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!