Featured Woman in STEM: Sarah Snider

In this article, Sarah Snider—biologist, zookeeper, and Vermont native—shares what it’s like to be a zookeeper, and the journey that led her to this role.

Happy Women in STEM Day!

I am a zookeeper at Zoo Atlanta and have been here for over three years. My specific position is a Swing Keeper for the Mammal Department. This means that I am lucky enough to get to work with the Hoofstock, Carnivore, and Panda Teams. Our Hoofstock Team takes care of reticulated giraffes, plains zebras, ostriches, white rhino, and warthog. The Carnivore Team cares for giant river otters, sun bears, lions, tanuki, fossa, clouded leopard, Sumatran tigers, and binturong. The Panda Team cares for giant pandas and red pandas.

Since I bounce around to different areas around the department, my days vary a lot. However, the basics of the routine are pretty similar. I start off my day checking on all of the animals that I will work with for the day and get them breakfast. Then I spend most of my morning preparing their habitats for the day and cleaning their night areas. Usually I am able to incorporate some training and enrichment into my routine. Training and enrichment are important aspects of being a zookeeper since they help us provide good care for the animals that we work with.

All of the animals that I work with are trained to do husbandry behaviors. These special behaviors allow them to participate in their own daily care and some veterinary procedures. We are able to do voluntary blood draws on our lions, X-rays with our giraffes, ultrasounds with our female sun bear, and administer annual vaccines on our giant pandas (just to name a few!), all without putting them under anesthesia. Enrichment is equally as important. The enrichment that we provide our animals elicits natural behaviors and encourages mental stimulation and problem solving. This means that an enrichment item given the zebra is going to be very different than the enrichment that we give the giant river otters and fossa. Usually this part of my routine keeps me busy until lunch time. After lunch we generally have some time to do extra projects such as making enrichment or improving habitat space, additional training, or give education talks to the guests who are visiting. Then we set up the behind the scenes areas for when the animals have access to them overnight. This involves setting up feeders, hay beds, additional enrichment, and browse.

One of the most common questions I get is: How did you become a zookeeper? Zookeepers follow many different paths to get where they are, but it all requires a lot of hard work and dedication. For a majority of zoos, it requires a four-year degree in a biology related field. However, there are specific zoo colleges that offer accelerated programs for professional animal care. It also requires experience gained through internships and seasonal positions. I received a degree in biology from Old Dominion University in Virginia before moving to Atlanta for an internship and seasonal position. I followed those experiences up with a behavioral enrichment internship at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo before moving back to Atlanta for a full-time job.

Growing up in Vermont, I knew that there were careers working with animals, but I never considered zookeeping since the closest zoos are in Montreal, Boston, and New York. I knew that I wanted to work with animals but didn’t know in what capacity. I didn’t consider a zookeeping career until I was in my internship at Zoo Atlanta. I fell in love with the animals and the field and never left! My intern coordinators at Zoo Atlanta and the National Zoo have all been wonderful mentors throughout my career. Being able to bounce ideas off of them and learn from them is something I continue to experience and am very appreciative for.

I like the flexibility of zookeeping and the fact that I am consistently learning about the animals that I work with. The main focus of the job is the care of the animals, but each keeper is able to focus on different aspects of care that they are most interested in. Some of my favorites are training, enrichment, and behavioral research. I am currently conducting a behavioral research project with our giant river otters to gain a better understanding of their behavioral patterns under human care and how that compares to behavioral patterns of their wild counterparts. This will allow the Otter Care Team to help encourage more natural behavior patterns through enrichment and routine.

Conservation initiatives are another one of my favorite aspects of the job. Zoos and aquariums work closely with scientists and community members around the world to gain a better understanding of wildlife-human relationships and how we can work together to maintain a balance that benefits both. Educating the public about different conservation initiatives and organizations related to the species that they learn about at the Zoo is very rewarding. Last year I was awarded a grant from Zoo Atlanta on behalf of the conservation organization Twiga Walinzi. Twiga Walinzi uses GPS collars and field cameras to track the movements of reticulated giraffes so that we can better understand their behavior and movement patterns in the wild so that conservation efforts can be implemented appropriately.