Adelaide Zoo - Keeper for a Day Part 2: Keith completes his tour of the zoo in the Adelaide City region of South Australia
Want to know what it's like to be a keeper at the Adelaide Zoo? To find out I've teamed up again with Keeper, Karina Boardman for another Keeper for a Day experience. Here you can play out your Doctor Doolittle fantasies - and learn lots in the process.
We start the day by hand feeding the giraffes with a bucket of tasty carrots. While it's great fun, Katrina explains it's part of a very important conditioning program.
Katrina Boardman, Keeper: "We're conditioning them to get then used to people feeding them. It allows us to get nice and close to them which is handy for vet purposes.
"We could give them medication in the carrots. Pop a tablet in the carrot and it would go straight down the throat. As keepers we have to be very, very creative when we're trying to get medication into the animals."
Hang around the Giraffe exhibit long enough and your sure to hear the question - why is their tongue blue?
Katrina Boardman: "Their long tongue is blue because they spend so much of the day with their tongue out of their mouth eating leaves in the sun so they need some sort of sun protection. It's blue so it doesn't get sun burnt."
Now you know. Our next step is the Meercat enclosure where we get to feed them a tasty lunch of one dead mouse each.
Katrina Boardman: "We've got an alpha male and alpha female and we've got three litters now. This is their lunchtime feed and it also allows us to observe them. It's really important for the keepers to observe their animals, make sure they are all OK."
Fans of the kid's movie Madagascar will recognise the guys on our next stop. The zoo is home to seven beautiful male Ring-tail Lemurs. Aged from 5 to 31, these guys like fruit and leaves - especially bananas and wild figs.
The Squirrel Monkeys are next. From the tropical forests of South America, these guys usually live in groups of 50 or more. We go inside their enclosure and meet Cisco and Lorenzo.
We're now in for a real treat as we venture behind the scenes in the Asian Rainforest and a close encounter with one of the Zoo's three Sumatran Tigers.
Tiger keeper Arliah introduces us to 12 year old Tuan. She reckons he's a classic 'SNAG' - a sensitive new age guy who hopefully will do his bit for a worldwide breeding program.
Arliah, Keeper: "He is part of our breeding pair and he's very lucky because he's got two females in the area. So he gets to smell them when they're coming into season. He has his own little harem."
Tuan's menu today consists of 5 or 6 kilos of horse meat including a bone hidden in a cardboard box and it's our job to spread it throughout his enclosure. I'm under instructions to make it a bit interesting for Tuan so how about we put a chunk of meat up the tree a bit. This is all about behavioral enrichment - making the animals work for their food - exercising not just their body but their brain.
The cardboard box is covered with palm fronds - again to make it look interesting. The food planted - we retreat to the other side of the glass and Arliah let's Tuan out and the hunt is on.
Watching Tuan find the meat is a wonderful way to end our daily rounds as Keeper for a Day and one Katrina never tires of. She describes it as a day of education, entertainment and conservation.
Katrina Boardman: "The best part of the day for me is to see my visitors getting a buzz. And that's what makes me get a buzz. I've had people come up and give me hugs, I've had people shake my hand and just to see their eyes light up and the smile on their face and go 'oh my goodness'."
No wonder people talk about this as being an experience of a lifetime. The Keeper for a Day experience is one of a range of behind the scenes options. Check out the Zoos SA website for details. Meanwhile, the zoo's open every day from 9.30 until 5.00pm. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au
Adelaide Zoo
Open daily 9.30am-5pmPublished 11th July 2010
