Who You Gonna Call?

I got a text this morning from a colleague, asking a question about hand-rearing flamingos.  I had absolutely no idea what the correct answer would have been - I've never hand-reared flamingos.  Fortunately, the question didn't just go out to me - it was part of a text group of keeper friends, a few of which did have extensive experience with this situation, and who were able to provide some helpful info.  As a bonus, I got to read along and learn, more for my own curiosity than for any practical application.

Over the past few decades, we've greatly expanded our collective knowledge about exotic animal husbandry - but it would be fair to say that this information isn't exactly neatly compiled.  There aren't many authoritative textbooks or published guidelines, for instance.  A few years back, AZA decided that it was going to create a uniform series of Animal Care Manuals to cover all taxa in zoo and aquarium collections.  Now, two decades later, only a relatively small number have been published due to the onerous process of researching and wring them - and, in my experience, they're so stuffed to the gills with boilerplate text (AZA does seem to have a compulsion for uniformity) that they aren't especially useful resources.

Most of our knowledge seems to be floating around in the ether - or, more accurately, trapped in the heads of various colleagues, more folklore than science.  The challenge has been making it accessible to pass it down to future generations.  Right now, the main venue for getting answers seems to be shouting questions out into the (professional) void - and bracing yourself for the fact that the answers that you get back may be contradictory.  I've been on a few facebook groups geared towards zoo professionals, for instance, and some of the advice I've seen offered there from people who are extremely confident is mind-bogglingly wrong.  But how would you know that unless you already knew the right answer?

And so a major part of the job ends up being a combination of researching what verified, published sources there are, trying to cultivate a network of folks with expertise and opinions that you trust, and trying to be a good, accurate resource for those that you can help.

Might be easier if we just did a better job of writing things down.