Animal Enrichment Quotes

I think we have a real obligation when we do have animals in captivity to understand their needs and to care for them as well as we can.

I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most.

I'm in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.

We live in a zoo, and we get to share all our animals with the people who come in. We really put our animals first, and then the staff, and then the visitors. The animals aren't pacing; they're all happy. When you touch an animal, it ultimately touches you.

All those animals that were in the cages, I would spend a lot of time in those cages with the animals in-between shots, just hanging out, because I prefer animals to humans. If I get an opportunity to be with them, I'll usually take it.

I dreamed of growing up and becoming a zookeeper.

We literally live right in the middle of the zoo, and it means that every day is a new experience and so much fun.

We owe them [animals] a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible. That's my job. I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. Being close to animals brings some of it back.

What's the reality of being inside a zoo, for the animals and for the people who love and care for those animals? There's a lot of joy, and there's a lot of loss.

I actually wanted to be a zookeeper when I was 5.

All zoos are both beguiling and repellent.

In the Children's Zoo, Enrichment meant presenting the goats with a trash can smeared with peanut butter or dangling keys at the end of a broomstick in front of the cow. The goats would knock their heads around the inside of the can and emerge giddy, peanut butter drunk.

On her daughter's pet rabbit: I don't think he liked being in a cage and wouldn't stop masturbating and humping his bowl.

Marlon was more of a formal zoo director type.

I've had a love of animals from birth. I love getting to know other species. We should all be aware that there is not one thing we can give a wild animal in captivity that they need.

Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.

Enrichment happened to be my favorite time of day in the Children's Zoo, since it offered relief from the security-guard-esque standing around that makes up most of a zookeeper's day.

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.

Zoos have always fascinated me. What child hasn't wondered what would happen if all the animals escaped from the zoo? Or what would happen if they got caught in an enclosure?