2 August 2023
Discover what’s entailed in the life of a zookeeper and see if you can spot Veronica on your next visit to the rainforest at London Zoo!
I look after…
A huge range of animals! From the tiny golden-headed lion tamarins, Goeldi’s monkeys and our family of porcupines to the nocturnal species like aye-ayes and slow loris in Night Life and the sloths and tamanduas that live in the canopy of our Rainforest Life habitat.
We start the day…
By making our animals their breakfasts. With such a range of animals, food prep is really varied – our tamanduas have a soupy protein mixture that replicates their diet of ants and termites, while our sloths get steamed vegetables. The sloths mainly eat vegetables as there’s too much sugar in fruit!
The best part of the job…
Has to be coming into work in the morning to find a new baby animal. While this doesn’t happen every day, sometimes our animals will give birth overnight; there aren’t many better ways to start the day!
The most unusual thing about being a Zookeeper is…
When I first started at London Zoo, my family were surprised that we work on Christmas day. But, for zookeepers, we love it – probably the most out of all the days of the year. Spending Christmas day with the animals is so unique, and I always make Christmas crackers for the animals I’m working with that day (out of cardboard rolls and paper). We sometimes wear Santa’s hats, though the lemurs aren’t particularly keen on them; they’re a bit wary of anything new.
My favourite animals to work with are…
The porcupines and sloths. The porcupines, just because their personalities are so hilarious. Henning, our male, is the grumpiest thing I’ve ever met, and our female Hetty is so shy and sweet natured. The sloths, well, they’re just really cool! Our current baby sloth, Nova, is the second baby sloth I’ve cared for and she’s the sweetest thing ever – when I first met her I wanted to take her home with me.
Working with sloths is…
Slow! Everything is at their pace, though they do respond to us if we call them. Leander, the male, is especially food motivated – he’ll always come down for a piece of sweet potato.
If I wasn't a Zookeeper…
I’d probably work with kids. I’m a Girl Guide group leader in my spare time, which is kind of similar to working with animals…
My last job of the day is…
Making sure the heating is on, turning the lights off and letting our animals go to bed. Or, in the case of the nocturnal animals in Night Life, we switch their lights on so they think it’s daytime and go to sleep!
Feeding the sloths in the rainforests costs £300 per month - if you'd like to support the sloths and our work at ZSL further, a donation of £10 would cover a day's food for the sloths.