In an effort to fill time, I signed up to volunteer at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Help the keepers, the invite said, by observing and documenting animal behavior. I thought it sounded interesting and if nothing else would be a good way to kill a Saturday.
Yep.
The idea here is that random people will watch the animals to see where they are in their exhibit, what they're doing, and how/if they interact with guests, toys, whatever. The keepers can't do this themselves because the animals know them and come out to say hi when they come around, so the results are skewed. Why they need to know this information, I'm not actually sure. They didn't cover that.
It was decided that each person would watch an animal for 2 hours, then we'd take a lunch break, then watch a different animal for the next 2 hours. For the morning I just requested something cute, and was assigned the coati. I didn't even know what the coati was. I thought it might be some kind of little antelope type thing. Turns out it's a relative of the ringtail and the raccoon and has the distinction of being called the museum's "invisible animal" because NO ONE EVER SEES IT. Fantastic- I get to spend 2 hours standing in the heat watching for an animal that may or may not exist. Had I been able to capture a photo, it might've looked something like this.
I probably caught 4 glimpses of the elusive coati during my stint at the enclosure. When I did see her, she was on her way from one bush she could hide under to another. I don't think I gained any groundbreaking information for the keepers, but I did sneak off to watch the otter and also saw a lot of random bugs. Here is a dragonfly kind of bug that was hanging out near the coati moat.
After lunch I moved on to the bobcat. I was excited about observing the bobcats because they have an underground viewing area with air conditioning and drinking fountains. Bliss, basically. There were 2 bobcats and like most cats, they spent almost the entire time sleeping. If they weren't sleeping, they were lying around with their heads up, watching stuff. They did not do anything interesting. I didn't even take a picture of them for some reason. I did take pictures of the most adorable ocelot ever. Well, probably all ocelots are cute, but look at this one, aww, see how cute and soft and nice it looks? Probably it would eat your face off if it got the chance.
The ocelot was sleeping in this little den that has glass on one side so that visitors can disturb its sleep. The upside of that is being able to see it really close up.
The bobcats and ocelot are in an area of the museum called cat canyon. There are 4 grottos in Cat Canyon and the other ones hold a neurotic raccoon (he chews his tail, it's really cute and sad) and a grey fox. Those aren't cats so I'm not sure why they're in Cat Canyon, but there they were. So while my bobcats were sleeping I mostly watched Crazy Raccoon and the fox. I didn't get a picture of the raccoon but here is the fox. He spent the whole time sleeping and though I never actually saw him move, every so often his head would be pointing the other direction.
So I finished up with documenting how the bobcats take naps and don't care if people whistle at them or anything else, and that wrapped up my day as an animal behaviorist. I don't think behaviorist is a word but Blogger isn't telling me that it's spelled wrong, so there you go.
Yep.
The idea here is that random people will watch the animals to see where they are in their exhibit, what they're doing, and how/if they interact with guests, toys, whatever. The keepers can't do this themselves because the animals know them and come out to say hi when they come around, so the results are skewed. Why they need to know this information, I'm not actually sure. They didn't cover that.
It was decided that each person would watch an animal for 2 hours, then we'd take a lunch break, then watch a different animal for the next 2 hours. For the morning I just requested something cute, and was assigned the coati. I didn't even know what the coati was. I thought it might be some kind of little antelope type thing. Turns out it's a relative of the ringtail and the raccoon and has the distinction of being called the museum's "invisible animal" because NO ONE EVER SEES IT. Fantastic- I get to spend 2 hours standing in the heat watching for an animal that may or may not exist. Had I been able to capture a photo, it might've looked something like this.
I probably caught 4 glimpses of the elusive coati during my stint at the enclosure. When I did see her, she was on her way from one bush she could hide under to another. I don't think I gained any groundbreaking information for the keepers, but I did sneak off to watch the otter and also saw a lot of random bugs. Here is a dragonfly kind of bug that was hanging out near the coati moat.
After lunch I moved on to the bobcat. I was excited about observing the bobcats because they have an underground viewing area with air conditioning and drinking fountains. Bliss, basically. There were 2 bobcats and like most cats, they spent almost the entire time sleeping. If they weren't sleeping, they were lying around with their heads up, watching stuff. They did not do anything interesting. I didn't even take a picture of them for some reason. I did take pictures of the most adorable ocelot ever. Well, probably all ocelots are cute, but look at this one, aww, see how cute and soft and nice it looks? Probably it would eat your face off if it got the chance.
The ocelot was sleeping in this little den that has glass on one side so that visitors can disturb its sleep. The upside of that is being able to see it really close up.
The bobcats and ocelot are in an area of the museum called cat canyon. There are 4 grottos in Cat Canyon and the other ones hold a neurotic raccoon (he chews his tail, it's really cute and sad) and a grey fox. Those aren't cats so I'm not sure why they're in Cat Canyon, but there they were. So while my bobcats were sleeping I mostly watched Crazy Raccoon and the fox. I didn't get a picture of the raccoon but here is the fox. He spent the whole time sleeping and though I never actually saw him move, every so often his head would be pointing the other direction.
So I finished up with documenting how the bobcats take naps and don't care if people whistle at them or anything else, and that wrapped up my day as an animal behaviorist. I don't think behaviorist is a word but Blogger isn't telling me that it's spelled wrong, so there you go.
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