♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jody Himango: Hi, welcome to "Field Trip," I'm your guide Jody Himango.

We are here at the Sequoia Park Zoo, which houses over 20 exhibits ranging from pandas to porcupines, and whatever this is.

Let's go see what all the noise is about.

[donkey braying] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jody: Let's see if we can find an expert to learn more about the animals.

Lindsay Miller: Hi, I'm Lindsay.

I'm one of the zookeepers here at Sequoia Park Zoo.

Jody: Hi Lindsay, nice to meet you.

What's up on the chore list for today?

Lindsay: So next up we are feeding our two red pandas and Jack the Indian muntjac.

I think they're ready for breakfast.

Jody: That sounds like an amazing opportunity.

Let's go.

Lindsay: Let's go.

Lindsay: First thing you have to do if you're a zookeeper is enter gate one.

So we're gonna squeeze into what we call a vestibule and we're all gonna squeeze into here.

And you can see we have lots of neat stuff in this little cubby and this way we have two doors so that no one takes a stroll around the zoo, only guests get to do that, then gate number two.

So we have a beautiful enrichment device here, this is called a Kong wobbler and that's gonna go in with our pellets or this is called ADF, it's an alfalfa-based kibble for Jack, the Indian muntjac.

And he gets one and a half cups of this pellet twice a day.

So that is ready to go for him.

'Cause you'll see I have to get everything staged and ready 'cause these guys are gonna come meet me right at the door-- most of the time I should say.

All right, and then as we go in, these guys are very brave, very friendly, but they're not pets.

So we--you'll see, I won't be touching them like our dog or cats at home, but they have a really good relationship with their zookeeper.

So they'll come on over pretty quickly to say hello for breakfast.

And then right behind us we already have Sumo our--one of our red pandas and you can see he is ready to go as well.

Set that down for him over there.

And then we're gonna head to this table right over here.

We call this a station and basically in zookeeping that just might refer to an area that the animals are trained to go over.

This helps us give them communication of what's gonna happen.

So this is Sumo on my left, Simi on my right.

And these guys are trained animals, they are not pets.

But one of the things we do as zookeepers is we train many of the animals using positive reinforcement training.

Red pandas are an endangered species, that means they're losing numbers in the wild.

And while that's not that awesome, what is great is that zoos recognize we have the power to help vulnerable, threatened, and endangered species.

Just like us, although they love sugar, we can't eat only sugar for breakfast.

So we have to tell them all done.

And you can see they're-- Jody: They know what that means.

Lindsay: Yeah, it's one of their least favorite.

Jody: I got nothing.

Lindsay: So many of the medical behaviors we might train include walking over to us, craving, going into a crate, walking onto a scale, letting us touch them, all sorts of good stuff like that.

But now that they're done eating their treats, we're gonna see if they're ready for the rest of their food, which is lots and lots of bamboo.

Bamboo makes up 95% of a red panda's diet, and they're each eating one to four pounds of bamboo every single day.

So we're usually bringing them bamboo two or three times a day.

Jody: So bamboo is found in their native habitat.

Lindsay: Exactly.

So they live in different parts of Asia where bamboo might be really prevalent.

So parts of China, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Myanmar.

So there are two species of red pandas or subspecies of red pandas, I should say.

Sumo here is a western red panda which is gonna be lighter in color.

He's also a little bit smaller than the other subspecies, which is the Styan's red panda.

When you google red panda and look them up, you might see a red panda that looks kind of like Grumpy Cat, really, really dark, really intense eyebrows, and a lot of dark red and black-black on them.

That's the Styan's red panda.

They're darker in color usually.

But these guys are ready for their next breakfast, so we're gonna grab that for them as well.

So next up they're gonna eat this pellet as well or a kibble.

This is called mini leaf eater.

Jody: This is a specialty food made is specifically for zoos.

Lindsay: Yes, exactly.

All right, but I can see Sumo is wondering where it is.

So I'm gonna set this down real quick and then we'll place some bamboo around.

So you can see he's ready to go over here.

You can kind of see in their hut they get a variety of comfy options, including a blanket or straw they rest on.

But red pandas are a cold climate animal.

So while I might be wearing a beanie and a jacket today, they are loving this climate and the temperature here.

So you can see they're excellent climbers.

They are semi arboreal, meaning they're spending time up in the trees.

So we're gonna put the bamboo up high where they like to eat it.

That's to stimulate or encourage natural behaviors that they would be doing in the wild, like foraging around for bamboo.

But you can see this is already panda leftovers, which is great.

I like them to have some leftovers every day.

Each red panda eats one to four pounds of bamboo every single day.

So we're bringing in a ton of bamboo.

Jody: So that's stuff they've possibly chewed on from yesterday.

Lindsay: And yes.

And it's just hanging out here for just a moment before I take it away.

Red panda is focused on eating the leaves of the bamboo.

And primarily they're looking for soft, supple, really sugary leaves.

They don't eat things that are too old, they also don't eat the stalks like the giant panda bear does.

So I'm gonna start taking some of our bamboo pieces and you can maybe help me as well.

Jody: I would love to.

Lindsay: Fantastic.

So we can see there's old bamboo around and then we can take new bamboo and just place it up high.

As we move around this habitat, we do wanna be mindful of the animals.

Like I said Jack, the Indian muntjac is a lot more comfortable, but we just don't wanna sneak up behind him on.

That might get him excited.

Jody: So we can pull down some of the old stuff that's there?

Lindsay: And then just plop it on there.

Exactly, you're good, you're keeper in the making.

male announcer: "Field Trip" trivia.

female: Moso Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world!

How long does it take to grow to adult height?

A: 2 years, B: 5 years, or C: 10 years?

The answer is B.

5 years.

♪♪♪ Jody: How did you decide to become a zookeeper?

Lindsay: I am from San Diego, California, and you might be familiar, they have a world famous zoo.

So I grew up going to both the zoo and the San Diego Safari Park and I fell in love with it.

I loved the animals, I saw zookeepers and I thought that's gonna be me someday.

And as you can see, we are a very sleepy species.

So we do sleep over half the day away.

So we basically, if you're a red panda, you get up, have a snack, go back to bed, get up, have a snack, go back to bed.

So I think we've reached the go back to bed stage up there.

Jody: That's the life for me.

Lindsay: So Jack also gets alfalfa grass every day.

As a little deer species, he's both a browser and a grazer eating, meaning he's eating grasses down below and leaves from up high.

But you know what?

I think he's ready for something more than just his alfalfa grass.

Let's see if he'll do a little training session with us.

So when I first started working with Jack as a little solitary deer species, he was very shy by nature, but as you can see he is this really awesome, very confident and calm individual now, but he loves sweet potato roots, carrots.

This is part of our relationship building and just something he learned to like this year.

But this will buy us a little bit more time visiting with Jack the muntjac.

So as his antlers grow in, they have this skin layer and then those will fall off.

It'll be really crazy for a couple days and then have beautiful antlers underneath.

But because they don't get that large, he also has these teeth that he might use to help defend himself or use for different foraging tactics.

Jody: And his scent glands.

So like standing here pretty close to him, I can't smell anything.

Lindsay: No, so they're not really that stinky, but they have this secretion or oil that comes out when they press.

So he-- Jody: And it's--was it red in colors that just drew from the food?

Lindsay: I think that's a-- So yeah, so he--it's more of like this little secretion that comes out only when he presses it.

So actually when he goes around his habitat and presses onto the ground, this will change color.

It'll become like bright pink for a second.

Jody: Wow, so what is a muntjac's average age span in the wild?

Lindsay: So usually in a zoo setting, we might say like if an animal reaches to be 20 years old in a zoo, we might say that they only live about half that age in the wild, and that would be really old.

So Indian muntjac, the males can live to be in their 20s, maybe, you know, up towards 25.

So at 16, he is definitely older, but not necessarily old, old yet.

The other thing that's kind of wonderful is as you saw with him coming over as zoos and our understanding and zookeepers learn more and more and more, we can help increase their quality of life as they get older to be really excellent all the way through basically.

So I would anticipate that some of these animals will even reach older ages than we're used to seeing just because our understanding, our knowledge of their veterinary care, their daily care, and their life care gets better all the time.

Jody: Amazing.

Jody: So Lindsay, what other kind of jobs do you do during your workday?

Lindsay: So besides feeding animals, zookeepers also are a part of conservation.

So we might manage different habitats to encourage breeding.

Jody: What might that mean on a day like today?

Lindsay: So today we're gonna be making some mud nest for our Chilean flamingos.

Jody: Awesome, let's go get dirty.

Lindsay: Let's go.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Lindsay: We have 32 Chilean flamingos here at Sequoia Park Zoo.

They're a part of a species survival plan or a long-term conservation and management program.

So we're hoping for babies, but our job is to fluff up the dirt, make it really soft and pliable so they can build with it because flamingos make their nest out of clay and mud.

So we're gonna get a little dirty making some nest materials for flamingos.

Jody: Awesome, let's get dirty.

Lindsay: Let's get dirty.

Jody: How's that for pressure?

Lindsay: That looks great.

And then I'm gonna come behind you and start walking up the dirt.

Jody: Oh, fun.

Oh, you're like turning and lifting.

Lindsay: Yeah, 'cause I'm kind of like rotating the mud from lower to upper.

And often it's kind of like you want it almost like wet cement, so that's kind of what I'm looking for.

So often I'll kind of do a once over wet it down and do it again and it kind of just makes it like wet all the way through.

Jody: Right, so you get the water into the deeper layers.

Lindsay: Exactly.

male announcer: "Field Trip" trivia.

female: What is a group of flamingos called?

A: Bouquet, B: Gaggle, or C: Flamboyance.

♪♪♪ The answer is C. Flamboyance.

♪♪♪ Jody: You wanna trade jobs?

Lindsay: Yeah, that looks great on the water.

Jody: Thank you.

I wanna fluff mud.

Lindsay: Yes, see how dirty it is, yeah.

Jody: And it's a little bit harder than it looks or you're just really good at it.

Lindsay: I've done it a few times.

Jody: And then do we work this whole area around the mounds they were already built?

Lindsay: So basically I look at it as like a little circle around each mound and I'm just trying to get a nice surface area 'cause they're gonna sit their little booties right down on the mud or on the mound here and then they pull the dirt towards them and build it up like a giant volcano.

You're doing a great job.

Jody: Thank you.

Lindsay: Well, and then our patient flamingos wait and then usually fairly quickly, at least by the evening they come over here and start getting interested.

So that's exactly what I wanna see.

Jody: And then do we avoid stepping on this 'cause we don't wanna compact the backdown?

Lindsay: Exactly, so then you have to carefully navigate your way around all that freshly tilled mud.

Jody: And it is slip-- Lindsay: And it can be slippery.

So always a little bit interesting working in each habitat.

Jody: How many times have you fallen, Lindsay?

Lindsay: Oh, a couple times definitely.

Only once into the pond.

Jody: Oh, so it's kind of a job of who can stay the cleanest.

Lindsay: Absolutely, it's never me though.

Jody: All right.

Lindsay: That looks great.

I bet the flamingos will be interested in that.

So we can see if they build some nests and then maybe have some babies this year.

Jody: I can't wait to see it.

Lindsay: Thank you for your hard work.

Jody: Thanks, Lindsay, for showing us some new skills.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Jody: Next I'll be meeting with zookeeper Natalie to help prepare food for Dorsey the porcupine.

Natalie Parchman: All right, so here we are ready to make our diet for the porcupine.

So we always wanna make sure that we give the animals as natural of a diet as possible.

So in nature they're going to eat a lot of browse and plants in the summer.

Porcupines are generalists, so generally they'll eat whatever is what's in season.

And that's great and humble because we always have a lot of seasonal variety of our produce.

So in order to mimic a natural diet, we tend to use root, green, fruit, and veg.

So that's what we have in front of us.

It's important that we follow the rules of our calculated diet because a nutritionist made sure that this was balanced nutrition for a porcupine, she needs 100 grams of roots.

Jody: All right, so any roots that we have, we have a carrot, the beet.

Natalie: And a sweet potato.

All right.

And the next thing we're gonna need is fruit.

It says 50 grams of fruit.

Jody: So any fruits?

We could do a mix, some banana.

Natalie: Yeah, banana just happens to be her favorite.

Jody: Oh, well, who can blame her?

Natalie: Oh, with the banana she'll eat the peel and all.

Jody: Will she do the same thing with the orange?

Natalie: Yeah.

Jody: So now we have 38, so we're going for another 12 grams and a little bit of apple.

This actually looks like a great lunch.

Natalie: Okay, so now once we're done with our fruit, next thing on our list says veggie, 100 grams of veggie.

I just happen to know she loves broccoli, so we'll put a little broccoli in there.

Jody: Broccoli's a super food.

So eat your broccoli if you like it.

Natalie: And a little bit of zucchini.

Jody: And so in this basket that you have for us, we have some locally, not all native, it doesn't look like but we have things that grow in the wild that she might kind of stumble upon if she were living in the wild.

Natalie: Right, so as often as possible we want to mimic a natural diet, and whenever we can incorporate some of her natural diets in with the prepared produce that's gonna be really good for her.

And then when we don't have natural things to provide her, like the natural browse that we used or the greens that we used.

What's really neat that a lot of people don't think about is that at the zoo we give everyone a fresh produce diet and then we give them a supplement food.

And it's important that we give them the supplements because they'll have all the vitamins and minerals that maybe aren't in the seasonal variety when stuff's not in season.

So that's where these biscuits come into play.

Jody: It's almost like an animal multivitamin.

Natalie: Yeah, yeah, so it's made by the zoo industry and every species of animal kind of has a supplement.

So if you're a carnivore and you eat a lot of protein, guess what we supplement with?

Usually dog food or cat food because dog food has a lot of protein in it, but it's available throughout the year and it's also fortified with vitamins and minerals.

So even the river otters get a little bit of dog food every day just as a supplement.

Jody: I saw that on your menu.

Natalie: Yeah, so for the porcupine, for the monkeys, even for the red pandas, everybody knows they eat bamboo all the time, right?

But they actually eat a biscuit too.

So we call these "leaf eater" biscuits and it's basically a bunch of cellulose or plant matter baked into a biscuit.

But when I look at these I think, okay, well, I wanna give her a different variety every day, and I know she got the larger leaf eater yesterday and she would've gotten ten of them, but when you look at the size of this biscuit, it doesn't make sense that she would only get ten, right?

Jody: Right.

Natalie: So I just happen to know because I've used my scale that one large biscuit is about ten grams.

So I wonder how many grams of little biscuit would we need to be able to equate to the same as ten large biscuits?

Jody: Natalie, that sounds like a lot of math that you have to do in your job every day.

This sounds like a job for Number Woman.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Number Woman: Thanks, Jody, that's a great question.

How many small biscuits will the porcupine need to get more variety in his diet?

Let's figure it out.

Well, we know that 1 large biscuit is 10 grams and the porcupine eats 10 of those, which is a total of 100 grams.

But we also know that the small biscuits are about a gram and a half.

So what we wanna do is figure out how many of the small biscuits the porcupine would need in a day.

So we take 100 grams total and we know that a small biscuit, 1 small biscuit is about 1 1/2 grams.

And then what we do is we can cancel out the grams.

And we see that 100, and we'll go ahead and put a 1 under the 100 and multiply straight across and we get 100 small biscuits divided by 1 1/2.

So if we take 100 and we divide it by 1 1/2, we don't wanna divide by decimals, so we'll multiply by 10 over 10 and anything divided by itself is 1, which is the multiplicate of identity, so it doesn't change the problem.

So then we get 1,000 over 15.

And then I like when fractions have smaller numbers so they're easier to manipulate and it's easier to work with.

So what we'll do is we'll take and divide the 1,000 and the 15 by 5.

And when we do that, we get 200 divided by 3.

And then at that point, we can take the 200 and divide by 3 and we'll see what we end up getting.

So what happens is 3 into 20 goes 6 times, 6 times 3 is 18.

When we subtract, we get 20 again.

Oh, and the same thing.

So another 6 times 3 is 18 and we see that it repeats.

And when it repeats we know that what we have is about 67 small biscuits.

So if we wanna give the porcupine small biscuits instead for more variety, then we wanna give them about 67 small biscuits and then they get more variety in their diet.

All right, back to you, Jody.

Jody: Let's go feed Dorsey the porcupine.

Natalie: Dorsey is one of our special ambassador animals, and basically what that is a collection of our education animals that came from nature, but were unfortunately injured.

So it's a little bit of a sad story, but it's actually a strong survivor story.

They're nocturnal.

So porcupines sleep all day and play at night.

And when they do sleep, they're sleeping up in the trees.

She doesn't rely on sight very well, but she does rely a lot on her hearing and on her sense of smell.

And then the bottom of her feet have pads on 'em that are sensitive to vibrations that help her too in the dark.

Jody: So are the quills of a porcupine modified hair?

Natalie: They are.

Jody: This is something I've been wondering.

Natalie: She has two kinds of hair.

She's got her modified quills hiding under her beautiful soft guard hair and that's her camouflage is the guard hair.

So it's important that she has darker hair to camouflage.

Jody: So some people think that they can shoot their quills out.

Natalie: Right, and that's another thing I like to point out is that she is a mammal, so she sheds her hair.

So just like when I'm brushing my hair, I find some in the comb or in the hairbrush.

They don't really shoot them, they have no control over it, but they do shed in a really uneven pattern and they shed more when they're nervous.

So I like to tell people to be really careful, but if you have a chance to look at a porcupine quill with a magnifying glass or a microscope, essentially the black tip is reverse barbs like a fish hook.

So you're right, it's meant to kind of go in and not come out.

Jody: What kind of behavior would you see?

Like heaven forbid, a dog was bothering them in the wild.

What kind of behavior might we see from a porcupine?

Natalie: So if it's a young porcupine, it can actually be very dramatic.

They'll turn around and kind of use their tail like a spiked club just for, you know, to be dramatic, like check me out.

So they learn as they get older that they can just hunker down.

So they'll just grab onto the grass and they'll tuck their head in because she's got 30,000 quills all over her body except for that front face area.

So if she grabs the grass and tucks her heads in, she then comes--becomes like a ball of quills, almost like a hedgehog and it's nearly impossible to flip them over.

All right, so it looks like Dorsey is getting ready to be finished, so let's go ahead and put her away and we can go feed the river otters.

Jody: That would be amazing.

Thank you, Dorsey.

♪♪♪ Natalie: So let's go ahead and wake up the river otters.

Toby, Etu, Takoda!

Otters!

♪♪♪ Natalie: These guys are actually terrestrial mammals, which means they spend most of their day on land and they only come to the water during feeding times.

So we do like to try to make our habitats as natural as possible.

And so the otters have dug a den where they like to sleep right near the water, which is what they would choose to do in nature as well.

male announcer: "Field Trip" trivia.

female: River otters are some of the best swimmers around!

How long can they hold their breath?

Is it A: 2 minutes, B: 8 minutes, or C: 20 minutes.

The answer is B.

8 minutes.

♪♪♪ Jody: Natalie, what made you wanna become a zookeeper?

Natalie: Yeah, I was probably in about third grade when I started reading about animals and decided that I would really wanna grow up and work with animals.

So I started taking like summer camps and learning about the animals, volunteering as an adult, and then I knew right away that this is what I wanted to do.

Jody: So every day that you're here at work, you're using biology?

Natalie: Yeah.

Jody: You're using your wildlife background, nutrition?

Natalie: Eighty percent of my day is gross and I just mean that it's dirty.

I'm cleaning stalls, I'm mowing the grass, I'm doing stuff inside the exhibit, I'm picking up poop.

I mean, let's be real.

I caretake for the animals.

And then 10% of the job is the diet and nutrition.

And then 10% is going to be the fun stuff, which is the animal training, the social behavioral, interaction.

Like right now as we're talking in front of the otters, they're showing off for us, but at the end of the day you get a special relationship with the animals.

So the gross stuff doesn't feel that gross anymore.

Jody: So Natalie, thank you so much for hosting us here at the zoo and giving us a glimpse into what it means to be a zookeeper at the Sequoia Park Zoo.

Natalie: Yeah, it was truly my pleasure.

Jody: Thank you.

Jody: Let's see if we can find a zookeeper to learn more about the animals.

Lindsay: Hi, I'm Zookeeper Lindsay and I'm here at Sequoia Park Zoo.

Jody: Can we redo that?

male: Yes.

Jody: I got all--I've never been bit by a goose, but I have been bit by a chicken.

They'll do that.

They'll get you.

This sounds like a job for Number Woman.

This sounds like a job for ♪ Number Woman.

This sounds like a job for ♪ Number Woman.

This sounds like a job for Number Woman.

male: Okay, we're gonna do it one more time.

♪♪♪