(upbeat intro music) - [Penny] Today we are at Zoo Miami Spending the day with a zoo keeper!

Well thank you Mr. Ron Magill for inviting us to Zoo Miami to find out what zoo keepers do!

- Aw, thank you for coming, Penny!

This is a real pleasure to have you here.

Ya know, zoo keepers are a special group of people.

They are so dedicated to working with animals.

They have an inherent love for animals, and there's a lot of work that goes into taking care of these animals!

It's not like taking care of your dog or, or cat.

Ya know, it's something that becomes a passion!

For me, ya know, I started as a little kid.

I grew up in a small apartment in New York and there was only one television show when I grew up, it was called Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

And I watched that show, and at that moment I knew that I wanted to work with those animals.

Those animals that I saw in Africa, those animals that I saw in the Amazon, in the arctic, all these wonderful animals.

I knew that's what I wanted to do all my life.

And that's how I ended up here.

- What was your first job?

- Well, my first job working with animals was at a place called the Miami Serpentarium.

And I started there as a custodian tour guide, and then kinda worked my way up into being a zoo keeper and then the curator of the reptile department there.

And I worked with everything there from crocodiles, to tortoises, to, to venomous snakes cobras, rattlesnakes, and all kinds of other big snakes like pythons and anacondas.

And I just watched these animals and it became so fascinating to me that I said 'Gosh, if I could make a career out of doing something that I loved to do as a hobby, then I'll be happy as I could possibly be.

- Is there special training that zoo keepers need to, to take?

- Well yes, zoo keepers need to concentrate their studies on the life sciences; biology, zoology, things like that.

You want to become aware of how animals interact with each other.

Learn your observation skills because, ya know, wild animals, they don't tell you 'Oh, I feel sick' or 'This hurts' You have to look at their behaviors and be able to determine if this animal needs special attention or not.

- [Penny] It sounds exciting, lets meet the kids and take them around the zoo!

- I am so looking forward to meeting these kids and giving them a firsthand little window into the world of what it's like to be a zoo keeper.

- Yeah.

(upbeat music plays) (upbeat music plays intensifies) - Where are we now?

- Well I'll tell you what Miss Penny we're here in the animal nutrition center.

And you know we have thousands of animals here at the zoo.

And they prepare hundreds of diets every day!

We've got Rachel here, who's one of the supervisors in the nutrition center, and she's going to explain to you how we do these diets for our sloths!

- So we're gonna start with this first diet here.

So our sloths get a tiny bit of fruit, lots of vegetables, and a product that we call complete feed.

The first ingredient in their recipe is 75 grams of collards cut into two to three inch pieces.

And we're gonna put collards with your hands, in here like this, until this number says 75.

- [Ron] Keep on goin, man Yeah, that's a good handful right there!

One leaf out, one little leaf out.

Good!

Perfect!

- Our next ingredient, we have 180 grams of frozen green beans.

- [Rachel] There ya go keep going!

- Keep on going, ya got a long way to go, buddy!

One more good one, Zach!

Bam, way to go Zach!

- That looks really good!

All right, Hayden, next we have 180 grams of carrot sticks.

- [Ron] Big handfuls, buddy, you got big hands.

Show them what you got!

- [Rachel] There ya go!

- [Ron] Oh, another big handful, two more sticks!

- [Rachel] Oh, that's pretty good!

- [Rachel] There you go!

What we can do is we can take our diet here and we will put it into our bag.

A sloth doesn't have thumbs, so they have to have hands like this.

So we cut the bite into sticks so that they can grab it with their hand and eat it.

- How much food do you bring in a day?

- We spend probably about $25,000 a week for the over 3,000 animals that we have.

- [Penny] Wow - And that's just the produce.

So we also have to receive fish deliveries, we get dry feed deliveries, sometimes we'll get other meat deliveries, we even go grocery shopping at Publix.

- [Ron] It all starts with what you eat.

You know that saying that says 'You are what you eat?'

Same with the animals, we gotta make sure they get their complete diet.

It can't be just what they want to eat, it's gotta be their whole diet to keep them healthy.

- Wow, you take good care of them.

- We do!

We wanna make sure they have the very best!

- So you wanna go see how these sloths are gonna eat this food, now?

You wanna see if you prepared it properly?

- Yes!

- Alrighty then, here we go!

- Okay.

(upbeat music playing) (chimes) (upbeat music playing) - Alright, so here we are with Chelsea the sloth!

We've got the diet that you've prepared.

Now Chelsea is a really interesting animal.

You know, a sloth is one of the slowest mammals in the world.

They're arboreal, you know what that means?

- [Children] No.

- [Ron] It means they live up in the trees.

You know the only time they come down?

- [Child] To poop and pee.

- [Ron] That's right, to go to the bathroom!

That's the only time they come down from the tree, to go to the bathroom.

So they're very slow, they only move on the ground about 6 feet a minute.

A minute, that's like, shorter than me.

It takes them a minute to go that length.

Chelsea is a very special sloth.

She has uh, a friend called Pete.

They came together from Panama as ambassadors, and what we do with them here at the zoo is, they're for people like you.

So you can look at a sloth face to face and get a better appreciation of it.

And know that we have to try to protect the forest where these animals are found!

- Do sloths swim slowly?

- Well, they swim faster than they walk, they're pretty good swimmers.

They don't move so much and in the rainforest it rains so much, they actually get algae.

Do you know what algae is?

The green stuff, it grows in their fur.

And you know what else is really neat?

There's a moth, there's a moth that lays its egg in the fur the eggs hatch out, they pupate in the fur, and they turn into moths, and they fly away.

Shall we see if you did a good job with the diet?

- [Ron] Oh, heaven.

He's in green bean heaven.

Chelsea is a big fan of the green beans.

Miss Penny - I'm up - Are you ready?

- Yeah - Are you ready?

- I am.

- Are you sure?

- Uh, yes.

- [Ron] Chelsea, look at that.

Oh miss Penny, oh look at that.

- Aw he's savoring it.

- He's savoring it, the juices are just flowing in, aww.

- Is it okay if I move the green bean for her?

- [Ron] No, no, she'll tuck that.

We never wanna touch an animal around its nose or its mouth.

This is the biscuit, that's the biscuit.

- [Ron] Oh yeah.

Oh she's happy now.

Remember how Rachel showed you in the kitchen how they have to be able to hold things?

So she takes it, exactly, she takes her finger and she holds it that way.

Show it to her there, there ya go, show it to her Oh yeah Oh oh oh!

Oh way to go, Zach!

So you guys did a good job, huh?

- How long does it take them to eat it?

- It doesn't take them that long to eat it but it takes them sometimes up to a week to digest it.

And see how sloths always hang upside down?

That's naturally what they do because their internal organs have special attachments that allow them to hang upside down without causing any stress on those organs!

- [Penny] Do they have a sound that they make?

- [Ron] They really don't make a sound generally speaking, even though every now and then they make a weird scream that would kinda freak you out.

All right, so you ready to go see something else?

- Yeah!

- All right, lets go, come on this way!

(chimes) (upbeat drum music) - So what are we doing here?

- Well, here we are at the whacky barn!

Now you guys have prepared the diets, you've done the nutritional part, you've fed the sloths and seen how that works but there's a lot more to zoo keeping than just feeding the nice, cute animals.

Ya gotta clean up after them too.

(Ron Laughs) As they say in it in the movie, 'It is time.'

We're in the goat yard, and now you're gonna learn to use some of the most important tools a zoo keeper has.

The rake, the shovel, and the wheel barrel.

Are you guys ready?

All right, lets go, come on, come on, come on!

- Okay!

So now here we are with the tools of the trade.

Zach, that's yours.

Mia, that's yours.

Hayden, that's yours.

Miss Penny has a shovel.

And here, I'm getting the wheel barrel given to me by one of the goats.

What we do now, is you have to go and you see all of those little things that look like raisins?

- Pellets - They're not raisins.

So what you gotta do is, you gotta rake them up in a nice motion, and Miss Penny will hold a shovel, and when you got enough little raisins in that shovel, lets see which one of you can take the shovel from Miss Penny and put it here in this wheel barrel.

- Oh - You ready?

- Yeah - All set?

Go!

(upbeat orchestral music) (chimes) (upbeat orchestral music) - Where are we now?

- Well here we are at the José Milton Fun Factory!

This is a place where we make what we call enrichment for the animals.

Enrichment is a fancy word.

It basically is something to have them have some fun.

It keeps them occupied, it keeps them mentally stimulated, it keeps them physically stimulated.

You ever play with some toys, you ever play catch?

- Yep - That's all enrichment, you see.

So we come up with different types of games and enrichment and stimulants for the animals!

Pretty cool right?

But today you're gonna build the enrichment for the biggest animal in the zoo, what would that be?

- [Group] Elephants!

- Bam, you guys are brilliant.

So, what we have to do now, is, you have paint in front of you, you guys are gonna take your artistic talents and you're gonna paint this barrel.

That hole, is where we put little treats for the elephants!

And then we'll hang it up, and then the elephants will shake it, and then the treats will fall down and they catch the treats, and it keeps them busy because it's like they're searching for treats!

So you got it?

- [Penny] Yes.

- [Ron] You excited?

- [Penny] Yes.

- You gonna become artists now?

- [Group] Yes!

- Let's get going!

(upbeat orchestral music) (chimes) - So here we are in front of the elephant exhibit and our elephants are coming up.

We have Mabel, and we have Peggy.

They're two females, and what we've done is we've put enrichment throughout the exhibit.

What you did was create the barrels, you'll see there's one of you barrels out there, and there's another barrel out there also, that has some of their favorite treats in it.

You're going to see the elephants now go throughout the exhibit and start exploring all those different things that we have for them.

Which are part of their enrichment.

It's kind of like their toys.

It keeps them physically stimulated, it keeps them mentally stimulated, and they're rewarded by the treats that they get.

So now you can turn around and you can see Mabel, she's going after some brows there that she's got disguised in a rock.

There's some melon in there too.

She's going to the barrel!

She loves the barrel!

Boom!

I think she touched your fingerprint there first, Zach.

And there she goes having her favorite schleffera trees So these are all natural treats that the animals would get in the wild.

And it keeps them busy, you know, They have over 40,000 individual muscles in the trunk of the elephant.

Now she's trying to get as much as she can before Peggy comes up, because here comes Peggy.

Peggy's a dominant elephant, and she knows, that once Peggy gets out here, Peggy is gonna get first choice.

Elephants are very, what we call, they're a hierarchy.

See how Peggy's coming out in a pretty fast clip, she knows Oh there's Mabel.

She's like 'I gotta, I gotta go, here comes Peggy!

I gotta get outta here now!

Because Peggy's comin' and I gotta get my good stuff and run because Peggy's got this part of the territory.'

So that's what she's doing.

She's grabbing as much as she can, she's going to go to the other side, and then Peggy's going to come in here and she's going to dominate this territory right here.

And now Peggy's going to start exploring.

She's exploring the little containers, She's going to look for her favorite stuff first - [Penny] Let's see if she goes to her barrel!

- [Ron] And she's going to the barrel!

- [Penny] Yay!

- [Ron] And boom, she's checked it out, Got a little leaf of the barrel too, yes.

See how that works?

There's a little cantaloupe there, she's going to get the cantaloupe, I feel it!

There's the cantaloupe!

Up and into the mouth goes the cantaloupe!

All the stuff she's getting out of that barrel that you guys did as these incredible zoological artists that you are.

So you see how busy she is?

She's exploring everywhere and she's using that trunk it's not as much her sight as it is her trunk.

She's smelling through her trunk, she's examining, putting as much in her mouth as she can.

Over on the top of the tree there, there's a barrel hanging with some brows hanging from it.

- [Penny] They're really good with their trunks!

- [Ron] Oh, incredible.

Incredible dexterity.

They can lift up the trunk of a huge tree or they can pick up a dime.

They're what we call a keystone species they will actually alter an environment.

They will turn a forest into a savanna.

So they basically construct eco systems in the wild, That's why they're a keystone species.

- [Penny] Which ones are bigger, the Asian ones or the African?

- [Ron] Good question!

The African elephant is larger than the Asian elephant.

A big male can exceed, the record is, over 15,000 pounds.

- [Zach] What?!

- Peggy, you want another carrot?

You want another carrot?

No?

- [Penny] (laughs) - [Ron] How about an apple?

You want an apple?

No?

Oh wait a minute Peggy, they're Red Delicious.

They're Red Delicious, yes, okay.

Here we go Peggy.

Red Delicious, there you go.

She can pick it up with her trunk because she has such little muscles in her trunk.

Now I wanna show you what we do with her.

I'm gonna ask her to show me her ears.

Now watch this.

Peggy!

Ears!

Good girl!

- [Group] Wow!

- [Ron] Good girl, Peggy, good girl!

Did you notice all the veins in her ears?

- [Group] Yeah - [Ron] So we ask her, we ask her to present her ears so that the zoo keepers can collect blood.

She'll let us actually put a needle in her ear to collect the blood from her veins.

Living in a savanna, they don't have a lot of trees for shade, so those ears act like big radiators.

When they flop their ears back and forth they cool all the blood going through those veins and helps cool their body down.

- Thank you very much, Ron, for teaching us how to be good zoo keepers!

- Aw, it was a pleasure having you out here, I hope to see you out again soon.

- You will.

- [Group] Bye!