Delicate Touch

The reptile keepers that I worked with were, on the whole, a pretty surly, unruly lot.  They drank hard and partied hard, staggering to work bleary-eyed in the morning, but always managing to sober up enough just in time to wrangle a cobra or a mamba.  They enjoyed pulling sometimes vicious practical jokes on one another, which may or may not have sometimes involved the animals.  They did NOT enjoy Sundays and Mondays.  That's because those were the scheduled days off of our designated amphibian keeper, which meant that one of them would have to cover her section.  

Compared to reptiles, amphibians, as a group, tend to be far more delicate.  They breathe through their absorbent skin, so are extra sensitive to chemicals and contaminants.  They have a much narrow range of suitable temperatures and humidities - on hot days, when the back of the reptile house was even hotter, I liked to sneak into the amphibian wing and do as much of my work as possible under the misters and chillers.  Whereas the reptile work was often rough and tumble, the amphibians required a gentle touch and minimal handling.  Furthermore, none of them provided the adrenaline rush or excitement that my colleagues craved.  It's a lot harder to feel like a badass at work when you're carefully misting thumbnail-sized frogs with a garden mister (filled with reverse-osmosis water) than it is when you're sidestepping a charging crocodile.  

At least once a week, I'd hear one of my co-workers swear that they wish they could just get the amphibians out of the building and not half to deal with them at all.  They only said this out of ear-shot of the amphibian keeper, of course.  She was the only woman in the department, and I don't think any of them wanted to ruin their chances with her.  (None of them had a chance, anyway).

I sometimes wonder how much of our amphibian collection monotony is driven by that appealing to the lowest common denominator of keeper.  In recent years, many zoos have moved away from specialized, taxon-based keepers to generalists, who are expected to work with a variety of species.  Jack of all trades, master of none - or, in some cases, master of one, but reluctant or disinterested caretaker to others.  I suspect that might be a main reason behind the failure of some zoos to breed some species which have been successfully managed in the past.  And nowhere, I suspect, would that be more notable than in that group of species which require the most delicate of care.