Elise Newman, Author

Throughout my life, I have always been interested in writing. My mother, Patricia Newman, is a children's author and has constantly supported and encouraged me. Now that I work in a zoo, I have an never-ending supply of anecdotes and trivia!

I enjoy writing for children, and I believe that educating children about the conservation of animals is vital to the future survival of those species. As a result, I have published articles in two children's magazines. "Listening to Elephants" in the November/December 2012 issue of Ask is about the Cornell Elephant Listening Project's ongoing objective to conserve African forest elephants by listening to their infrasonic communications. It turns out that elephants do most of their talking at frequencies to low for the human ear to hear. Elephant communications give scientists information about population size, group interactions, mating behaviors, and large-scale resource use and migrations. Scientists can also eavesdrop on illegal activities like logging and poaching that negatively impact wild elephant survival. As an analyst for a year at the Elephant Listening Project, I had an inside perspective on using acoustic data to save a species.

"Nature's Superheroes," an article I co-authored with my mother for the January 2013 issue of Appleseeds, is about the best of the best in the bird world. This article uses comic strip-style graphics to depict bird species that are the fastest, smartest, most musical, etc. in the animal kingdom. Most people do not think of birds when they picture nature's most impressive species, but this article proves them wrong.

In addition to these two magazine articles, I am also co-authoring an article for the September/October 2013 issues of Animal Keepers' Forum. This magazine is a professional publication for members of the American Association of Zoo Keepers. My co-author for this article is Pattie Beaven, an elephant keeper at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. The article explains how to use boat bumpers as enrichment objects for bored zoo animals, like elephants, tigers, and red pandas. One of my previous blog posts, It's a Boy!, was also picked up by a local newspaper covering the birth of the baby red panda at the Binghamton Zoo.

As my career continues, I hope to continue writing many more articles for newsletters and magazines about conservation and the cute, clever, or impressive animals keepers worldwide are trying to protect!

Red Panda Cub Update

Zhin-Li is growing like a weed. He is nine weeks old this week, and about the size of a loaf of bread. His eyes are fully open and he totters around his nest box, but he is still nursing and has not tried solid food yet. He has also not yet ventured outside the nest box on his own, but his mother, Mei-Li, moves him between nest boxes regularly. He is getting so heavy that she has trouble picking him up and ends up dragging him! Zhin-Li is becoming more visible on the camera outside of the exhibit as he investigates the entrance to the nest box more and more. And he is getting increasingly feisty! When keepers open the nest box to check on him or weigh him, he barks angrily and aggressively in a corner. Unfortunately for him, an aggressive red panda cub is about as scary as a stuffed animal, so he gets weighed anyways.

Photos courtesy of Saasha Caldera. Video courtesy of Binghamton Zoo.

Friday, August 23

Photo courtesy of Sentry Alarms webcam system
at the Binghamton Zoo.

So the beauty and challenge of working in a zoo is that things are constantly changing. I posted the above update about the red panda cub on Thursday, August 22, and on Friday, August 23, Zhin-Li tried his first solid food and left the nest box on his own. We are never positive about what the animals will do! Zhin-Li ate some bamboo leaves that a keeper put in the entrance to his nest box, and visitors saw him climb out of the box and follow his mom around the den! He has since been seen out of the nest box multiple times, but has not yet ventured outside into the exhibit.

Video courtesy of Keeper Ashley Landry of the Binghamton Zoo.

Penguin Love

The Binghamton Zoo is home to seven African black-footed penguins; six males and one female. This species of penguin is found along rocky beaches in Southern Africa. They are not the emperor penguins typically seen in movies, and they do not like the snow and ice.

Penguins are fascinating for a variety of reasons. Everyone knows that penguins are flightless birds, but did you also know that they have unique molting patterns? Most birds molt once a year: they lose and regrow one feather at a time so that they are always able to fly and are never vulnerable to predators. Penguins, on the other hand, molt all of their feathers at once. Remember when you were little and your adult teeth grew in and forced your baby teeth to fall out? Penguin molting is very similar. New feathers grow in under the old feathers, causing the penguins to look fluffy and disheveled. Then the old feathers fall out in a downy explosion! While the penguins are molting, they are not waterproof and cannot swim. In the wild, this means they also cannot fish; penguins bulk up before molting to compensate for not eating during the week-long molting process.

African black-footed penguins also have interesting social structures. The penguins within a colony form a hierarchy: the dominant penguins eat first and get first choice of nests and mates. African black-footed penguins are very territorial and make a "jackass" call to defend their territories, especially when they are first introduced to new colony members.

Many zoo-goers race to the penguin exhibit when they enter the Binghamton Zoo. Every day, I hear adults and children exclaim that penguins are their favorite animals, and I have to explain that penguins do not make good pets because they are not as cute and cuddly as they look. With one exception. Ronde, a three-year old male penguin at the Binghamton Zoo, has bonded more with the keepers than with the other penguins. Ronde was partially hand-raised and is at the bottom of the penguin hierarchy, so he seeks companionship with the keepers. Ronde builds stone nests for me during breeding season and offers me fish. He will even lure me towards his nest and crouch into a mating position! He loves being touched and will often climb into my lap when I'm not looking. Ideally, when we introduce more females into the colony, Ronde will choose a penguin mate and forget about his human love interests. But until then, cuddling with Ronde is one of the best parts of my job.

Safety is No Joke

Photo Courtesy of M.J. Grippin Photography

When I tell people that I am a zookeeper, many of them are immediately worried about my safety. From wide-eyed concern to jokes like "don't get eaten!" I respond to safety concerns from the public, my family, and friends every day.

Zookeeping is a high-risk job. Zookeepers contend with freezing rains, sunburn, dehydration, heavy lifting, poison ivy, chemical exposure, and insect swarms, not to mention zoonotic diseases, animal bites and kicks, and dangerous animal escapes. Sounds fun, doesn't it? We do it because we love it and are passionate about the animals we care for. Zoos also have safety protocols in place to protect their keepers as much as possible, and we are all highly trained to do our jobs.

However, accidents do happen. Many of you remember Dianna Hanson, the keeper that was mauled to death by an African lion at the Cat Haven Sanctuary in California earlier this year. Authorities are still unsure what enabled the lion to escape and reach the 24-year old keeper, but there are many safety measures in place to prevent such a tragedy at other zoos.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) regularly check zoos to ensure that both animal and keeper safety measures are up to code. When working with potentially dangerous animals, keepers use safety equipment, such as gloves, boots, masks, nets, catch poles, crates, tranquilizer guns, and radios. Keepers run drills to prepare for everything from severe storms to animal escapes. Dangerous animals are also shifted into additional holding areas for cleaning and feeding so that the keepers are never in an exhibit or den with a dangerous animal.

Inside the tiger dens. Notice the steel guillotine door
leading into the exhibit and the multiple locks on the keeper door. 

The Binghamton Zoo houses lots of dangerous animals, such as tigers, leopards, wolves, bears, and cougars. However, the top safety concern is often our two female Amur tigers. As a tiger keeper, I am asked daily by the public if I am afraid to work with them. Although they are intimidating, I feel competent and prepared to work with our girls. In order to work unsupervised with the tigers, I had to complete 50 supervised hours caring for them with a veteran keeper and then shift them properly with the curator's supervision. Additionally, every time I shift the girls between their exhibit and dens, I call on the radio to inform the staff, and I call again when the cats are secure. Finally, I am always separated from the cats by a barrier and many locks. To even get into the tiger building, I go through a door with two locks. Then another solid door with three locks separates the hallway from the exhibit yard. A chain link door with a padlock separates the hallway from a second hallway in front of the dens. Both dens have heavy-duty doors with three locks, and a hefty guillotine door with a sliding lock separates the dens from each other. If the cats are outside on exhibit and I need to clean in the dens, I close two solid metal guillotine doors (with automatic locks) that separate the dens from the yard. All of these precautions keep me safe. Although our tigers, Koosaka and Terney, seem to be afraid of their own shadows and have a good relationship with me, I never want to test that relationship.

Zookeeping is not 100% safe and it never will be. Working with animals is an inherently dangerous profession. However, we do everything we can to ensure both the animals' safety and our own.

Red Panda Story Covered by Media

My most recent blog post, "It's a Boy!", about the birth of baby red panda Zhin-Li at the Binghamton Zoo, was duplicated in the Press & Sun-Bulletin on July 31.

Additionally, on Friday, July 26, the day after the press release at the Binghamton Zoo, Zhin-Li made the front page of the Press & Sun-Bulletin:

Finally, and most exciting of all, Zhin-Li's birth was covered by USA TODAY!