The crowd was thick at ZooTampa when I approached the exhibit. The visitors were three or four deep as the pressed to the wire. The opportunity was worth the crush - the chance to get up and close, even to touch and feed - one of the largest, rarest, and most extraordinary of earth's mammals - the Indian rhinoceros.
For centuries, zoos and aquariums have provided visitors with the opportunities to see, hear, and smell a variety of creatures. All of this, of course, was before we had David Attenborough and Animal Planet and IMAX. Even with all of these other media, the attraction of zoos still remains strong. Still, for some visitors, there remains the desire for something more - the chance to form a deeper connection. The chance to get closer.
Many zoos now offer special encounter programs, essentially single-species behind-the-scenes tours that let a small group of guests meet animals up close and personal. At Chicago's Shedd Aquarium you can get into the water with a beluga whale. At Newport Aquarium, you can mingle with African penguins. Walruses at the Indianapolis Zoo, moose at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, alligators at Saint Augustine Alligator Farm.
As a zookeeper, I've visited a lot of zoos and aquariums, either for work purposes or for personal pleasure. Whenever I do, I try to look up friends or colleagues working at those places and finagle my way backstage to meet an animal or two. These have resulted in some of my fondest zoo memories, such as encountering the last US-zoo Sumatran rhinoceros in Cincinnati Zoo. In return, I have taken zoo friends of mine back with sloths, wolves, and bears, among other critters. But why should we zooies have all the fun?
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