Animal Magnetism
December 18, 2007 - Van Jensen
Zoo Atlanta is quiet, not yet open for visitors. The flamingos huddle together, heads drooped. Only a bright golden conure is alert, shrieking from its aviary.
Through this stillness, a steady line of people toting backpacks walk through the tropical plants and sleepy animals, past a banana spider and its dew-flecked web.
The group gathers inside the zoo's auditorium, ready to study carnivores, the day's lesson in Zoo Biology for these Georgia State University students. Zoo staff members deliver lectures and then take the class to see the animals, a hands-on experience.
Senior biology majors Tommy Kennedy and Kim Connor were surprised to have the chance to take a class at Zoo Atlanta. It's an opportunity they're glad they took.
"We were just talking about how this is our favorite class ever," Connor said.
The class — one of four offered in partnership with the zoo — is just one aspect of a relationship between the university and Zoo Atlanta, a relationship that both sides say benefits them greatly.
Sharing a habitat
Dwight Lawson, senior vice president of collections, education and conservation at Zoo Atlanta, came to the zoo seven years ago. The zoo's president at the time, Terry Maple, wanted to create a closer partnership with Atlanta academic institutions and helped Lawson gain an adjunct professor position at Georgia State.
In the following years, officials at Zoo Atlanta decided to expand beyond being an attraction and create a research environment at the zoo. At the same time, researchers and students at Georgia State leapt at the chance to study the zoo's abundance of animals. The result has been a mutually beneficial partnership that continues to grow.
"It's been very rewarding," Lawson said. "There are a lot of zoos that don’t do as much research. The fact that we do is good. But at the zoo you don't have the critical mass of researchers. Georgia State fills that gap."
One of the many studies currently going on at Zoo Atlanta features an artificial tree with video touch screens in the orangutan enclosure that measures the animals' cognitive abilities. The study is being done by the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a research consortium that Georgia State currently leads.
"We have a great relationship with the zoo. We both get a lot out of it," said Elliott Albers, a Georgia State biology professor and CBN director.
The biology department also hosts the Brain Expo at Zoo Atlanta every spring. Over two days, biology faculty set up booths, educating visitors on neuroscience and zoo animals.
And the partnership continues to grow, Lawson said.
"There's a bunch of opportunities yet to be explored," he said. "New things pop up all the time with research. There's so much more to modern zoos than what people think. There's such a commitment to learning."
Adapting to a field
One of the most important benefits of the partnership is to Georgia State students, who have a rare opportunity not just to study at the zoo, but to work there. Zoo Atlanta's internship program now routinely takes on Georgia State students, and that opportunity can turn into a career.
Maryanne Heard (B.A. '06) started college as a philosophy major but decided her future was in zoology after taking Zoo Biology. She then interned at the zoo, working with pandas. That fall was when panda Mei Lan was famously born.
Heard has jumped further into panda research. She’s now studying pandas in China, an experience she calls "absolutely amazing."
"I can honestly say I never expected to work with pandas or in China, but I can't find the words for how excited I am for the opportunity," she said.
Three students currently hold internships at the zoo. One, junior biology major Kristin Nicole Summerlin, works with carnivores: lions, tigers, otters and meerkats. It's mostly grunt work —cleaning cages and feeding animals — but it fits her interests. She wants to work in veterinary medicine, but says zoology is a possibility and that she is enjoying exposure to the field.
"I am learning a lot about a variety of animals," she said.
Mandy Musil (B.S. '06) was in that same position not long ago. While a student at Georgia State, Musil took Zoo Biology and decided she no longer wanted to be a veterinarian. She landed a pair of zoo internships: one working with birds and small animals and another with the zoo's youth education programs.
The work helped her realize that she'd found a home at the zoo, so when a position came open, she jumped at it. Now she works in a building filled with blue-tongued skinks, Honduran milk snakes and other animals.
"It's been awesome," Musil said.
She's training animals such as a springhare that's reluctant to wear a harness and a wary kinkajou: "She's very particular who she chooses to be in her circle of trust," she explained.
Musil even lectures to other students, reminding her of how her journey to the zoo began.
"Georgia State got my foot in the door," she said. "I don't know how else I would've done it."