Abi Clarke: Zookeeper in Training - Week 3: The Unexpected Icons

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Week 3 and it's time to meet the unexpected icons of the zoo. The underdogs. The animals you didn't have on your bingo card.Abi kicks things off by meeting the Brad Pitt of Komodo Dragons. And traumatising some children in the process.Then it's back to Keeper Jonathan from the bird team who's on hand to introduce some of Chester's most fabulous feathered residents.Plus, Abi meets a tortoise who's made more headlines than most celebs. And quite frankly, deserves every one of them.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. Is this the first time you've put a prosthetic on a tortoise? First time here at Chester. I'm Abby Clark. I'm a stand-up comedian, and due to what I can only assume is a terrible admin error, I'm Chester Zoo's newest trainee zookeeper. Why did I accept? Well, I needed a new

side hustle and considering my transferable skills are basically just Instagram and taking stealth pictures of dogs, I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss. So for reasons unclear to both me and Chester's HR department, I've been given six weeks to prove that I deserve a permanent spot on the zoo's team. There's a lot of pressure, okay? Chester Zoo is not just any zoo. They're an actual conservation charity caring for over 30,000 animals. That is 30,000 animals relying on a woman who's killed more sims than she is willing to admit. So, in the spirit of accountability, I'm taking you with me as I try and navigate my first few weeks on my brand new job.

This week, we are visiting some of the zoo's underdogs, the lesser-known species with big stories and possible grudges for being called underdogs. He ripped the whole head off, and he just looked. directly at 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 a significant amount of damage and it had to be amputated. This is Abby Clark, Zookeeper in training.

We're starting the day at Dragons in Danger, which is exactly. what it sounds like, a building full of dragons that are quite literally in danger. And the first dragon we are meeting today is the Komodo dragon. Easily, the most dangerous, scariest animal I've met so far. We even had a full safety briefing, although we also had a safety briefing for the sloth last week, so make of that what you will. You said he was the Brad Pitt of Komodo dragons. It is. Just his pure handsome looks. Absolutely. Yeah, pure handsome looks. Look at that jawline. You're coming over. So my name's AJ. I am a reptile keeper on the exotherm team and we're in dragons in danger with the Komodo dragons today. So in front of

us here is his official name is Satali but the keepers tend to call him salami. He does answer to both. He's our male dragon. He is 11 years old and he's absolutely glorious to work with. We've got an adult female as well. Mezcal, I'll show you her in a few minutes and then we've also got two babies as well oh my goodness and why are you such a fan of salami i think they were the first animals that i worked with as a keeper and my colleague that taught me about the dragons is like super super passionate about dragons he's worked with him for years and years and i think learning from someone like that just absolutely gave me the bug not meant to have favour but he would be my my absolute favorite what's he what's he got what's his magic touch

So when I'd only been on the team a few months and I got asked if I wanted to drive the Zoommobile to Colchester to collect him. And it was such a privilege to be driving along the motorway with him in the back. And as soon as I saw him, I just thought he was such a character. A lot of people don't realise that reptiles have massive personalities. And he's a really calm dragon. And I just think he's like, he's super handsome. There's always so much to learn about all the species on our department. But there's so much recent science to do with Komodo.

So, yeah, absolutely love him to bits. You said he was the Brad Pitt of Komodo Dragons. What makes a handsome dragon? Oh, he's just got a really lovely face. I know he's an apex predator and he's a hunter and is a scavenger. But I think he's got a really lovely face. I think he's got a really sweet face. Like being this close to him, I'll never ever get bored of it.

I just think it's such a privilege. I say, would you like to give him his reward? Let's do it, yeah? So if I give you these big tweezers, if you just get a chunk of mouse, you can give it a name if you want. I don't want to, no, I feel like that makes it a far worse. This mouse was a boy. I think that's its insides as opposed to it. Oh, that's its inside.

Okay, anyway. And he's usually really polite, so call him over and give it a little wiggle. Salami. Here he comes, there you go. He currently weighs 49 kilos. Mescal in comparison is 23 kilos at the minute, so she's considerably smaller but she's super pretty do you want to meet mescal as well yeah yeah so she named after paul was she first yeah bye salami she's super cute she's just like her way of us oh you're adorable

what's on her back so she's got a little device called an accelerometer and it's similar to an activity tracker so they're invented for athletes but because they're currently on different animals and different zoos we have have had to change like the activities so So initially the data would tell us that Mezcal's been lying down for 20 minutes. She's been cycling for five minutes. Her legs aren't that long. Obviously, she can't reach the pedals. The cycling was basically digging.

So we've been able to add those additional activities. All the dragons have had them on. The babies have had them on as well. So their activity will be very different to Mescal or salamis because they tend to live life in the trees as baby dragons. And they're really fast. They run, they jump, they climb, whereas the adult dragons,

because they're completely terrestrial, they don't do those things as much. And why is she separate back here? So they're solitary in the wild, they're not social animals, they only come together for breeding purposes or they might come together when they fight over a carcass.

We found out in 2006 through a dragon that was here at the zoo, she was called Flora, that females can actually produce eggs that will then hatch. Wait, how does you? guys? That was here. You discovered that? Yeah, it was here first. It was first recorded at Chester Zoo and the following year at ZSL. Wow. So Flora went on to have a clutch of eggs, which were, the boys were,

it was all boys that she had. So it's called Parthenogenesis and it's very, very cool. So it was the first time that it was recorded here in Dragons. It's like the ultimate survival technique. So in the wild if a female washed up on one of those Indonesian islands and there was only females there, that female could produce those males for other females to breed with or potentially it could go all Game of Thrones if she was the last one. If needs to be? Yeah, so it's really, really clever. So that would have been a really exciting time at Chesterton.

So you guys are really like the masters of the dragons. We're ace, aren't we? Yeah, the dragon kings and queens. Okay, so what is there enrichment? What are we going to be doing? So when we talk about enrichment, we mean anything that keeps an animal physically active and mentally stimulated. For Komodo dragons, the way they hunt in the wild, they would. be ambush predators and they're very opportunistic as well they rely heavily on their senses so they've got brilliant eyesight but his sense of smell is top-notch so you can see now he's started tongue flicking so he is not just picking up the smell of the food that i've been preparing is picking up

your smells as well he knows what his keeper's smell like but when he's sticking his tongue out is collecting all the scent molecules in the air and he's using that forked tongue to decide have i got more scent molecules on my left or my right fork and that's how he knows which way to travel when he's following a scent trail so i have got some mice that i've chopped up for us i've also got some that whizzed up as well so we've got a really strong smell there of meat and blood when you say like whist up in this water bottle yes please don't drink that it does look it doesn't like it looks like a milkshake yeah and mouse smoothie yeah it's got a bit of a whiff to it. They don't do that protein shake at Barrett. Definitely don't be taking a swig of it.

It's grim. So when we take the lid off, it will smell a little bit. But we're going to leave that scent trail behind and then we'll hide those chunks of mouse as well. We're going to do that in the main habitat, which is on show to the public. So there'll be a lot of people out there watching. Don't feel nervous because you're like the rock and roll one in this situation. They all want to be you. Yeah, I'm currently holding a pot of blood. So it is something that we do almost every day. You for enrichment purposes but we also offer dragon experiences so he's guaranteed to get that time and no matter what's going on in the zoo we know that the dragons are going to get that set time for their enrichment which is really really positive for their welfare and what is the dragon experience

so people at home could do this yeah absolutely so you get to spend an hour with one of the team over here in dragons in danger you get to give them their reward through the gate so it'd just be like a little a little nugget of mouse or chick or something like that and everything that we feed them is weighed out as well so we're never overfeeding them you get the opportunity to see him up close like we just have you see him tongue flicking and we talk about how we do daily health checks with them and then once he's safely locked in this area here then would go into the main habitat would leave that scent trail or enrichment it might be a carcass feed we might be hiding things burying things hanging things or with the intention of making him work for it i really like

to imagine someone saying they kind of like Commodo dragons just like a week before Christmas and someone's like, I'm going to give them the full exorium. Let's leave that conversation in the pot of blood there for a minute because we are only 10 minutes into this podcast and all you've heard about so far is blood and blended mouse. It's time to lighten things up a touch. I'll admit it. I've made mistakes in my life. Okay, I got a drastic new haircut the day before my poster's photo shoot. I've pressed end on many strongly worded what's apps without drafting in my notes app. And I briefly thought I could work with children.

But the worst, the worst of all, was thinking birds were a bit boring. I've been to zoos, fully walked, straight past the bird exhibits and gone straight to the tigers. But then, I spent the morning with Jonathan. One of the assistant team managers of birds at Chester Zoo, and I can safely say, I was so wrong. Okay, birds are chaos with wings. The original drama queens, One slight move and you are part of their life or death performance art pieces. Buckle up, this is a whirlwind ride of feathers, flirtation and genuinely unhinged bird facts. Birds two to birds eight. Hi Matt, what time are you planning on getting over with the smart turnover?

Would you want me to bring the birds of her house? Yeah, that's fine. Birds six, Birds 11. Would you be able to be? be able to come as well and we'll try and move this male out now. We've got one Samarch and Laughing Thrush at the front there. We've got two males and then we've got a recommendation to pair one of the males with the females. We have joined Jonathan in the midst of catching thrush. I cannot be trusted to be an adult in this situation.

I'm going to leave it to Jonathan. But the male we're taking out is the really silly tame one. Who we call R2D2. Like, beep boop, beep, beep, beep. He goes like that. He goes like that. He's really cute. We wanted to put him in a walk to ravery, but someone's going to steal him. Because he'll literally sit on you and go,

so we're hoping we can just catch him by him landing on you and you're grabbing him. But we'll see. And then the female will go in and we have to see if the female likes the male. Normally it's like, it's absolutely fine. But sometimes the female would be like, no, not going to happen. Just don't leave these here in case they see him. So if they see the net, then they're not stupid. So if you hide them here, then it should be all right.

So we know this pair because one of the males, he was plucked by his previous mate, so he's got a bald patch. I've also put coloured rings on so you can tell him that. That's him. The other males at the back. So much like the human species, they've decided the balding male will not have the mate and moving him out of the bachelor pad for the male with a full head of hair. Harsh, harsh. Take him to turkey. Do you want to just keep him in the net

till you get across here? So what we do is we put it in this little fabric bag because it can't hurt itself. And I do believe that it's bird speak for why am I in a bag? Get me out of the bag. We'll let the female go now. So we'll just put this bird out now

and then we'll... Woo! So then they duet together, so the male has a... And the female goes... And they... So hopefully... They see that's that next to each other. So yeah, she's been by herself for a year or so now,

waiting for a suitable boyfriend. And he's bred before and she's bred before with different partners. So hopefully they'll have chicks this year, which would be nice. We're part of the, there's like a European program for these things. European endangered species breeding program which are head of birds coordinates. So that kind of works out who's paired to who and all of that. And these are really endangered in the wild because they're taken for the legal songbird trade so people have them in markets.

There's huge areas there, form a range in Sumatra that you just can't find them in now. So birds are either kind of really intelligent or really stupid. Like flamingo's pigeons, terrible. Really, really, really stupid birds. Jonathan, the biggest bird fan I've ever met, calling a lot of birds stupid. So when a pigeon makes a nest, it's like about four sticks and we kind of wedged together.

But they just do that and they're like, oh, that looks all right, and then the eggs on the floor and they go, oh well. And then they lay an egg and then they don't sit on it and then they go, oh well. and then they lay another egg and then about six eggs later you've got a little big pigeons but once they know what they're doing

they do tend to be all right after that yeah this pair of pink-headed fruit doves yesterday they'd stopped sitting because they got bored they just don't seem to be able to grasp the concept of parenthood but they were sitting on an egg there

and then they'd stopped sitting for whatever reason so we've taken their egg and giving them a plastic one, a dummy egg. And we've put the dummy egg under a pair of superb fruit doves that we don't want to breed and hoping that they'll raise their chicks. So last year, that pair of superb fruit doves raised one of their chicks. Because they're just terrible parents.

I mean, they really should be sectioned or something, but they're absolutely useless. These dummy eggs are basically just like the inside of a kinderag. I mean, I'm happy to do that part of the zookeeper job, happy to eat them. We also get the toy. they're like oh yeah well that's hatched and they'll just leave it and other times they'll not feed it enough and other times it'll be absolutely brilliant and generally once we've got another pair of these who had one that they failed with and then after that they were really good every time but this pair of no idea why not we had them in a nice big avery and they

bred once and then after that fail fail fail fail fail fail but they're from the same mountains that you get the green magpies in so when people are doing habitat surveys and things they'll often see these up it's in there from Java and Bali in the mountains but again they're heavily a lot of stuff on Java's traded because everyone in Java it's cultural to have a bird so you're meant to have like um a successful man will have a man a house a horse a ceremonial dagger and a bird outside their house and there's 155 million people on Java and that's half the landmass of the UK and so if everyone's meant to have a bird it's like millions and millions of birds traded every year people love that they've got a lot of like turtle

doves and things so you hear that it's like whoop whoop whoop whoop who in cages outside people's houses but then when you find you could have a pink-headed fruit dove that makes the same noise but looks like that i mean so they're also starting to be traded and then people from other countries go oh that's a nice bird and then the people in indonesia who have low income go yeah we'll sell you our wildlife so it's a global global issue on our section we've got the green magpies are probably the most intelligent the proper savage little serial killer hunter birds so we're going to have a look at them i'll take the food for them. Yeah, we finally have a bird Jonathan rates the intelligence of and a raging killer.

Great. The busiest time of our day's first thing in the morning because you're trying to get everything fed quickly. You have to feed all the insects. So let all the insects have a feed so that they've got all the nutrition in them for when you give them to the birds. Because otherwise, you're just feeding out like fast food to them. Whereas if you make sure they've eaten all their vegetables, then the birds get all their vitamins as well. Don't let the gym bros get hold of this information, they're going to start feeding protein to their protein. So there we've got, there's about 20 species of bird free flying in here, and then on the side we've got birds like hornbills, which if you put them in the free flight, they eat

everything else. These birds going do-da-do are the black napeed orioles. So the parents of these came from an illegal confiscation, people had been traded illegally in the Netherlands, and then they were confiscated and given to the zoo. So we've bred them and then there's a pair of their youngsters in here and they spend a lot of time chasing each other but it seems to be normal it's always the male chasing the female then he'll call to her and they'll call back and then they do laps around the house but this is one of the biggest indoor spaces for birds in the UK so they just spend all day living a total naturalistic life it's lovely there's a lot of illegal trade because people like birds as pets

and there's a lot of countries that won't let you export and there's a lot of regulations and even since Brexit to move animals is so difficult so legal trade is so difficult that people move animals illegally. So these collared trogons we've got here, their parents were taken from the wild and we received them in a confiscation as well. But since then we've bred, there we go, we've bred loads of those.

But they're really stupid birds, like really, really, really thick. Again, just not rating these birds' IQ at all. I personally love a dumb bird. They've got eyes on the side of the heads and they won't look at you, they'll just stand like that with their back to you and slightly tilt their head because their eyes are so massive. and they've got legs for short, they can't really walk.

So if he wants to turn and face the other way, he has to fly back up and fly back down again. But you watch them in here, and there'll be an insect flying, and they'll go and catch it. So they have a use, and they're really nice. Some birds can, like, imprint on people, and other birds won't. So normally, when you're rearing birds, a lot of the time,

you don't talk to them, you just maybe play the call of the adult or whatever, and you should be fine. But some birds, like the green magpies here, if they see your face, they'll imprint on people. And then they won't pair up naturally, and they can be quite aggressive. more at a frustration that they can't mate with you, I think, half the time.

But you wouldn't want a magpie to mate with you anyway. See how sharp its beak is. So I've got a pair of green magpies in here, which these are critically endangered from West Java. So we managed the population of these as well. The zoo sent me out to Indonesia for 18 months, so I actually lived and worked at the centre that these came from. So they copy up everything else, so sometimes you'll hear them. This pair doesn't do it, but we've got one pair that copies a grey-breasted parakeet. We've got another pair that copies a fire alarm.

the pair that copies a fire alarm and I'm sure they could copy people if you spoke to them enough but we try and not do that because you end up with birds we've got a yellow face minor who she mimics people so you walk past the exhibit and you're like no and then the public we moved her off exhibit for a bit or she was under treatment and the public were going this is where the bird is that says hello hello hello but she wasn't in there so they went hello and I went hello in the back Wow. Really giving away the true secrets of the zoo now. My housemate told me that her and her mom, when she's home, if the cat meows, they'll meow back. So like if the cat's like, they'll be like, you know, as regular people do. But a few times, they've found themselves meowing to each other in different rooms. And the cat was not meowing. They were just relying to each other in meows. And I really enjoy that. And some ducks. That's the sound of Jonathan, seeing some ducks.

By the sounds of it, I think they're very clever ducks. He's very into them. They're all starting to think about getting sexy with each other. So these are called stiff-tailed ducks. These are white-headed ducks, which are endangered in the wild. And they breed all along in these reed beds. So we're normally really successful with them. You can't find the nest.

All of a sudden, you find little ducklings, swimming around. But 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, of any vertebra, and it all curls out of it and then curls back into the female. She's got a corkscrewed vagina as well, so, yeah. They do this thing and they look like little wind-up toys. Yeah, we had a member of the public, and they pointed at the sign

and they went, oh, that's the lake duck, isn't it? I went, yeah, that is. I told them the fact about the penis, and she went, what? And this guy went, you saying that duck's dick's bigger than mine? She said, honestly, Kevin, everyone's bigger than you. I've worked with birds, so I was a junior member when I was, eight years old so I used to come on all of the junior members trips and an oil of the keepers and then I did a university degree and then worked with birds from straight after that so it's 10

years this year but I did have birds at home as well they're just amazing people always find them really underrated and I just think they're brilliant so if you have two rhinos when they show the right signs you put them together obviously there's a lot more signs to it than that with a bird you've got to watch them make a pair bond watch them build a nest watch them look after a nest watch them lay an egg are they going to incubate the egg are they going to rear the chick Are they going to have issues with that? When the chick fledges, are they going to know what to do? There's everything you've kind of got to carefully manage,

and I really like that. It's a lot more involved than some of the bigger animals, because you can go in with all of these, all the birds we work with. And does Jonathan have a favourite bird? I really like working with the hornbills. They're absolutely fantastic, because they're really charismatic, noisy, colourful, and they can be horrible as well.

So, you know, if you've got a particularly nasty hornbill, they can send you to hospital. So it's also something you've got to be a bit careful with as well. I want everyone to find someone that talks about them the way Jonathan talks about birds. What a guy. He's like a bird-loving fountain of knowledge. Honestly, you should have seen the way his face lit up when he was talking about pigeons. Anyway, schools out for Jonathan's University of Birds for now.

Let's check on the mouse smoothie we prepared earlier. It's been festering on the floor of the Komodo Dragon House for long enough now. It's time to see how salami is getting on with the dragon delicacy of blended rodents. so when you're in here you can see that is left behind marks from his tail there's claw marks you'll often see imprints from his tummy scales as well for his enrichment today we're going to be leaving that scent trail so that's the whizzed-up mouse yes mouse milkshake it's grim don't sniff it so we're going to start it from around here okay and you can't do it wrong don't get it on your clothes though okay um a commode a dragon follows me home so we're gonna you can do it in

blobs. You can do it in one long line. I really don't mind. But we're going to basically take it up to the windows, okay? Okay. There will be lumps, don't we? Oh, no. That looks like someone bombed. Yeah, okay, so just to explain what's happening here, we'd taken the top off the kind of sports bottle, and so it was a very much free-pouring technique, and I over-poured. We lost about three quarters of the shake in just one spot. I was trying really hard to do a drizzle, but it was a positive plop, I'd say. If you bring it round, do you want to pick on somebody at the window,

like this little girl here in the Rosie Jumper? Oh, I like this vibe, yeah, let's go. We'll pick on this little girl over here, and he'll eat in his popcorn. So put the rest of it there. Oh, all of it. Yeah, go for it. There you go, little girl.

And then that'll be his focus. And hopefully, after he's dealt with that little pile over there, it'll come straight over here. Right, okay. So I'll swap you. I'm going to give you this. Yeah. If you want to take those lumps of mice and pop a couple in that area there. I'm so sorry, Charles. You're about to see half a dead mouse. Your parents are really glad they brought you. There's Mickey. And let's stick half a mini down there as well. Yeah. Perfect. So do you make a hobby of traumatizing children? Is this a regular? Quite often. Yeah, this wouldn't be the worst situation. This child's actually enjoying it. Some of them do. They get right up close. You've got a future psychopath. You can pull the rest of that any way you like. So I once had a participant, she was only young, she came to celebrate her birthday and I said to you come on a brilliant day, it's a carcass feed and her face change straight away. One of her family members said, it won't look like the actual animal. And I said, oh, it does.

It was Easter and we had a white rabbit, but I'd already gutted it the day before. So I had to show with the rabbit behind the scenes that she said that she didn't pass out. okay and she didn't really want to touch anything in here which was fine she just used the scent bottle but then when we went out we I buried the rabbit and just left his head and his ears out of the hole so I thought it was great because I thought it was Easter very in keeping with the you know the theme that we had going on but we went out to watch and her auntie was retching in the corner a little sister was crying and he tugged and he ripped an air off oh my god and then he tugged at the other ear and he shook his head about like they do moving his neck side to side working those muscles

he ripped the whole head off and he just looked directly at us and he was holding the ear in his mouth and his head was just hanging so yeah but like we said if you want to book the experience at home you absolutely can we did get really good we got really happen once we got really good feedback we got really good feedback we did yeah but yeah so if you come to do the experience ideally um and that girl's now in prison if you're not scream at prison or therapy I then made our way to the front of the Commodo Dragon habitat and waited for the crowds slash victims to gather. On the way, I spotted a unique animal living just next door to the Komodo dragon, literally within sniffing distance of the mouth's smoothie. And considering this

is an episode about underdogs, I had to stop and meet the underdog of all underdogs. It's the plow share tortoise, which might not sound like the most exciting animal you've heard today, but let me tell you, you are wrong. Not only are these guys critically endangered, but one of Chester Zoo's plowshares is also missing a leg. Keeper Josh was available to tell me more about these guys. So I look after the reptiles in particular, so mostly tortoises and comedians. That's why we're here with these plowshares. But first, I face my biggest challenge yet. Oh my God, there's a wasp. No one warned me about wasps.

Oh my god, no, that's the one thing I can't deal with. Yeah, fair enough, that is a fair reaction. Can't believe they put me through that. I was very brave. Please introduce us. Who are these guys? So these are three of our plowshare tortoises. So we've got two males and one female in here. You just gave a tortoise scratch.

Yep. Can they feel that? Is that a thing? Yep. So they've got a layer of nerves that's underneath the shell. Oh, I made him jump. So yeah, they will feel this through the shell. I will be honest, they're a bit dumb at times. They know they've got the shell there, but they will get their head through a gap

and then they will get their head through a gap. So they will get stuck. But they're quite like the backs being scratched because they can't really scratch them. But we do see them under, like, logs and things like that, giving themselves scratches. Will we ever know what's under the shell? Do you scan them? Do you x-ray them?

So we have, not their species, but we have done CT scans on some of our other species and we do x-ray them fairly regularly. So what we see is their shell, is actually their rib cage. So it's the ribs basically formed into layers on what we see on the outside is there. It's what we call scutes

and they're designed to protect the joints in the rib cage to stop any infections going in. When we're handling them, we've got to be very careful. But if you have to flip them over, we always flip them back over the same way just because they can actually have intestines twisting and things like that. That's crazy.

Obviously the star of the show is this little one that's in front of me here, Hope. If she was actually confiscated from seizure in Hong Kong, She was poached sadly So they basically just pack as many tortoises They can do in a box and ship them out on the plane Which is you get loads of diseases Loads of injuries and loads of death really

So it's not the pleasant side of things And then the wildlife officials in Hong Kong Joint with Madagascan officials Seased the shipment When I came to Hong Kong airport There's a facility out there called Kodori And they deal with all of the seized animals So what the poachers will do out in the wild is go out, they're finally tortoise and make sure they keep it for another day.

They tie a knot around his leg or even draw a hole through its shell and tie it up and make sure I'll come back for it later. So hers, sadly, had a significant amount of damage and it had to be amputated. So she has a little stump that we've put on the base of her shell. Oh my goodness. And it just basically helps her stabilise and... It kind of looks like the thing you just get on the... the end of a chair leg? It is exactly that. Is it literally that? It is exactly that. So we have tried different methods. So we, when she first came in,

she had three little stumps. We've kind of felt that on rough terrain, it didn't really help her that much. And she just needs a little bit of balance. So if you had to work out, like, is this the first time you've put a prosthetic on a tortoise? Have you had to try and work out what works? First time here at Chester, it has been done, as I say, it is sadly quite common for sea tortoises to occur. So you will see sometimes a put wheels on them. But again, a wheel doesn't always work quite nicely. So I guess other than the obvious of a really strong front arm, how is life different for Hope, the three-legged tortoise? So day-to-day business, she's actually completely fine. So she gets around slightly slower than

the others. And we actually do find she tries to bully the other tortoises. So she doesn't really mind causing trouble. We have had to take one of our tortoises out to give him a bit of break because Hope kept bullying them. Why was it decided she should come here? It's one of the things where we can give her a better life over here. You can have a lot more care and attention towards them. So it's kind of an opportunity for us to bring in new unrelated animals, but also allow them to help seize more animals and kind of continue the fight against poachers.

What are they specifically poached for? So the main one for these guys is their shells, because people find them really beautiful. They also are used for soup, so meat is a big one, but also the medicinal trade as well. They'll use the bones and the shell as different ointments and remedies. Are there any other threats that this species face and what a chest are doing to help? One of the, part of them poaching, the next biggest thing is probably deforestation out in Madagascar.

So a lot of what we call slashingberg agriculture happens out there. So farmers will go down, cut down the rainforests and the dry forests where these guys are from, take out all the resources and then burn the land. and at that point they can then grow all the crops in the ash and then after that, turned over to cattle pasture, which isn't conducive to tortoises. So a lot of the work we're doing out in Madagascar is trying to find alternatives for the local people to do, so they don't have to do that sort of agriculture,

more sustainable methods and things like that. Okay, side quest complete. Let's get back to seeing how many children we've managed to traumatise with salami's mouth smoothie. I want to go see him follow my trail now. We'll go and head out like canceling Gretel. So if we go and get where we put the bulk of that food. Yeah. So can we stand near you? Is that okay?

So I want you to see because you were who we were trying to target when we were in there. Okay, we were like, we're going to put it all near that little girl so she gets a really good view of him, okay? We set a little trail and now we're going to release him. Here he comes. It's coming out of his bedroom now. So he's probably going to spend a little minute near the little pile of. that you said a little pile that's very kind of you

the maximus spinach so he's doing exactly what I expected so his tongue flicking really quick can you see how quickly he's doing it is collecting all those scent molecules in the air where have I got the most scent molecules on my left or my right fork

so his tongue is completely directional so he's going to go to the area where there's the strongest smell so he's picking that up there he's landed straight in front of the little girl Founds and mouse. Exactly what we wanted. So did she see that, he swallowed it straight away, didn't she?

If he gets any leaves on there, any salad, he's not going to want that. So we'll probably just shake his head to get the leaves off. He'll probably give you a little look because he knows it's just left it behind. There you go. So if you just take a minute and have a little look at how many people are stood watching. He's drawn across. Yeah, absolutely. So he's not just sat basking.

The length of time that people tend to look, you know, is very, very minimal. It's a matter of a few seconds. we want people to feel that emotional connection with the animal we want them to come on an experience or to adopt an animal at the zoo or even by a goodly toy that if we're pulling in money then it means that we can use that money on really good things like all these conservation projects which is super special so you've literally done that today

you've brought all these people and they're all looking we then headed back to the keeper area because the crowd was so excited to see salami they were getting a little bit noisy so if people are falling in love with Komoda dragons as we speak what can they do at home to help them so something as simple as becoming a member adopting any animal at the zoo coming for an experience there's so many things you can do all those things help support the zoo

and then in turn we can support those conservation projects but aside from that if there's behaviours that you're willing to change something as simple as turning your lights off more frequently to help combat climate change. There's lots of information on the zoo's website regarding more sustainable options and sustainable palm oil, lots of things like that that you can do at home to help. And if you want to traumatise children at Chester Zoo yourself, then you are in luck. Head to chester Zoo.org slash podcast to find out more about the experiences the zoo offers, including the Komodo Dragon Experience and the Reptile Keeper for the Day experience

where you can meet Salami and Mescal too. So I'm a trainee zookeeper. What's been the best day as a dragon keeper? It really is genuinely so difficult to pick one. You do have to, though. I've got so many. I think it's got to be when those eggs hatched and being there to see those brand new baby dragons,

I've been part of that process of salami coming to the zoo from Colchester and the dragons being put together on those. first hot dates and then to see those eggs become those beautiful little dragons and my colleague the dragon king Matt Cook said to me get your gloves on and get involved so I actually got to help with the measurements taking measurements and on photos I've got Mardi lip because I was so close to going but I think that would probably be my highlight because I love salami and mescal so much to to see that whole process was mega, mega special.

So the only thing better than a dragon keeper as a dragon midwife, possibly. Yeah, that's it. And it means the world to the team. You invest so much that there's moments like that. As a zookeeper, there's lots of highs

and there's lots of lows, but highs like that are, yeah, top-notch special. Do you have any dragon tattoos? I haven't, I'm getting, because I'm getting a big dragon tattoo. I'm getting it, I'm getting two, so I'm going to have a baby dragon tattoo,

but I'm going to get a, salami himself is going on my back so how do you like should you picture your artist going to be accurate yes photo of him 100% yeah it's not just going to be any dragon it's going to be I'm going to have salami and the other baby dragon which is off show

and he's I don't have favourites obviously yeah I was going to say just don't show mask out but he's my favourite that is a wrap on today's episode of zookeeper and training if you made it this far you're officially part of the chaos. I'm pretty sure you've learned more about tortoises, birds and mouse smoothies than you ever thought possible. Make sure you head over to at Traini Zookeeper on Instagram and TikTok for more behind the scenes madness. And if you enjoyed the show, you should hit follow

wherever you're listening. So you get notified when a brand new episode is out. So he was trying to get at me and I was trying to fend him off. He did bite me in several places and drew blood on my chest and on my knee. She's wearing a beaded bolt. So if we go further down, you might be able to see some of the little harnesses we've also got on them. It looks like Vivian Westwood. For me, it was just a bit of a no-brainer that that was the species. Why would you not want to go and work with the biggest of the mall, you know? Thanks for listening.

This has been Abby Clark. You're slightly confused, definitely chaotic, but somehow still here. Zookeeper in training. See you next week.