BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Three residents of the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo — along with two humans — were guests at the Aug. 27 Kiwanis Club of Starke meeting at Starke’s The Downtown Grill.
A chuckwalla, red-footed tortoise and European glass lizard were part of the program presented by Jade Woodling, the zoo’s conservation-education coordinator, and staff member Cameron Wolf. They talked about the “ambassador animals” they brought with them, the zoo animal technology program at the college and the zoo in general.
“A lot of people have never heard of the teaching zoo, even though our program has been around since 1970,” Woodling said.
The zoo is located at the school’s Northwest Campus in Gainesville and is the only zoo on a college campus that is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
“If you have ever been to or heard of the Bronx Zoo, San Diego Zoo, that little zoo in Orlando called Disney’s Animal Kingdom — they are all AZA accredited,” Woodling said. “We are held to the same standards. Our little 10-acre zoo that sees almost 70,000 people a year has the same standards as a zoo that might see 2 million.”
Woodling asked how many Kiwanis Club members had been to the zoo. She said if those who raised their hands last visited before 2011, they probably did so on a weekend or by appointment.
“Now, we’re open every single day from 9 to 3,” Woodling said.
The zoo is a component of the school’s zoo animal technology program. Woodling described it as a “10-acre learning lab.”
“Not many people realize you can go to college for zoo keeping,” Woodling said, adding, “Our zookeepers go off to do amazing things all over the world. We have keepers in Edinburgh, New Zealand and Australia, San Diego and, of course, Florida. We probably have more AZA zoos in Florida than in most states. We have a lot of opportunities for our students when they graduate. We have about an 85-percent placement rate.”
The college has an associate-in-science program that is five semesters and a new bachelor-of-applied-science zoo-and-aquarium-management program.
“When you go to the zoo, you’re going to see our students working with the animals,” Woodling said. “They’re not shadowing a keeper. They’re not doing an internship. They are our zookeepers.
“They are also taking classes that reinforce everything that they do.”
Providing nutrition and enrichment
The first animal that was introduced at the Kiwanis meeting was a chuckwalla, a species of lizard common in the western U.S. and in Mexico.
“This species is related to another lizard you might know — iguanas,” Wolf said. “They are in the same family as iguanas — Iguanadae.”
Wolf said chuckwallas in captivity can keep growing until at least the age of 25, which exceeds their average lifespan in the wild.
Knowing how different species grow and develop is just part of what students need to know when planning for animals’ nutritional needs.
“Not all of (the animals at the zoo) eat every day, especially our reptiles,” Woodling said. “We have some larger snakes that might only eat every other week. Our alligators in the winter might go months without eating.
“It really just depends on how they metabolize food and if they’re living outside, where they’re at the mercy of what our temperatures are.”
Wolf said zoos have commissary positions for students who find their passion is working kitchens and preparing animals’ diets. She added that nutrition is one of five areas of zoo care that students rotate through.
Woodling said students have a chance to put creative skills to use when it comes to animal enrichment, which helps every day seem like a new day for the animals.
“That’s a big part of what we do,” Woodling said. “Our zookeepers get to build things and get really inventive with them. They also learn to build habitats. If you come to the zoo, you might see some of those that our keepers almost exclusively built from top to bottom and even helped to design, which is really great.
“We often hear from hiring managers that one of the things they love about our zookeepers is how multifaceted they are.”
As part of enrichment, Santa Fe is working with a company called FluentPet, which produces talking-button kits that allow animals to communicate with people. Woodling said FluentPet is interested in finding ways that animals besides cats and dogs can communicate via their kits.
“We’re actually helping the company,” Woodling said. “One of our instructors who started this project is writing up all of what we’ve learned and discovered and sending it to zoos all over the country so they can start to practice this with their animals.”
Woodling said the zoo’s otters, for example, can tell zookeepers what type of fish they want to eat. Other animals, such as parrots and tortoises are using the buttons as well.
Healthcare
A baby red-footed tortoise was introduced next. The species is native to the northeastern part of South America.
“This little one is a really good example of why it’s important that our students learn about health care,” Wolf said. “Baby animals have a lot more complex needs than their adult counterparts.
“Also, tortoises have really complex health needs in the first place. We’re very fortunate to have the University of Florida Small Animal Hospital in Gainesville because they are really wonderful turtle and tortoise specialists.”
Wolf said UF veterinarians and students visit the Santa Fe Zoo every other week to examine the animals, with the Santa Fe students also getting to be a part of that.
“You’ll see (UF) students listening with their stethoscopes and looking, while our students are holding (the animals),” Woodling said.
Wolf said, “Several of our students end up going into zoo healthcare. A lot of the zoo medicine technicians at the University of Florida are our graduates.”
Maintaining animals’ health can be difficult and dangerous, Woodling said. She cited white-handed gibbons as an example, saying that if a gibbon needed an antibiotic, it’s not simply a matter of filling a plastic syringe and inserting it into the animal’s mouth.
“That’s just not going to happen,” Woodling said. “They’re very strong. They bench press their body weight all day long. If they don’t want to do something, they’re not going to do it.”
That’s where training comes into play. Woodling said gibbons are taught to drink juice from syringes, which makes them willing to allow a syringe to be placed in their mouths.
“It’s not something super novel,” Woodling said of the concept, “and they actually associate something very positive with that experience.”
Healthcare efforts and the fact the animals are in captivity can lead to long life spans. Woodling said the zoo has had parrots that lived for more than 50 years. It had an ocelot that loved to 26. In the wild, they live to be 10-15.
“We had to euthanize,” Woodling said of the ocelot. “She didn’t just die. We just had to make that choice one day.”
Not a snake
Kiwanis Club members got to see one of the oldest animals at the zoo — a European glass lizard, which resembles a snake.
“She has earholes, which snakes don’t have,” Woodling said. “She also has eyelids, and she might blink at you. A snake does not have eyelids. They don’t blink.”
Woodling said European glass lizards, unlike snakes, have stiff, bony like scales, which are called osteoderms. European glass lizards’ bodies, therefore, are less flexible than those of snakes.
A glass lizard can detach its tail, which Woodling said makes up approximately half of its body, in order to escape a predator. Woodling said that was basically a last resort, with Wolf adding, “In the wild, they would probably just retreat and burrow away.”
Each Kiwanis Club member was allowed the chance to touch the glass lizard. Woodling said the animal had been meeting people for most of its life.
“She’s not fearful of people,” Woodling said.
A friend to animals and the community
Woodling said those at the Santa Fe Zoo want to do their part to improve the health of the planet and the animals living on it.
“We do a lot of work with communities around the world and our local community to help protect areas and even to help support the communities that are making differences for animals in their areas.”
Santa Fe has one of the handful of zoos that is breeding Guam rails — birds that became extinct in their native home of Guam.
“These guys were extinct in the wild as late as 2017,” Woodling said. “They were no longer found in Guam because after World War II cargo ships brought an invasive snake onto the island.”
Guam rails raised at the Santa Fe Zoo and other zoos have been released into Guam’s neighboring islands.
“Now, they’ve been uplisted to critically endangered, which is only the second bird in history (to be uplisted),” Woodling said. “The first one was the California condor. Both of those were zoo breeding programs.”
Woodling said the zoo has animals that have been rehabilitated from injury, but unable to be released back into the wild.
The zoo hosts several events throughout the year. It recently held Brew at the Zoo, which features craft beer, food, live music and, of course, animal encounters.
Boo at the Zoo, a trick-or-treat event for children, takes place on Halloween from 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. Admission is one canned or non-perishable food item per person, with items then donated to local food banks.
“It’s a very family friendly event,” Woodling said, adding that it’s not scary. “Our zookeepers decorate the whole zoo in different themed areas.”
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work at a zoo, Santa Fe has a Zookeeper for a Day program, which offers the chance to work alongside a zookeeper for a morning. The program is available for animal enthusiasts ages 9 and up.
The zoo also offers animal encounters and hosts birthday parties, school groups and private tours.
For more information on the zoo and its events, please visit sfcollege.edu/zoo.
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