Episode Transcript
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Hey, Melan Kay, this isWomen we Love Today. We're talking to
Carrie and Sarah, wildlife care specialistzookeeper at the San Diego Zoo. Carrie,
thank you for joining us. Whatattracted you to your profession? I,
from a very young age, haddecided I was obsessed with animals and
their training and really wanted to beable to talk to them. Long story
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short, my mother would read mefrom the Doctor Doolittle series and that just
really fascinated me and I My grandparentslived in San Diego before my family moved
here, and we would come visitin the summer. And I was about
eight or nine years old and Iwas picked at the animal show at the
Weaga Fourth Bowl to come up onstage and interact with the trainer and the
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sea lion, and I got thekiss from the sea lion and that was
it. I just decided, I'mworking at a zoo. I'm working at
the San Diego Zoo. And Ijust pursued that pretty relentlessly all threw growing
up and look at you, now, that's so amazing. It was that
one outing that really made your path. Yes, absolutely, and then when
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I realized there's jobs that I coulddo that for other children and other people,
and yeah, I was hooked.Well the Karen research of wildlife never
sleep. So when do you getto rescue you? Are you at it
every day? Because we know thezoo never closes seven days a week.
It's true, we are at itevery day. Someone's always here, you
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know. And when we as humansfall ill or we're tired and we can't
come to work, someone else onyour team is there to back up and
step in and do the jobs.So me personally, I'm also a mom
to two little boys, so I'mnever off the clock. Oh yeah,
yeah, for sure. And theywill get a really interesting upbringing because they're
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with you. They're going to bebehind the scenes at the zoo. Yes,
we just had bring your children towork day last week and my oldest
son got to come and he wasjust yeah, beside themself with joy.
Do you think that they will followin mommy's footsteps. That's a good question.
I do think they realize how hardI work, and actually how much
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I'm kind of a way, soI'm not sure if they will. They
definitely have an appreciation and an interest. Well, it remains to be seen
where they where those interests fall.Carrie, we're looking at a photo of
you right now holding what I believeis a two can. I'm sure it's
a specific type. But and Ithink as pet lovers, as dog owners,
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really in this room, we assigna lot of human emotions to animals.
But I always admire how you guyskind of just get right to it,
what is actually happening in their brains, with their biologies, their thought
process. Does this bird in yourhand recognize you every day? Yes,
it definitely does. And certain birdsmore than other, certain animals more than
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others. So I work with avariety of birds, mammals, reptiles.
There are certain species of birds,say like the parrots, core of it's
crows and ravens, a two can, something like that. They definitely recognize
us individually. They have individual relationshipswith each one of us. Um.
But then there's other animals, maybesay birds like an owl. There's not
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as much intelligence going on up there, so saying it anyone can turn their
neck around like that. I mean, you know, they have giant eyeballs.
There's not a lot of room upthere for a brain. Okay,
brain recognize us, Yeah, theyrecognize us versus strangers. But it's not
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like, hey, I'm happy tosee you as some of the more social
animals are. You know, Sothe more social the animal, the more
they recognize us as individuals, andthose relationships are a little bit deeper,
um, rather than just based onyou know, for an owl, for
example, it's just do you havea mouse for me? Yes or no?
It's it's kind of big yeah,right, yeah, So what is
in your experience at the San DiegoZoo, what is the smartest animal there?
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Oh, my gosh, that isthat is very difficult to answer.
We've got all of our great apesthat, of course are incredibly intelligent.
Parrot species are right at Ravens andcrows are right up there at the top
of that list. But you know, they're all just as smart as they
need to be to survive in thewild. So you know, I joke
about owls but um not being thesmartest you know birds on the planet.
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But everybody has their different skill setand that's what's important for us to recognize
and utilize. And um, youknow, cater to right, you also
deal with kind of the the uglyside of wildlife, and that's trafficking,
and so I know that you doa lot to stop the trafficking and to
educate about trafficking and you know,people smuggling animals or or keeping large animals
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or wild animals as pets when theyshouldn't be. So how how are we
doing on that? Well? WhatI love that I get to do right
now directly involved with working with ourhero rat ambassador. So the hero rats
are gotten their nicknames from the greatwork they're doing all over the world to
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help protect all sorts of wildlife.They come to us from a Belgian nonprofit
organization called a POPO that has beentraining these rats to use their sense of
smell to sniff out all sorts ofthings, but one of those is different
animal trafficked parts or wildlife, hardwoods, pangling scales, all sorts of different
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things. They can be trained todetect that scent and pull that out even
when being masked by a really strongopposite scent, you know, a coffee
for example. So being able topartner with that group and then having a
hero rat in our part of ourteam and being able to bring her out
and do that demonstration where we showpeople how she's using her nose and her
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sense of smell to identify an objectand then being able to explain how these
rats can work out in the fieldto you know, kind of catch those
things. It's been really awesome endeavor, and we're able to share that with
the public and read awareness that way. So there's lots of things that come
with that that's astounding. I hadtwo rats as pets, and I was
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very very attached to them, andthey to me, and I would get
home from work and they lived inmy apartment in San Francisco. I wasn't
allowed to have animals, but Ifigured, you know what, my landlord's
really chill and cool, and Ikeep them in the cage when I'm at
work, and then I would letthem free room and they would come when
I called them, and they lovedto sit on my neck and just kind
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of hang out with me, andthey were so affectionate. Are they as
smart? Obviously they're a smart breed. But I'd like to debunk the myth
that rats are dirty and gross.I mean they were really cute, cafe
and ole and a brown and awhite one. Absolutely, and I had
a very similar experience with pet domesticrats, and they are very social and
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very intelligent, and I absolutely lovebringing our hero rat out, and that
is generally the first response is totallywe're bringing out a rat. But I
would like to point out that ourhero rat is a different species. So
it's called a giant pouched rat,and they're from Africa and they are three
pounds. Okay, they're much biggerthan our domestic rat. There's still a
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little small, you know, asfar as embattist our animals go, but
they're one of the largest species ofrat, and so their lifespan is quite
a bit longer. So I loveto tell people, hey, rats make
wonderful pets. They're much better thansay, like a hamster or a gerbil
because of their social nature and theyall of the things that you just mentioned.
Is very common when you have anice relationship with one or two.
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So the pouch rats are a littlebit different in that they're bigger, but
it also makes people that kind ofoh, that is the biggest rat I've
ever seen. Yeah, I cango but get this, you know,
and we can share the amazing workthat they're doing smelling sniffing out landmines,
you know, abandoned landmines. They'resniffing out tuberculosis samples and finding positive cases
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that humans have missed. They aredoing the wildlife trafficking, there's a potential
for search and rescue. They canget into the small spaces that a human
or a dog can't get to.So there's lots of applications for this small,
yet mighty you know species. Andthey live a lot longer. So
the domestic rats, you know,they live two to three years, and
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these pouchtrats have a lifespan of anywherefrom eight to ten. Oh nice.
What is a hero rat's name?Ours is named Runa, Are you na?
Yeah? She's four years old.Yeah, and she, you know,
went through the training program with apopo and you know, in order,
she started out as a landline detectionrat. And you know, if
you're going to be detecting landmines,if that's going to be your job,
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he's kind of need to be onehundred percent accurate. Yeah, So she
made it, let's say, throughninety percent of the training. She got
to the final test and she wasn'tcomfortable being out in wide open new spaces,
and that's kind of where you needto go if you're going to do
that job in the field. Soshe was one of I like to say
she was one of the lucky fewthat was you know, handpicked to come
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to the San Diego Zoo and wewere able to give her that career change.
We'd like to say she didn't slunkout, she just had a change
of careers. And we have awhole setup where we can demonstrate all the
behaviors that she would do. Achurch through the dirt for a buried sense
under the dirt, bring it backto less um, and then just do
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all sorts of demonstrations for guests aboutthe house she needs to search sense of
smell. Does Ruona have a cape? You should have a cape. I
don't know if you've seen it,but there's a there's definitely a picture online
of the most the hero rat withthe most accolades wearing a little metal.
This is the whole world that we'rejust learning about through you, Carrie.
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Thank you. Oh you got tocheck it out. It's adorable and there's
lots of amazing stories. Yeah.So what advice would you give, you
know, young students who would loveto do what you do every day?
I mean, what a what aspecial gift to be able to work with
so many animals. It is reallyspecial. It's it's a lot of hard
work because you know, the funparts are the relationships we have at the
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animals, the you know, thejoy we get to bring to people's faces
and getting to bring them out inpublic is definitely one of the funniest parts.
Um. But then of course there'sall the hard work behind it.
You know, we are also theircaretakers, so we're cleaning and we're repairing,
doing maintenance and using power tools andour muscles and um. Then of
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course there's like the advanced age kindof situations, so that it's it's puff
um, it's like having a bunchof kids, to be honest, and
I think it's uh, it's challengingon your mental you know, your mental
state because you're just just pouring outso much devotion and so much care for
these creatures, but it is reallyrewarding when you get that relationship back that
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that like free flight birds, whichis where I started. Um, I
think what was so it's amazing aboutthat is that they really do have the
ability to fly away. You know, at any moment, there have the
capability to fly to Mexico on meum. And so it's our relationship and our
training that keeps them with us andit keeps them safe. And so it's
like that for any of the animalsthat we work, even our terrestrials and
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our reptiles and things. But sothat relationship part is really more rewarding.
And I would just point out toanyone that you know, it's also a
lot of hard physical work and it'schallenging on your mental capacity. So just
be ready, you know, yeah, ready to dive in work hard.
That's well, you're an inspiration carryand thank you for coming on with us.
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We were fascinated with what you doand when we come to the San
Diego Zoo, we're going to definitelylook you up up. Oh please do
We'll share Runa and any of ourother critters that I can, so please
do usually do yes, So weusually do it. Heck yeah, annual
visit. So this is this isgreat and I'm really I just have to
say about the whole team every timeI've gone, I know the same for
you, Ellen, and you aretop notch, first Class's that's the reason
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San Diego Zoo is known around theglobe as being the leader. You guys
are just tremendous in every way there, So what an honor to be part
of that team. It's the mostbeautiful zoo I've ever been ever. Yes,
and it keeps getting bigger and better. It is, and thank you
for that. I'll share the compliment. We really appreciate it getting that kind
of reinforcement. Yeah, thanks Carrie, have a great day. Yeah,
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thank you, you too,