Been There. Tried That.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try - and then quit.  No use being a fool about it."

- W. C. Fields

One of my greatest pet peeves in working in zoos - or any field - has been the reliance that so many people have on the concept, "That's the way we've always done it."  There's no need to continually reinvent the wheel, or change things for the sake of changing them.  There's a lot to be said for expertise and experience, honed over time.  Still, if we're taking "That's the way we've always done it" to its logical conclusion, we'd still be naked bipeds wandering the savanna, picking lice off each other and living in perpetual fear of leopard attacks. 

Equally exasperating to me, I've found, is the mentality that I've seen in a lot of my colleagues over the years of "Been there, tried that."  Something will have been attempted, maybe by themselves, maybe in the hoary past of the institution ages ago, and have been found to not have worked.  With that initial failure, the book is now closed, the subject shut forever, with no possibility of re-opening it.  It can be related to an animal, or a care practice, or a piece of technology, or whatever.  Tried once, then done.

Two examples I've dealt with, one of which ended with me having some satisfaction over naysayers, the other never got anywhere.

The alligators at our zoo were being fed fish and chicken parts, and I wanted to switch them over - at least partially - to the commercially-made crocodilian diet produced by Mazuri.  My co-workers, many who had been there far longer than me, were adamantly opposed.  They'd been talked into trying it once before, they said, the alligators hadn't touched it, and that was that.  

I argued the case for a while - there were lots of advantages that I could see, such as health benefits, costs, and facilitating the animals' training.  Eventually, I prevailed and bought as bag.  I decided, last minute, to do the first feeding attempt when I was by myself, so that way I wouldn't have to hear lots of "Told you so's" if they rejected it.

There was no need to worry.  They loved it.  They started eating it right away with more enthusiasm than I had ever seen for fish or chicken.  These were the same alligators that my co-workers had previously tried the chow on with no luck.  Maybe the gators were just hungrier, or the weather was warmer, or, if I had to guess, they'd tossed one nugget of chow in, hadn't seen much of a reaction, and shrugged it off.  That would have been in character.

The second example concerned an empty bird exhibit we had in our Tropical American area.  We needed to fill it, and I suggested toucans of some sort.  The reaction from my older colleagues was immediate and negative.  They had tried keeping toucans at the zoo years ago and the birds had fared poorly.  They were resolved never to try them again.

The thing is, I'm sure that they were right, that the birds had done poorly.  That had been twenty years ago.  Toucans have specialized diets and are very prone to iron storage disease, which can make them ill or kill them.  But... that was also twenty years ago.  In the meantime, other facilities have made huge advances in toucan nutrition, with special diets that have greatly improved our ability to care for these big-beaked birds.

Not interested.  Tried once, failed, didn't want to try again.  I've since left that zoo.  As far as I know, that exhibit is still empty...

The past is the greatest learning tool that we have at our disposal, and we should always be willing to study it and learn from it in order to help us better care for our animals.  That doesn't mean we need to be stuck in it, however.  Times change - so do techniques, technologies, and our understanding of the animals.  We should be prepared to change with them.