crane understood, grabbing up the last morsel. Only then was a shower of more thrown to her by the amazed interns.

I was also astonished by the birds that turned and hopped away after we had thrown them several small fish (their favorite!). Ms. Bruce explained that we weren’t being snubbed; the birds were merely saying that they were full and didn’t want anymore. This surprised me; I thought all animals ate as much as was available in order to always have extra stores of energy. I know that I have certainly eaten more even after I was full, especially if it is one of my favorite foods! But most birds have a keen ability to know when they have eaten their fill and will ignore any extra food that is thrown to them. During the feeding, I noticed several behaviors: certain birds such as the white-breasted cormorant just waddled away, while others turned their backs as we threw food but stayed around out of curiosity.

There is one quality that the birds and I have in common—we like the foods that are most unhealthy! Most birds have broad ranging diets from insects to fruit, but the favorite foods of some birds are also very unhealthy for them! Sound familiar? Mynahs, toucans, and birds of paradise are very sensitive to iron-rich foods. Although french fries and candy aren’t the problem here like they are with me, these birds require specialized diets and can’t be housed in the open aviaries with the other birds. When the keepers put out foods with iron, there is no way to prevent the iron-sensitive birds from consuming them. In order to limit their diet, the birds are kept in separate enclosures so that they aren’t tempted to sneak a taste!

Birds show a lot of common sense in their behaviors, and even in their love for junk food, they are a lot like us humans. So next time you hear the chirping and twittering in the trees, listen up!

Ronit, The Real World Team

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As a keeper, it is Ms. Bruce’s job to cater to each bird’s attitude so that they can showcase their personalities to the public. Inside one of the Asian aviaries, we gloved up to take on the task of feeding one of the bird species. After taking a pinch of delicious-looking mealworms, our only instructions were to “throw them one at a time into the air.” Doubtfully, I tossed one unlucky mealworm into the empty air. Just as it was about to fall back to Earth, five birds swooped down to pluck the worm from its descent! Kristi Bruce and other avian keepers let the birds exhibit natural behaviors such as this so that visitors to the San Diego Zoo can be amazed by and enamored with what these feathered animals can do. More than this, keepers maintain the mental and physical health of the birds in this free-flight environment.

While we were feeding the birds, Ms. Bruce answered the questions of any inquisitive guest passing by, connecting them on a more personal level with the birds that need our help to survive in the wild. With one-on-one talks backed by a colorful chorus of birds, Ms. Bruce does wonders for the conservation of animals in the wild from within the Zoo’s aviaries.

Lauren, Conservation Team

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Bouncing on bales of hay in the back of a keeper truck, our first destination was the Central Asian plains to see the Indian rhinos. There have been nearly 70 Indian rhinos born at the Park. This includes baby Jontu, who is about a month old. Rhinos are one of the fastest growing animals, gaining about 100 pounds every month for their first year. But even with all this success at different zoos and parks, Indian rhinos are still endangered with only about 2,400 individuals left on the planet. This is due largely to habitat loss, but it is also due to poaching.

Currently, there is an effort to gather copious amounts of information about rhinos and to have all of it available in one location. Jane Kennedy, a 25-year veteran animal keeper at the Wild Animal Park and resident rhino expert, will soon be flying to London to aid this effort. Several efforts are underway to understand and protect these incredible creatures, but what really helps is when people make the conscious effort to protect the environment and be aware of how they are affecting the planet.

Amelia, Conservation Team

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Any degree associated with animals is sufficient in becoming a keeper. But be prepared for plenty of poop! In fact, while on our excursion, Ms. Kennedy collected a rhino fecal sample for a research project tracking ovulation cycles. Studies are being conducted worldwide to learn more about rhino reproductive physiology.

Keepers generally work five days per week from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Department crews meet in the morning to arrange their day’s agenda. Feeding is the first morning task along with counting the number of animals in each enclosure. Keepers then escort veterinarians into the exhibit if necessary medical procedures are scheduled for that day. No matter how good your schedule looks on paper, a keeper’s day depends heavily on their vehicle. “Not to worry,” Ms. Gaffney minded us, as the parking brake on the truck we were riding in the back of started to give. Keepers are accustomed to unexpected situations and are well trained to think on their toes. They learn early on to not get too far from the safety of their trucks, as they might have to hop in if an animal who is feeling territorial comes at them. Keeper logs are kept of daily occurrences in a report sent to the curators and veterinarians at the end of the day.

One thing is for sure: Ms. Gaffney and Ms. Kennedy are masters of maneuvering around animals of all sizes. No animal is too large to receive their excellent care, as animal keeping is their lifelong passion.

Lindsay, Careers Team

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The interns thought all of the burnt cacti had died. Mr. Montagne showed them, however, that many of these San Diegan plant species are very resilient and can regrow after a tragedy!

Although the interns didn’t find any animals in the buckets that day, they did manage to observe a red diamondback rattlesnake warming itself on a hot rock.

Paige Howorth fascinates the Zoo InternQuest Interns with a leaf insect, a creature that is mimicking a green leaf.

Don’t get antsy in front of these leaf-cutter ants! These critters are hard at work, cutting and moving pieces of leaves.

Holding up a stick insect, Kelli Walker explains how not all bugs are dangerous but can be friendly.

At the Petting Paddock, the Zoo InternQuest Interns watch as Bob Cisneros trains and interacts with TJ, the goat.

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Paige Howorth, an animal care supervisor of arthropods, and Kelli Walker, an invertebrate keeper in the Insect House in the Children’s Zoo, showed us around the San Diego Zoo’s Insect House, affectionately called Spineless Marvels. According to Ms. Howorth, insects are “the last frontier” of animal biology. No one really knows how many insect species exist: at least one million species are identified and more are discovered each year. Meanwhile, many are lost every year due to habitat destruction. There may be millions more that we will never meet. And for both Ms. Howorth and Ms. Walker, the infinite possibility is exhilarating.

From leafcutter ants to rhinoceros beetles, the Zoo is home to around 40 different species of arthropods, a phylum that includes both arachnids and insects. But this variety and the population numbers constantly change as the species reproduce and the Zoo exchanges individuals with other zoos and museums nationwide.

But what is so special about the Zoo’s exhibit is the opportunity for visitors to get so close to these amazing arthropods. Many of the critters are rarely seen in nature because they would likely be underground or in hiding. The Zoo provides visitors with the chance to see a variety of invertebrates in displays that are specifically designed to encourage natural behaviors of the inverts and WOW! expressions from the humans.

When you visit the Spineless Marvels, you can see the bugs that make the world go round. From decomposers to carnivores, the behaviors of arthropods serve critical functions in an ecosystem. Although termites may seem an annoyance when they are chewing up the wood of a house, they are just doing their job: breaking down dead wood and recycling the nutrients into the soil for another organism to use. And although the huge spiders may scare you, their consumption of other insects helps keep pest populations such as flies and mosquitoes from flying out of control. Even if they scare your pants off, you can’t live without them.

Ronit, The Real World Team

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Ms. Walker’s bug fascination started in Washington D.C. when she held her first hissing cockroach. She knew she wanted to work with animals, so she spent a few years volunteering in D.C. (where she held the cockroach), then moved to California for a job at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (recognized for its incredible Insect Zoo) then finally to the San Diego Zoo. Ms. Howorth was stung by her bug fascination as a pre-med college student, starting with a course in zoology at the University of Kansas, then changing her path that eventually sent her off to the University of Costa Rica to be really close to some of the most amazing insects in the world. What an education!

For a vertebrate, Ms. Howorth has deep respect for the invertebrates that occupy this planet. Maybe we should too, given the fact that only .04% of the identified species on Earth are mammals like us. The rest of the creatures are all invertebrates like spiders, slugs, millipedes, scorpions, crustaceans, beetles, and the millions of others I can’t even begin to list.

Dana, Careers Team

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