Zoo Internquest is a seven-week career exploration program for San Diego County high school juniors and seniors. Students have the unique opportunity to meet professionals working for the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and Institute for Conservation Research, learn about their jobs, and then blog about their experience online. Follow their adventures here on the Zoo’s website!
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes to ensure that every animal at the Zoo is having their physical and psychological needs met? Well this week, my fellow interns and I had the incredible opportunity to meet with Jessica Sheftel, who is an Animal Welfare Specialist at the San Diego Zoo. Ms. Sheftel has been working with the San Diego Zoo as an Specialist for four years and focuses on animals’ collective physical, mental, and emotional states and ensures that the animal is comfortable and engaged within its enclosure. Ms. Sheftel promotes an animals’ natural behaviors by providing animals at the Zoo with challenges or puzzles to receive meals or rewards. These challenges often encourage an animal’s natural instincts and allows them to use their natural adaptations that they would use in the wild.
Ms. Sheftel received a bachelor's degree in anthropology and minored in behavioral studies at Beloit College in Wisconsin, and has even worked with bonobos at the Atlanta Zoo before beginning to work with the San Diego Zoo! Ms. Sheftel enjoys the fact that each animal that she works with at the Zoo is unique, and provides a challenge when figuring out the best way to keep that animal both physically and mentally engaged in its enclosure. Working alongside keepers and other enrichment specialists, Ms. Sheftel works hard to provide the public with all the facts and emphasize that the San Diego Zoo prioritizes the health and comfort of all the animals.
When providing animals with different forms of enrichment, Ms. Sheftel takes all of the animal’s senses into account, including touch, taste, sound, and vision. Anything from auditory calls to materials to make a nest are provided to an animal to help encourage it to act naturally in its enclosure and to challenge the animal to use its senses to help find its food, or use other forms of enrichment. Instead of simply trying to entertain an animal, Ms. Sheftel always asks herself, “What behavior do I want to promote today?” so an animal is engaged in its enclosure and always eliciting natural behaviors. These forms of enrichment help an animal to feel more comfortable and at home in its enclosure which, in turn, also is beneficial to its health and mental state.
My fellow interns and I got to see animal welfare and enrichment in action with the help of one of the Zoo’s long time residents, Bola the three-banded armadillo. Bola is about 20 years old and is an animal ambassador at the San Diego Zoo. As an animal ambassador, Bola travels to different classrooms and showcases to represent her species and promote conservation. After being given multiple pieces of rectangular cardboard, my fellow interns and I assembled a makeshift enclosure for Bola to move around in. At different intervals, either myself or another intern would move their piece of cardboard and alter the shape of the makeshift enclosure. In changing the shape of the enclosure, we were presenting Bola with a new challenge of navigating this new area that we created. Presenting an animal with new challenges in its enclosure helps to keep that animal engaged and promotes the use of the animal’s senses to help it solve problems and behave in a way that it normally would in the wild.
By providing different animals with new challenges daily and encouraging the use of an animal’s natural adaptations, Ms. Sheftel is prioritizing the mental health and engagement of all of the animals in the Zoo’s collection. Please continue to read the blogs that my fellow interns and I post each week and continue alongside us on this amazing and unforgettable journey!
Cole, Real World Team
Week Four, Winter Session 2019
