Abi Clarke: Zookeeper in Training - Week 2: Training Season

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

It's Week 2 and it's time to turn things up a notch.First stop: Sloth training with Keeper Sophie. Move over Dua Lipa, Rico's training season is just getting started. And he's doing it at his own pace.Then, Keeper Zoe introduces us to a huge bird that could probably win a fight against a dinosaur, provided the dinosaur didn't distract it with grapes. And finally, Adam is meeting us in a car park to show us how some converted caravans are saving species globally.See some of Abi’s adventures at Chester Zoo on Instagram and TikTok.Find out more about the incredible work at Chester Zoo, here.New episodes every week.Music courtesy of BMG Production Music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is your official warning that this podcast may contain some very mild swearing. Don't worry, I won't be calling an elephant a... But if you're expecting a super child-friendly podcast, this may not be the show for you. Proceed with caution. Rico! I'm Abby Clark. I'm a standard comedian, and I'm on a mission to become the ultimate zookeeper. Look, I am all out of fun facts that haven't been heard before to save me from small talk. So I have secured myself a traineeship at Chester Zoo, and I'm full of animal facts

because of it. I've got six weeks to prove myself as the ultimate zookeeper. And these guys know their stuff. They're committed to preventing wildlife extinction and raising awareness around key conservation and environmental challenges across the UK and worldwide, so it's really important that I don't mess this up. They're basically saving the world. One skink at a time. What's the skink? Good question, you'll find out. I'm taking you along with me as I learn the ropes

and try to survive my first few weeks on the job. We're on week two, and I haven't been fired yet. Last week, I did otters, giraffes, flamingos. This week, I come face to face with a sloth, feed grapes to a cassowary, and we've got conservation pods in the car park. Training sloths is unlike any other animal. You can ask for a behaviour

and get the response in five minutes. She would go out and find multiple males in a breeding season, whilst the original male stays with the eggs and rears the chicks. And it was the nuns that realised that the species was actually declining in the wild. Welcome to Abby Clark, Zookeeper in training. We are starting our day to day with Sophie, one of the keepers here at Chester Zoo. So target training is basically the act of offering a target. So I've got this lovely ball on a stick to an animal.

And you're basically asking them to go to that. target. She's showing me something called target training, which is a really clever way of allowing the animals to voluntarily take part in their own care using positive reinforcement. And it's adorable. It's a bit like rewarding yourself with a sweet tree after cleaning your room, or in my case, a coffee and a treat after doing literally anything. And leading the way is Rico, one of the zoo's two-toed sloth. So we are currently inside the sloth habitat. though the habitat extends past the glass technically up in the air there's ropes that go all the way to the wall there's currently a sloth sat is that a sit is that he's asleep yeah she's she's fast asleep

no it's okay she's fast asleep but yeah she's sort of killed up in a ball yeah i'd say sat yeah sat ball on a rope above where kind of visitors would be stood and then we have one in the tree right by us in a reclined hammock. I mean, it looks divine. That is his favorite resting position. I'd love to be him right now. And we're with Keeper, Sophie, and we're going to attempt some target training. We're going to try our very best, yeah. We also, we've had a health and safety briefing. We have, yeah. We've been through the do's and don't when you're working in with slots. Because apparently, sloths, I don't know this, can be dangerous. They, yeah, they definitely can be dangerous. So they're obviously sort of not.

nicknamed as being friendly slow and you know you wouldn't really think they can do much harm but they are incredibly strong and they've got some huge teeth so they can give a very nasty bite and they're generally quite gentle-natured but if they are sort of pushed prodded annoyed by people other animals they can get quite aggressive when they want to be so yeah we do have to be careful working in with these guys and make sure we're sort of reading their behavior and not doing anything to upset them so this this training's all hopefully if he wants to join in it's all voluntary if he doesn't want to that's his choice yeah we don't force them into doing anything and talking of nasty bites we're also just steps away from piranus there's a little what would

you call that a water a pond a big tank just a tank just below the trees with the sloths full full of piranus glittery glastonbury looking piranhas they look fabulous but i'm i'm careful with our feet. These are the hazards of being a zookeeper. So floss, there are different species out there, but in general they're obviously known for being very slow. They have a really slow metabolism and in the wild they be eating lots of leaves and foliage, the odd bit of fruit, things like that. So foods that don't really have a huge amount of energy in them, So because they eat sort of these really low energy level foods, they kind of have this slow metabolism and this really slow way of life.

Don't get me wrong, they can get pretty speedy when they want to. I mean, it's no one near as fast as some animals, but for them it's pretty quick. You know, occasionally we'll see Tina and Rico sort of zooming around on the ropes. And when he is a lot more awake, his training can be quite a bit quicker than that. So the sloth gift shop, a reliable source, says the average speed for a sloth is around 0.15 to 0.5 miles per hour. In a dead sprint, a sloth can reach a top speed of 1.5 miles per hour. An impossible speed to move at.

But in general, yeah, they are just slower animals due to the sort of the nature of where they live and the kind of foods that they eat. And what does sloths do? Is it not a lot? But as in like, no animal eats them, really? There are predators for them out there. So most of the time they're just, they're up in the trees, just staying still, trying to sort of blend in, avoid trouble, you know, potentially find a mate. But they are just sort of living up in the trees, having a chill time.

They're quite laid back. They'll obviously move around to find food and to find a mate potentially. They're really important in the evening. ecosystem for things like seed dispersal and because of all the fruits and, you know, foliage that they eat, that then obviously the seeds and things come out in their feces. So they're important for things like that. But this is, this is a sloth. This is what they do. So what do target practice for? What is target practice? So target training is basically the act of offering a target. So I've got this lovely ball on a stick to an animal. And you're basically asking them to

go to that target. So for our sloths, well, Rico is the one we're going to be training today, our male. We present him with the stick, we say target, and he has been trained to tap his nose on the stick, well, the ball on the end of the stick. And if he does that, he gets a reward for it. And we can basically use this to get him, obviously, to come down close to us, so we can give him a health check. And we've used target training for some really important healthcare behaviours recently. Rico unfortunately has had dental issues. He's got a bit of a history of having cracked teeth or he's had an abscess in the past as well. And given the fact that they can be potentially way high up in the air, it can be quite

hard to monitor these sorts of things with a sloth. So we've used the target training to get him coming down to us regularly. And most recently and most importantly, we've actually managed to use the target training to get him to have a voluntary x-ray with the vets and a really, you know, risk. free way of monitoring his teeth. But yeah, he's a really good boy. He does a lot of training. Hopefully we'll get to show you today.

So, yeah, he absolutely loves cooked carrot, cooked parsnip, cooked sweet potato. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so I've got lots of little pieces here for him for if he does decide to come down and do some training. Okay, and I have been warned that Sophie's going to do a funny voice. And no one's allowed to laugh. This is going to be really embarrassing. So the theory is that sloths hear better at low frequencies. So we call our recall for him, which is the signal that we give him to tell him we want him to come down and start training.

We call his name but in a low, deep voice. So it's the most embarrassing part of being a slothkeeper, is doing this funny little call. So we'll try, we'll see how he goes. Sometimes he takes a few minutes to wake up and realize what's happening. Okay. You go ahead. Here we go. Recall.

We'll get him. slight head twitch. Rico's lifting his head slightly. Training sloths is unlike any other animal because they are so slow to respond to things. And you can ask for a behaviour now and you get the response in five minutes, which is quite like other animals that are quite quick to respond. So we do just have to have patience. I mean, I'm the same on WhatsApp.

It takes me a while to get back to you. Four to five business days. Yeah, that's, that's Rico for you. So we'll give him a minute. We'll see if he's interested. I'll do the embarrassing shout again. I loved it. It sounded like a call to church.

While Rico was taking his sweet time to climb down from that branch, I thought I might as well nip over to see Zoe, the team manager for penguins and parrots, aka the coolest job title ever. She introduced me to a very unusual bird that can only be described as a cross between an emu and an actual dinosaur. Honestly, expecting to see this guy in the next Jurassic Park, Come on lady you coming over okay so I'm with Zoe you're in charge of parrots and penguins

yes and lots of other species as well what are you seeing right now so she's just hiding in the bushes at the moment but this is our beautiful southern cassowary I'm just going to try and call her over with some grapes these are our favorite favorite thing to eat she's ignoring us now come on lady I see you she's going to sneak in through the bushes oh I see at the back and you can see she's absolutely enormous but she'll sneak through those trees like she's not there. She can melt away really easily. They've got a bit of a reputation, Southern Cassowaries,

for being quite an aggressive bird. And that is true. If you sneak up on a male with his chicks, he's going to be quite defensive. And they have an amazing claw on the inside toe. And they use that as a defensive weapon, so they'll kick out with that. But they would much rather be really secretive.

So their main defence is literally just to melt away into the forest and be almost silent as they go. That's surprising because they have a bright blue neck. Yes, yeah, they are. Yeah, it's really surprising. If you see her, if she's hiding behind here, you won't notice there at all. Wow.

And so you said the dads with the chicks? Are they a stay-at-home dad species? They absolutely are. Yeah, they're actually really unusual in the bird world. So they're part of the ratite family. So they're related to things like ostrich and rear and emu and things like that. And in this group of birds, it's the males that look after the eggs and the chicks.

and the females really pay no part at all. So she's actually what we call polyandras as well. So she would go out and find multiple males in a breeding season and she would mate with him lay some eggs and then once she's finished that clutch, she will then wander off and find another male to mate and lay some eggs with whilst the original male stays with the eggs and raise the chicks.

I'd consider having kids if that was the deal. I want to be a casseroom. It sounds like a good trade-off, I reckon. Yeah. And what's the massive horn on her head there? So this is called a cask and its exact purpose is still not fully understood. There's a lot of research going on with these birds currently. It's thought that it probably helps with some heat exchange.

It's got a very big blood supply. It's like honeycomb on the inside of it. They used to think that it was there to protect them when they were running through the forest. So they put their heads down and it would help protect them from branches and stuff. But actually it's very soft. So it probably doesn't serve that purpose at all. but it's got lots of blood supply to it so they can probably exchange some heat, but also it's probably to do with resonating sound as well.

I've been doing a lot of research on these birds, and one of the parts of my research has been how they communicate with one another, and we now understand that they can communicate an infrasound. So this is sounds that are below our hearing range. And this is really useful when you're living in dense forests, because they need to communicate over large distances, especially when you're a solitary species that only comes together to breed. So communicating with one another is really, really important.

And how they do that has really not been looked into at all. So now that we understand that they can produce these very low frequencies, the cask is probably helping with resonating that through the forest. And you said you have to keep them separate other than breeding time. Why's that? Yeah. Well, they can be very aggressive. They're very territorial outside of the breeding season.

So they would much rather be sort of in their own patch, eating all their own food during that time. And then when it comes into the breeding season, that's when they'll slowly start to come together. And again, my research is about how they do that and how their body language communicates that it's okay to approach. Because if they do get that wrong, then obviously there can be quite serious consequences.

So they need to be able to read each other's body language to know that it is actually safe to approach and that particularly the females are ready for breeding because they're a lot bigger than the males. And why are grapes so popular for her? It's a bit of a treat really. They're quite high in sugar, so we don't give them too many of them, but it's like us having a bit of ice cream or something. So yeah, she really enjoys them. What's her regular diet? We give her a mix of things. Here in the zoo, we do try and make sure that

we give them as close a diet as they would be eating out there in the wild. And actually, surprisingly, steamed veg is the closest that she would be getting out there. So that's what most of her diet consists of. But she also has a little bit of fruit in there as well, so apples and pears. And with our females, seasonally, they will eat quite a lot of protein. So at the moment, she's getting some hard-boiled eggs as we come into the breeding season. She gets mice. She quite likes those. And if she can find any bugs or insects and things, she'll be mooching around for those as well.

So the boys, not so much. The girls enjoy that bit of protein before they start laying eggs. And is she feather? Because, like, to describe this bird, it looks like fur. Like, is she furry or are they feathers? No, they are feathers, but they're very unusual feathers. they actually have one sort of root, if you like, to the feather, which then splits off into two feathers that are basically like this.

So they have one shaft with little tiny sort of feathery bits off. Yeah, exactly. And so it does give them that sort of hair-like appearance. Because obviously, this is a ground-dwelling bird. There's no way she's getting up in the air. No, she looks heavy. No offence to her, but she wouldn't want to have to pick her up. She's about 90 kilos, so yeah, you probably wouldn't want to.

But she doesn't need those lovely long flight feathers that you see in other birds. and she doesn't need a long tail or anything like that to help her steer when she's flying. So all of her feathers are there to keep her protected and warm as well. So that's the main purpose. You can just about see. They do still have residual wings,

but can you see there's like those quills that are coming down? That is what is left of her flight feathers. When they get a bit upset, they can drop them down a little bit because they have, like I said, little tiny wings. They can drop them down and they can rub those quills against things to make a bit of a threatening noise as well.

But yes, as she's sort of walking around, you can barely see them at all. apart from those little quills. Yeah, she kind of just looks like a furry poof on legs. Like, all of those dogs that you can't tell which end is which. And then there's just a magnificent blue neck. And what is the little red cockerel-like thing? Yeah, wattles, they're called exactly the same as with a cockaw.

So again, these are used for displaying and communicating to one another. And are they related to dinosaurs? I mean, it looks like a dinosaur. I mean, yes, loosely speaking, I mean, dinosaurs did sort of turn in. into birds. These particular birds, Rathites are one of the most ancient forms of birds, and they're out on a limb on their own as well. So they have many of the features that Theropod dinosaurs used to have, so the meat-eating dinosaurs that turned into birds. Similar things like with the keel, which is the bone that attaches the breast muscles to, is very similar to them.

And the feet are extremely Theropod dinosaur-like. The feet and the hedge piece are very dinosaur. And are these endangered in the wild? It's a bit difficult really. The data that we have on them is very sparse and the status that we have on them is only as good as the data we have. It's thought that they're quite common in certain areas. So in Queensland, Australia, they think that they are a lot more common over there than they are in Papua, which they're also found. But they have huge numbers of threats which makes them a vulnerable species. Things like deforestation is the biggest one for them. They rely entirely on the forest for their food.

and they're what we call a keystone species as well. So they can eat many of the fruits of the forest that other species can't because of their very unusual digestive system. They can eat things that are very poisonous to other things. So they're really important for seed dispersal. And they're called a keystone species. So it means that if we lose the cassowary from the wild, then we're actually going to lose huge numbers of species of plants

and therefore other animals as a result. So keeping them safe is really important. But obviously as well as deforestation, they get problems from cyclones, from car accidents, dog attacks. They're also hunted for meat and for their feathers as well. So there's a lot of things that are causing a lot of pressure on them at the moment, which is why it's really important that we have them in zoos here in breeding programs like we have with ours. So do they kind of hang about in populated areas then? They're not very scared of humans or anything.

They can do, yeah. And they do get themselves in trouble for doing that, especially when they go onto the beaches and start stealing people's picnics and stuff. Oh my God, I thought seeing girls were bad. And there's a few interesting videos of people who get confronted by these birds. But really, they prefer to stay in the forest where it's quiet. But as I'm sure you're aware, there are less and less places that are not populated by people. So they do clash with people quite regularly, which can cause them problems because they're a bit scary to come across. Oh, that would be, yeah, I would be terrified if that approached me someday then on the beach.

This is the first time I've seen one in person. If I didn't know that existed, that would, I'd be like, oh, take you by surprise. Something's gone wrong. Am I dead? What's happening? Can I give a grape for a guy? Yeah, yeah.

You need a really good arm in Zookie thing to throw food. She's going there. She's going to go into the bush. She's not going to let a good grape go to waste. Yeah, I'm actually throwing in the bush on purpose, and this is in Richmond. Yep. It's good enrichment for her. She's having a good look around.

So what does all your research involve? What are you doing? Is it all computer work? Are you doing anything in the field? Nothing in the field at the moment. But for these birds, I was studying their behaviour, their vocalisations, and looking at their hormonal changes throughout the year. So the behaviour study was done using CCTV footage.

I looked at 70,000 hours of footage throughout the year. If it was cassowary crimes, yeah, it would be great at it. And then about 15,000 hours of audio recordings and then we've been collecting fecal samples, so samples of their poo a couple of times a week. And we analyse the hormones of that to see whether the behaviour and the vocalisation changes are affected by hormone or changes. And you said you wanted to go out to the wild. Where would that be? What would you do? Well, I mean, we would, ideally would be Papua, but it's not as safe as it would be to study them in Australia. But it would be really interesting to see whether we could collect these samples in

the wild, be able to set up cameras so we could watch interactions between the birds. so timing it during the breeding season and see if we can see these comparisons to how the birds react in in zoos and how they react in the wild and whether we can make any changes to help them. If you want to see some of the incredible animals I'm working with in this series

and seriously you need to see just how much this casseroory looks like a dinosaur, head over to at trainee zookeeper on Instagram and TikTok. You can see some of my favorite interactions from the day. I'm really hoping that Rico is ready to start his target training now because I've got things

to do. I'm heading back over to Keepa Sophie to find out how on earth she's managed to train a sloth to actually agree to a mouth x-ray. Honestly this sloth is more chill than most of us at the dentist. Okay, I'm going to do my best Attenborough. The sloth

puts his two claws around the branch and begins to lift himself ready to make his job. journey down to the training branch. The sloth hangs upside down, facing directly the keeper. He snissed the branch. Here he makes contact with the branch.

Where I go. That's pretty good. Oh my goodness. How do you not melt when he looks into your eyes like that? I know. He's a proper teddy bear. So currently he has one leg left to put on the branch before he can get a treat.

a treat. He's looking expectedly at Sophie, but she's not breaking. You know the rules. There's a real standoff happening right now. So at this point, if he's going to refuse to put the last foot on, we'll give him a minute and then as a separate behaviour, we can ask for something different. So I'm not going to reward him for the recall because at the moment he hasn't put that fourth limb on the branch. So technically he hasn't done what I've asked, which is fine, you know. I'm not going to punish him, but he's not going to get the reward because he's not quite done the full behaviour. I do feel mean because he is on the branch,

but it's just that foot. So what I'll do instead is I'll ask for a target if he does that and he does that well, then he'll get his reward. Target. Oh, he's going towards the target. That is a nose boop. Good.

He's got a bit of cook carrot for that. Cook carrot for nose boop. Some days he's really quick to behave, to, you know, respond to the queue and other days, not so much. Target? Good. I'll see if I can get him down onto the webbing. Not sure how well it will go. Target.

So Rico's currently on a branch, but we're going to try and get him down to some kind of seatbelt material. It kind of looks like when the hipsters set up a slack line in your local park. This is the trickiest bit for him because he has to figure out how to get down onto this webbing. Yeah, it's much thinner to grip onto, isn't it? Yeah, and it's not as, you know, rigid as the branches. and it is lower down for him, which obviously they do come down to the ground, you know, to go to the toilet, but pretty much otherwise they don't choose to be low down. I hear they only come down to poo once a week.

On average, I'd say so. I think Rico's a little bit of a more frequent pooer. So at this point, obviously, if we were doing an x-ray, we could have all the machines set up. And we'd just keep him here, basically, doing multiple targets, keeping him happy. And we've managed to successfully x-ray here. him, I think three, if not maybe four times now. Target. And he's hung up outside down, like most of the time. How do they then walk upright on the ground? So they kind of, it's quite ungraceful. I mean, they don't really walk around too much on the ground. Target. Good. But if they are on the floor,

they're kind of on their belly. They look a bit like a flat pancake. They kind of lift their head up, but yeah, they don't really sort of move around on the floor. They'll come down a branch. Right. Target. Good. And what's are sloths like main predator? Because obviously they can't run away in any shape or form. Oh, sorry, I just threw sweet corn in your face. So they're from areas. I mean, you get all kinds of, you know, big cats and things like that.

They're actually good. Their biggest risk, their sort of biggest threat at the moment is actually the pet trade. Rather than predation, unfortunately. They've, you know, become very popular with the public. and people now think that sloths would make a great pet. And unfortunately, it's created this really terrible pet trade situation where quite often young baby sloths are being taken from their mothers to become pets. Target.

Good. And how are Chester helping with the conservation of sloths? So we support many different organisations with fundraising who are working out in the field to raise awareness about the pet trade and teach locals about, you know, respecting sloths and things like that. And obviously, we're raising awareness just about the issues that they face. Here, another big one is deforestation. Deforestation is obviously a huge problem for these guys, given that they live in the trees.

So educating the public about how they can be more sustainable with the products that they buy and the way that they live is all really important. target, good. And teaching people, again, about things like the pet trade and how it's not cool to have a pet sloth. They don't make good pets at all. They have really particular requirements that aren't able to be fulfilled in a house. We have obviously educational talks about the sloths. We also include them in some of our experiences that we do. So our Latin America experience, we do bring guests to see the sloths and hopefully, you know, sometimes they get to see some of this training. And again, we can educate them about this species and their needs

and their threats in the wild and ways that they can support charities as well. So this is our signal to tell him that training's done now. And then we just sort of take a step back so that he knows that he's not going to get any more treats from us. It usually takes him a minute or two to actually realize that, you know, it's over. So the signal to end then was Sophie literally just waved in his face. Yeah, so we just, we waved nice and close to his face. They've not got the best vision. So just seeing that sort of like flashing of colour in front of his face is a really obvious cue for him that that's it, we're done. And hopefully now he'll realize that it has ended and he's not going to, you know, keep trying to follow me and see if I'm asking him to do things.

So that's target training over and out. But what is the benefit of target training other than a tasty treat. But Charlotte can tell us more. My name is Charlotte and I'm the veterinary resident here at Chestersea. So with Rico, we had a problem where he was getting facial swellings. We ended up doing a CT scan and found that these were actually abscesses associated with a tooth infection. So we were very lucky and able to get help with human dentists from the University of Newcastle to help us do a slightly unusual procedure to try and save Rico's teeth. Usually, when you go to human dentists and say, do you think you could help us with this sloth case? Their first instinct is we've never treated a sloth before, but we're very lucky here with everyone that we work with.

Most of the time, we get a lot of enthusiasm to trying to help us with cases, and it's through those collaborations that we can really do some quite pioneering work here at the zoo. So with sloths, their dentition is quite unusual. They have very long, sharp, caninaform teeth, which are a modified molar tooth involved in shoe. and eating. And that's why we were trying to preserve the teeth in RICO. Now, because they're long and sharp, we can't do a kind of standard root canal procedure. And so instead, what we were able to do is put fillings at the base of the tooth or at the root of the tooth so that we could manage the infection while making sure that we didn't have to actually extract the tooth in both cases. We unfortunately weren't able to save both teeth, but the filling that is in place continues

to do really well. And the wonderful thing about Rico is being the fabulous sloth that he is, we're able to do the training with him. So we're able to monitor that tooth using conscious x-rays. So we know that it's in place and he's continuing to eat and drink without any issue. So with sloss, they're not the best anaesthetic candidates. We always try to do as few anesthetics without animals here as we can. But if we need to do an anesthetic for the sake of their health, we will. We will try and avoid doing multiple anesthetics. We're possible and particularly with sloths because their low metabolism means that everything is slow and they're a little bit harder to monitor under anaesthesia. But thankfully, we've never

had any problems with RICO. We just try and avoid doing extra anaesthetics were possible. We now know RICO has had problems with his teeth, so we'll continue to monitor him really closely. We're very lucky here that the keepers have such a close relationship with him, that they can keep close tabs and tell us if there's any problems with his eating or if any swellings recur, but we'll be keeping close tabs on him and any excuse that we can go down there and check with him we will take. When you think about conservation and saving species globally, you're probably conjuring up images of every sci-fi film you've ever watched. Not a little car park in Chester,

but that's exactly what's happening right here in Chester Zoo in a special off-show area that's actually stopping wildlife from going extinct. And to show me how it's done, Keeper Adam gave us a tour of these conservation pods, which, spoiler alert, basically just converted caravans. But hey, it saves the species, and I'm here for it. Adam, can you please introduce yourself on what you do at Chester's Z? I am one of the assistant team managers on the Extern Department, and I specialise mostly in amphibians, but I also work with reptiles as well.

And I spend a lot of the time working at this sort of off-show facility here called the A-pods. which is sort of a series of modified shipping containers which we use to create sort of temperature controlled environments some are full of inquirium, some are full of poison dark frogs, some are full of mountain chicken frogs, some are full of mountain chicken frogs, some have snails in, some have lizards in and they're kind of these little standalone units which we use to sort of breed critically endangered species.

These kind of single storage containers that are away from the public, this is where the main conservation of animals going back into the wild happens. Yeah, in terms of reintroductions for sure. also there's different types of direct conservation so sometimes it's doing a reintroduction but sometimes it might just be learning something really important about the way an animal behaves or reproduces and that can help us inform conservation in the wild so we do like behavioral studies on things which might help us understand what they need in the wild and we can do that with a lot of our animals they're small you know so we can keep large numbers of them in in these containers

so you know in the in the snail pod there's hundreds of thousands of snails which is absolutely mental how much you can actually achieve in one small room and we've done lots of different behaviour studies on them to see how they change when they're released and things like that so where do you want to take us first so i was thinking we'll go through this one here so the pods all sort of change in terms of age so this one was from 2008 and as we've developed and got new pods they kind of get shinier as we go this one is insane it was brought over here from Australia so It was Tarongazu in Australia first started using these containers to conserve amphibians. And the reason is because they're modular, you can move them around,

and you could potentially have them dropped into a field site, or you can use them in a zoo, you can change them. And at the time, they wanted this sort of quarantine to be like so, sort of hardcore on the quarantine. They have this shower in the entrance. Currently still in a disused shower. Yeah, so we don't use it. But, I mean, the concept back in the day was that people would come in, have a shower before they went into work with the frogs.

Now we kind of use foot dips, overalls and stuff like that. We've been gradually smashing it to pieces and removing it. They are kind of just shabby caravans in a back car park, but I feel like we go in and it's going to be a different world. They get shinier. They get shinier. This one's shiny, I reckon. So this one is Apod 2.

Ooh. So this is, this pod is full of tree frogs. Some little Madagascan tree frogs down here, which are quite pretty actually. Oh, they're quite small. So that's the species which we mix in our exhibit. So we like the frogs that you see on show in the zoo. We might breed them in here before we put them out on show. Oh, there's tiny little orange ones here. Yeah, that's one of our favour. So that is the Golden Mantella. So that is a critically endangered frog from

Madagascar. That's an adult. So actually, that's a female. She's full of eggs as well. You can see your eggs for her side. Yeah, and they're really cool. And we've done loads of studies with these. So we've looked at how they change in zoos and we do a lot of field work with them as well. So we've done lots of population studies on them. We do those sort of conservation-based research projects with the frogs here. So one of the projects found that the frogs in zoos sound a little bit different to the frogs that are in the wild. So that's sort of an ongoing project and we've been trying to kind of train frogs to call and sound like the wild frogs. So to us it sounds a saying. How do you do that?

So what we've done with some of the frogs is we did this sort of three-year project and what we do is we reared the frogs in a sound booth, a completely sound controlled environment and we played them sounds of Madagascar and completely influenced the sounds that they were exposed to and we thought that that might influence the sounds that they make and that's part of like a big long-term project with Liverpool University. So sadly the Chester accent, just not doing it for the Madagascan frogs,

hasn't got that sexy Madagascan twang? I don't know. So they're playing the Chester frogs sounds of the sexy Madagascar frogs to train out the scouse. It's like duolingo for frogs. So what's the issue with the golden mantella frogs accents changing? So if you are conserving a species and using maybe a zoo or any other sort of exitue programme to breed them,

the aim is that in all respects it's unchanged from what it is in the wild. So I guess from a conservation perspective, that's a big change. So the calls they use to talk to each other. talk to each other. So that means the wild frogs ignore the frogs that are born in zoos. So if you were ever to do a reintroduction, the frogs that have been reintroduced don't mix with the wild frogs. So they won't breed, which is what you want them to do.

And who's conducting that research? Well, as a team really, we all have our own little specialisms and interest. So it might be that a particular team member, like we have a team member that's really interested in poison dark frogs. So we just kind of, you know, let him crack on with it really and figure it out. So it's kind of a whole team effort. Does anyone, like, go out to their natural habitats and work that out? Yeah, we do quite a lot of fieldwork.

So I've been out to work with the mantellas in Madagascar. Got some salamanders in here, which is super cool. There's one. Oh, wow. So we do a lot of work with these guys. These are the Lake Patsquaro salamanders. So this species, unfortunately, critically endangered species, there's probably only around 100 or less of them living in the wild.

And they're only found in one lake in Mexico. So superficially they look quite similar to like an axlottal, which you might see in pet shops and things like that. But they're in the same family, but they are a bit different. So this species has a really interesting sort of like conservation link. There's a group of nuns in a monastery in Patscuaro, which is the town near next to the lake. They actually keep and breed these nuns in the monastery. Just to clear up any confusion, the nuns breed salamanders, not further nuns. They're famously celibate.

And it was the nuns that realised that the species, was actually declining in the wild, and then they started breeding them in a lab in their sort of monastery, in a breeding facility. So they do use the salamanders. They make a cough syrup out of them. The land's day? It's not like using them in any kind of source

that depletes the population into that effect. The things that affected their population was actually introduced predatory fish species and disease and pollution. The lake is heavily polluted, and it's full of invasive fish species. and there's like sedimentation and all sorts of things more to do with climate change and human influence on the natural world and because they realized that they were declining

they thought well we'll start breeding them and it actually the the nuns ended up with the largest colony of this species and they learnt how to keep them they learned how to breed them and fair enough they harvest a small number of it to do to do this cough syrup but they have the basis of a sustainable use of a breeding program Yeah, it's quite an interesting project. It gets people thinking because, you know, you think about sustainable use of a species. And if people don't have an interest in a species, they're less likely to put any effort into saving it. So it's quite an interesting project, really.

I think it gets people thinking about the sort of how people interact with species and how conservation works in different ways as well. And you don't have to be working in a lab or a scientist or anything like that to be directly involved in conservation. The nuns are great. They love the salamanders, like it's crazy. We went there and I was helping them. microchip the salamanders and Ophelia who's the main nun that looks after them she was literally like eyes over my shoulder that do not hurt my salamanders like it was like it was so nerve-wrecking

but yeah and if there was a drop of blood Ophelia was like giving me the evil eye you'd go to how basically yeah yeah she'd make sure of it yeah but when they've sent salamanders to like the university they like bless the water that they're in and everything yeah they just love salamanders and it's really cool because you go to like this little town in mexico knock on this monastery door And on the wall, when you're waiting in the foyer, there's a massive painting of like the lake. And then there's like the hands of God coming out of the sky holding a salamander. I was literally going to ask if they had paintings of salamanders. You go there and it's just murals of salamanders and you're in this like monastery.

You're like, where's Jesus? He's just like in the back room. And at the end of it, the nuns like give you a lasagna. If later day you're thinking, what was it that was saved by the nuns? or if you want to read more about any of the animals mentioned in this podcast, then you can head to chesterzoo.org slash podcast, where the team have collected loads of further info about everything you've heard in this podcast. What do you think was these conservation pods biggest success story?

I think the biggest success story from all of the pods is probably the snails, the Bermuda snails. I don't personally work directly on that project the Invert team do that and they've done such an amazing job of it so those were species that were literally thought to be extinct like completely extinct and a very small number of them were found

and then just in those rooms which are no bigger than the room we're in now they literally bred like 100,000 of these animals and released them back into the wild to the point where the releases may not be needed anymore That is, you cannot get better than that, like to the point where they're a sustainable population in the wild. So that's got to be the biggest success story of these pots.

Do you still have any of those snails? Yeah, we do those snails. You can see some snails, yeah. This was used for some native butterfly species. And then we've got the snails in this one and the mountain chicken frogs are in that one. Why are they called chicken frogs? Because people used to eat them.

And they taste like chicken. Oh, they taste like chicken. Yeah. Doesn't everything in a way. Yeah. Oh my God. He's super tiny. I think they were thought to be extinct and they were found behind like a leaking aircon in like an alleyway in Bermuda.

There was like an aircon unit that was dripping water. And in the damp water underneath the aircon unit, there was some snails. And whoever found them just happened to know what species they were. And that's the story of how they were kind of found, which is absolutely crazy. And then they were sent to zoo. So London Zoo had some, and then we've had some. And, yeah, they have bred so many. And, yeah, before they do the releases,

they literally have to count every individual. And they sort of recruit people from all over the zoo to sit and count snails. And it's just absolute snail madness. God, imagine losing count halfway through. Honestly, like 100,000 snails. It's like crazy. But, you know, these are the species that just don't get the attention. You know, it's not like a big megafauna or anything like that.

But these are the species that are the foundation of, an environment. So if you don't have these species, you can't sustain those sort of charismatic species, which is why it's really important that you, you know, we conserve them in zoos. So if I'm looking to complete my zookeeper trainee ship, that would? I don't know. Why would you choose to be an ectotherm keeper? I would say it's the most variable out of all the things you can do, working sort of in a zoo. Because I mean, we've got, we've just been through these pods and we've seen all different types set-ups, you've got aquariums, you know, we've got quarantine species, direct conservation species,

and you can probably get a bit more hands-on with some of these species as well. You know, you probably can't, like, go in with the tigers or something like that, you know. Whereas you get to feed a salamander directly, it's way more cool than that. You get to do so many different things, and you get to see stuff that, you know, how many times can you look at a species and think, I might be the only person, like, on the planet looking at this right now, because they're so rare. Not many people get to do that.

It's really cool. That's a wrap on my second week at Chester Zoo from Target training RICO, some thick bird thighs and learning to actually save species in the middle of a car park. It's safe to say I've learned a lot. But am I ready to pass my traineeship yet and become the ultimate zookeeper? That's still up for debate. I've still got a few species left to meet before then. He ripped the whole head off and he just looked directly out of us

and he was holding the ear and his mouth and his head was just hanging. We've got the lake duck as well in the Latin American Avery, which is the one that's got the largest penis relative to its body of any bird. So hers, sadly, had significant amount of damage and it had to be amputated. A huge thank you to the team at Chester Zoo

for letting me step into their wild and to you for coming along for the ride. I'll see your next episode of Abby Clark, Suekeeper in training. Thank you.