Into the Embassy

When I first entered the zoo field, I soon learned that my local zoo was really two zoos, for all practical purposes, with two different animal collections.  There were the animals in the main collection, the ones that the visitors saw, along with those that were in the hospital, in quarantine, and off-exhibit for any number of purposes.  And then there were the animal ambassadors, used by the education department to go to schools and other sites.  Never were the two to meet.   

Standards of care and protocols were very different between the two collections, even when comparing individuals of the same species.  They had separate keepers, separate record keeping, separate facilities - they did share our vet, but there was strict quarantine between the two, and the vet would only see the education animals after she was done with all of the "normal" patients for the day.   When an animal moved from the main collection to the education collection, it was as if it was sent to another zoo.  

That was the norm for many years, but times have changed.  I don't think I've seen a single group of animals in which husbandry has changed so much in recent years as the ambassador animals.  And nothing has been a better indication of this than housing.

Ambassador animals were typically housed in off-exhibit facilities, the understanding being that they needed time and privacy to rest when they weren't out on program.  Those facilities, as was often the case for off-exhibit spaces, tended to be... meh.  Probably more so than usual, really.  They tended to be smaller and more sparsely furnished, lots of modular caging or wood-and-wire pens, or simple tanks for herps.  The understanding here was that the animals would be going out on program and having space and enrichment opportunities that exhibit animals didn't have, so it was okay if the primary enclosure was a little... well... lacking.

There's been an increasing push to have all animals in a zoo collection maintained to the same standards of care.  That means that if an enclosure isn't good enough for a sloth that's on exhibit, why would it be good enough for a sloth that's a program animal?  This was really driven home during COVID, when program animals weren't being used, and spent two years or so in enclosures that, upon closer inspection, were kinda crummy.

If you're going to build better habitats for animals, you might as well let people see them.  Many zoos have done as John Ball Zoo has done and transitioned to having publicly-viewable ambassador holding.  Not only is this good for the visitors - a wider variety of animals to be seen, usually rotating in and out - but it also helps to promote a zoo culture in which as much of the facility as possible is on display, showing openly the inner workings of the zoo and the animal care.   An animal fresh back from program should still have places to retreat to for privacy, but there's no reason that a larger, better furnished on-display habitat can't be more comfortable or relaxing than a smaller off-exhibit one.   In fact, having a dedicated "home base" on zoo grounds can allow animals to do some of their programs from their exhibits rather than having to travel.  

Work from home - another great idea we got from COVID.