The Iceberg House

The fugitive beaded lizards that I scooped off the floor in my early days as a reptile keeper weren't exhibit animals.  Instead, they were held in a series of tubs in an off-exhibit part of the reptile department.  Looking back, I'm not exactly 100% sure why we had them in the first place.  I think (it was years ago, so can't be sure) that we had other beaded lizards on display, but we weren't breeding them, and they weren't surplus offspring that we were holding until they could be placed.  I don't think there was any long term plan for them.  We were just... holding them.  And they weren't alone. 

When I started off in that reptile house, at a large southern zoo, the curator proudly told me that we had nearly 1,000 animals in our collection - and that was excluding the invertebrates, which our department was also affiliated with.  It didn't take me too long to realize that we didn't have 1,000 (or even 100) exhibits.  The majority of the collection was being kept behind-the-scenes.  Much like an iceberg, a visitor to our building would have seen only the tip of the collection, while the remainder was out of sight - of them, anyway.  Certainly not for me - the vast majority of my work was taking care of those animals that were tucked away out of view.

Some of them were animals which were kept off display for breeding.  Some were neonates or juveniles that were being raised until they were big enough to either go on exhibit or ship out to other facilities.  Some were medical cases that needed special care easier provided in more sterile environments.  A lot of it, to be honest, felt kind of like we were warehousing animals, some of which had no clear purpose, other than the fact that either the curator or the supervisor wanted them.

In one little building behind our reptile house, off-exhibit, we had a group of Gray's monitors.  Gray's monitors are fascinating lizards from the Philippines, unusual in that, among a family of lizards known for being voracious hunters and scavengers, they eat fruit.  They're very beautiful and, at the time, were very rare in zoos (they're still not super common exhibit animals, but far more than they used to be).  I asked my curator once why we didn't put them on display - we certainly had suitable exhibit space that was holding animals far less impressive than these guys.  Why wouldn't we show off the crown jewel of the collection?   He said he didn't want people to know we had them.  He was worried someone would break in and steal them.  It seemed like a silly argument to me.  In the small herp community, I feel that most of the folks who would have been interested in them (and that's a relatively small number of people) already knew we had them through word of mouth.  Besides, we had plenty of other theft-worthy animals on display, and no one seemed inclined to break in and steal them.

When I started in that building, I was told having so many animals was standard practice for a big zoo reptile department, and it really was, so I accepted it.  Looking back at it, I feel like it was a holdover from the stamp collection phase that dominated other areas of the zoo world for so long and led to overcrowding and reduced keeper time for animals.  Even when the best of intentions are had, when you try to take in as many animals as you can, always finding "room for one more," that room starts getting increasingly crowded.  We had rows of turtles in tubs, racks of snakes, and walls of Neodeshas, with larger monitors and iguanas in modular cages banked up against the walls.  Enclosures were fairly small and sterile, and I had to work as fast as I could to get everyone fed, watered, and cleaned each day.  Sometimes, I felt that I barely had time to look at the animals to make sure that they were okay.

This was driven home to me one day when I came back from my weekend and found a plate of salad in one tank that was empty exhibit for a little log hide in it.  The keeper who had been covering the section for the weekend that been on autopilot, feeding a row of tanks with young tortoises, and had put salad in this tank as well without even thinking.  We joked about that hungry little log for quite some time.

There's always a need for having off-exhibit space for animals, and some animals will live back there long-term for a variety of reasons - reproduction, welfare, medical care, research, etc.  I'm under no illusions that they back-up housing needs to  be as grandiose or landscaped as the exhibit space.  It should be more than sufficient to meet the needs of the animals, however, and that means keeping the size of the collection to such a level that keepers are able to provide adequate care and devote appropriate space and time to all zoo residents. rather than treating back of house as a game of Tetris, seeing how many and how tightly the tubs and terrariums can be packed together.