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Zoo Animal Fun, Games, and Wellbeing

Dr. Biology:

00:00

This is Ask a Biologist, a program about the living world, and I'm Dr. Biology. For those who have been following along, we have been visiting the Phoenix Zoo for the past couple of episodes. This will be the third in the series and one where I hope we get to play around or at least learn about play and in particular, how, why, and when animals play because play is important for so many things like skill development, physical fitness, stress relief one of my favorites. It also promotes cognitive development by challenging learners to solve problems, make decisions, and think abstractly. 

And play is not just for humans. Primates, you know, apes and chimpanzees, birds have been known to play. Cetaceans, which are dolphins, and whales all are known to play. There's even research on reptiles and insects that show some play-like behavior. 

01:12

I'm looking forward to the conversation today because our guest is Danielle Wong, the Behavioral Enrichment and Animal Welfare Coordinator at the Phoenix.  If anyone knows about animal play and what it takes to make an engaging and I might even say fun environment for animals, it will be Danielle, and I bet we learn a lot more about what it takes to develop the best enrichment activities and environments for a wide range of animals. Welcome to Ask a Biologist, Danielle. 

Danielle:

 01:45 

Thank you for having me. 

Dr. Biology: 

01:46

It's been such a joy to be at the zoo, just to be able to get out and be with the animals. You know that's not really a job, is it? 

Danielle:

01:55 

Oh no, when people think of a job, they think of something they have to go do. Going to the zoo every day is a good treat, right? 

Dr. Biology:

02:04 

And I started the episode off talking about play as part of animal enrichment. What else is involved with animal enrichment beyond play? 

Danielle:

02:15

When we talk about behavioral enrichment at the zoo, we're talking about purposeful, goal-oriented items which can be to stimulate play and to have them spend their time doing something. But more than that we like to tie into their natural history, and we like to dive into what should they be doing? What behaviors should we be seeing? What aren't we seeing? And then we try to elicit those behaviors. 

Dr. Biology:

02:41 

Ah, interesting. So, if a giraffe isn't acting like a giraffe, there's a problem. 

Danielle:

02:48

Yeah, when people think of animals in the zoo, they automatically think that they're domesticated in some way. But these animals are still wild. They still have all the natural instincts and, in order to promote their most optimal well-being, we want them to exhibit all their natural behaviors that they can and have that capacity to do that, and behavioral enrichment allows them to do that. 

Dr. Biology:

03:12

Hmm, okay, so I promised a little bit about play. So, I do want to get into that part. One of the questions, though, before we dive into all the animals that you know that play at the zoo, are there animals that don't play, do you know? I'm thinking probably not a snake. 

Danielle: 

03:34

Well, you know, it really is going to depend on the individual within a species too. So I'm sure that there probably are some instances of play being seen across all species, but when you take into consideration their age and the individual behavior as well, sometimes we don't see that as much, and so it really just depends. 

Dr. Biology:

04:01 

Okay, so for those that play, let's pick the most playful animal at the zoo now. 

Danielle:

04:10

Well, probably a huge favorite would be Chudi, the greater one-horn rhino. He is one of the most engaging animals that we have, and he spends a lot of time interacting with his environment, interacting with his behavioral enrichment, and even interacting with his keepers, and a lot of that would come across as this aimless play behavior, where he's just playing and he's moving around in his exhibit and it's so much fun to watch. 

Dr. Biology 

04:37

Right. When I look at him and he's in his habitat and enclosure I notice what I would say are toys. So, can we talk about some of the toys, and how did someone come up with the idea that a tire is a good toy? 

Danielle:

04:54

Right, those toys that we're talking about. That's the behavioral enrichment, and so probably the easiest way to relate it to us as humans is to think of it as toys. But if there's one thing we can take away from this, that's so much more than that, and so a lot of the items that he has in his exhibit. They're fun for him to interact with, but they do also serve a purpose. A lot of those items that he gets up and he manipulates, he throws them around, which he has been known to do. He'll get a drainage culvert like a black pipe on his horn and he'll toss it in the air. He'll carry it around. 

05:31 

All of that stuff helps tie into his natural history, where these guys are known to kind of be ecosystem engineers in a way. They go through their environment, and they will route through things, they will move things around, and that will actually help create different architecture in the ecosystem where they're from. And so all of that, while it seems like a lot of fun and it definitely is it really ties into their natural history too, and where we get the ideas for things is somebody just randomly thought, hey, this might be really fun to play with or to provide for him and then go from there, and a lot of that actually comes from the industry. The zoo industry together will rely on one another for their expertise and their experiences in order to help provide the best experience for the animals. 

Dr. Biology: 

06:21 

Very interesting, because I don't usually think about animals as engineers, but yes, there are quite a bit of it Animals that are engineers. Besides the rhino, what are we going to have for engineers at the zoo? 

Danielle:

06:34

Oh goodness. Well, there are, let's see, some Cape porcupines that will naturally dig into the ground in order to excavate burrows and or to find their food. You've got birds as well, that will kind of take items from one location to another, nest-building all of that. So, across the entire animal kingdom, you're going to have engineers everywhere. We might have to think about it a little bit more, to think of it as engineering. 

Dr. Biology:

07:04

Right. What about the primates? 

Danielle:

07:06

Oh, easily. Most primates are so intelligent they can utilize tools, and so you can actually see a lot of that example in the environment that we provide to them and their enclosures. They can move things around. We provide them tools to utilize for puzzle feeders. You'll be able to see their behavioral enrichments really geared towards that tool use as well. 

Dr. Biology:

07:30

Now, in addition to behavioral enrichment, the other area that you're very interested in is well-being, and we had Dr. Gary West on the last episode talking about life as a zoo veterinarian right Beyond their healthcare. You're looking well, you're looking into the well-being of the animals just as much. You just aren't necessarily treating them for any kind of health issues. So, what does that involve? 

Danielle:

08:01

Yeah, when we're talking about well-being, we're talking about the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy, which ultimately is the question that everybody wants to know Is that animal happy? And so that's what we're looking at and what we'll actually do is our keepers know the animals the best and the keepers, on a daily basis, are working with these animals and they might notice some subtle changes and they record everything. They have those conversations if they're starting to see something. So that's always happening on a daily basis where these keepers are keeping an eye on the animals. But we do also have a more formal assessment process and that's our well-being assessments, and for those, we will look at both the inputs or things that we provide to the animals. So, we provide their diet, their enclosure space, their behavioral enrichment, and the trained staff that work with them. 

08:57

But then we also look at their outputs, so what they're giving to us, their health, their weight, behaviorally, how they're responding to us, and we look at all of these assessments and then we go through and see, well, how are we doing? Do we need to have areas of improvement or do we have those areas I should say that we need to improve on, and then we go through and we can have those conversations and make those changes if needed. And that's kind of our way of keeping us in check, making sure that we are doing right by the animals, because that is definitely our top priority, but it is our way to keep us in check on that. And it's a whole process that the keepers get to fill it out. The managers come in, they provide their input, the curators provide their input, then it comes to me and the director of living collections. We get to provide input If there are any concerns. We have an animal welfare committee on board that we go through, we review and then we make those changes as needed. 

Dr. Biology:

09:55

You use the term happy and obviously, that's a challenge, right? 

Danielle:

10:02

With animals saying happy. 

Dr. Biology:

10:04

So, we might say content, or even maybe better, just they're in their natural animal groove. Yes, and you talked about learning about the natural history of a particular animal, and that's the part I am interpreting, that you basically do the research on how an animal should behave in the wild, and if they're not doing something similar in the zoo, then probably something's wrong. 

Danielle:

10:31 

Right, and that's where leaning on our industry as well is so important because we've got decades and decades of experience of people working with these animals and saying, hey, that's not normal or that's exactly what you'd want to see. And, honestly, this whole field is just constantly progressing. We're learning more, we're always trying to improve, and so we talk about animal welfare science. That's the science that we've used to inform our conversations about well-being. So, there's always room for improvement in my mind, and so it's always looking for ways that we can do more. 

Dr. Biology:

11:11 

Right On an earlier episode, we talked about one of the challenges with zoos, because there are some people that don't like zoos, and I do understand they really think of them more as prisons than a resort. 

11:31

They also don't always realize the conservation role that you play when we talk about the animals, and the idea is that we're not trying to domesticate them. That's one thing. Let them be wild, that's important. But the other one is some of the animals that you have at the zoo do get reintroduced into the wild. So, when you're working with those kind of animals, what do you do? That's, if anything different than the ones you do, that probably aren't going to be released into the wild. 

Danielle:

12:05

That's a super great question. Those animals that may be released into the wild definitely have more restrictions on how we typically work with them. A lot of those animals tend to be less human involvement, a little more hands off. You try to not familiarize them with humans and or training them any sort of capacity, because you don't want them to go out into the wild and then be habituated to go right back into a populated area. And so for those animals, when we talk about like behavioral enrichment and things like that, we try to keep it as natural as possible. So, we're definitely more limited there. But it also is geared towards seeing those skills that we would want to see prior to them being released, and I think that's what's really important to know is that it's all again still very goal oriented and purposeful ties right back into that, but for them the intent and the purpose is just a little different. So that's how we offer them just some slightly different things. 

Dr. Biology:

13:11

Right Now, when you're building your habitat and you're thinking about them, and I'm not mistaken, is it the squirrel monkeys? Is it the new home for them? 

Danielle:

13:22

In the Monkey Village.  

Dr. Biology:

13:23

Yeah, Monkey Village. Was Monkey Village basically renovated before we got our new troop of monkeys for Monkey Village? Did we renovate the space beforehand? 

Danielle:

13:36

We actually did make some modifications, namely extending wall height and trimming back limbs on trees because we wouldn't want them to accidentally find their way out of the exhibit and oftentimes it wouldn't be necessarily their intent to find their way out of the exhibit, they would just happen to find their way out through a pathway and then they would be out there, the other animals would be inside and they would be kind of confused like oh, how do I get back in there? 

14:03

So, in order to kind of prevent that confusion on their part and also, it's a new space for them, so really just kind of defining the boundaries of the space for them, making those modifications on trimming back those limbs, increasing the height. We closed down Monkey Village so that they would have time to acclimate to the space themselves. So it wasn't even open to the public for people to go in that way. They had time to get used to their environment. And then, as we started to introduce people back in because it is a walkthrough exhibit when we introduced people back in we started by having the people only go a certain distance, or smaller groups, just slowly getting them used to having people in their space. But they have all sorts of space in there to get away if they want to. They can regulate their distance and they really seem to be enjoying their exhibit and they're really fun to watch in there too. 

Dr. Biology:

14:56 

Right, that's one of the favorite places for me to go and the bird aviary. You know you have several of them that are quite nice, where you can go in and the birds are just wandering around, flying from place to place. That's another place. So, when you're developing a new habitat, how do you do that? And part of that question also is how long does that take to figure out? 

Danielle:

15:22 

Oh yeah, it takes a long time, and it really just depends on how big of a scale we're talking, on how long it takes to go from start to finish. But we really do try to design the exhibits with the animals, natural history in mind. You want to ensure that there's enough one space for them, and so when we look at a space that we could be doing an exhibit, we go through and we say, well, how much space do we have, realistically, what animals can go there? And then we sit there and we then think, well, what are their requirements? What do they need? What do they need for resting, what do they need for locomotion, moving around?  

16:03 

Also, a lot of animals will come in social groups. A lot of animals are social, and so what are their requirements there? And if it is a social group, well then the space needs to be bigger to be able to have them regulate their space from individuals of their species or their social companions, as you will. And so there's a lot of thought on that end. But then furthermore, you then go and look at their natural history. 

16:30

If you build an exhibit for a jaguar, for example, you also want to include not just a lot of space on the ground but a lot of vertical space, because they are an arboreal cat, they'll go up into the trees and they climb, and so you really have to tie all of that in. So, it's a big design process. Of course, we always want to make sure that the space that we provide for them is optimal for their well-being, but we also want to make sure that the guests can really see what space they're in too, and so it takes a while to design and then, once you have a design, then it goes into the construction phase and, like all construction projects, sometimes that gets pushed back, but it's definitely worth the wait once you have those new exhibits open and you have those animals out there and you're seeing how they're in those exhibits and, behaviorally, how they're responding to their new space. 

Dr. Biology:

17:23

You know what I'm waiting for. 

Danielle:

17:25

Predator Passage yes. 

Dr. Biology:

17:29

I think, what the meerkats? Aren't they going to be in there? 

Danielle:

17:31

We're going to have meerkats and hyenas, then we're going to have a leopard, as well as African lions. 

Dr. Biology: 

17:38

Wow. 

Danielle:

17:39 

I know it's going to be amazing once it opens.  

Dr. Biology:

17:42 

And we delay the opening. And why? 

Danielle: 

17:46 

Well, sometimes construction projects might take a little longer. But also, we have to think about where we are. We're in Phoenix. It is so warm here during the summer that when we talk about bringing in animals for these new exhibits or transfers, we also have to consider what is the weather like, and is this the optimal time to bring them in? And for a good part of our year the answer is no. It is way too warm, and so we do have to wait for that perfect window for them to come in when it's a little cooler, so that they can adjust to not only the new space but also the weather.  

Dr. Biology: 

18:22 

All right, I've got to get back to play again. Okay, Because I would like to know if you have at least one and you might have more than one so you can pick one or two favorite experiences with the animals really looking like they're enjoying what they're doing, and something that maybe surprised you. 

Danielle:

18:45 

You know, this to me is probably one of the funniest things I've ever gotten to witness. But we offer a lot of our animals foraging devices, and by foraging devices, I mean items that will extend the amount of time that they take to consume their food, and by that it might take longer for them to get it, and then they have to chew it, eat it, process it, and so these foraging devices are probably the most common behavioral nurturement that you'll see, and they can come in all shapes and sizes, all different materials, and they can be for the smallest of animals to the largest of animals. And there are some devices that are specifically made for animals, like for foraging, like, so people at home could use them for their pets too. And we have in our Harmony Farms, in our Children's Zoo area we have three equines. They are Strawberry the miniature horse, we have Dinky the miniature donkey, and Popeye the mule, and these guys, they were all given the same enrichment item, a pellet ball, and it has a hole in it so that the keepers can put their pelleted diet in it, and then they have to figure out, well, how do I get the pellets out and then I get to eat it. And every single one of them. They're lined up right next to each other on their exhibit. 

20:10

Every single one of them used a different method and I thought that was the most intriguing thing to watch, and any person that would come by all the guests I would excitedly tell them watch them, watch how they do it.  

20:21 

So, it was really funny, because Strawberry would knock it around and would seem to get the most exercise from this. She would knock it around and then she would follow it and she would go all over trying to get the pellets out of this ball. Dinky was a little more reserved, would knock it around but would not go as far, wouldn't knock it as hard and still would get all the pellets out of it. But then you had Popeye, and Popeye would just put his nose on the end of it and he would shake it back and forth with his head, so he wasn't moving an inch, but he was getting all the pellets out of it. And I think that is just the funniest example of how behavioral enrichment it serves a goal. Every animal is going to problem solve differently, every animal is going to utilize it differently, and so they surprised us how they use them.  

Dr. Biology: 

21:10 

Is there an animal that solved a problem that you were a little bit surprised and maybe solved a problem that you didn't want them to solve?  

Danielle:

21:17

Yes, definitely. It probably happens way more than I'd like to admit. But let's see, not too long ago I thought, well, how can we use cardboard boxes differently? Cardboard boxes are probably one of the most common items that we can give our animals, because we always have cardboard boxes, our staff can bring them in and we can use them in a variety of ways. But I thought you know, how can I make this cardboard box a little more challenging? So, I decided to put some obstacles or blockers in it. The keepers would put the food in it so it wouldn't just fall right out. 

21:54

And then I decided to essentially paper mâché the outside of it closed so they couldn't just open the box. There was a hole on top, so they'd have to kind of juggle it around. And I gave that to our orangutan keepers to give to our orangutans. And Wgasa, one of our males, decided I'm not going to lift this up and try and get the food items out of the hole, I'm just gonna rip off the paper mâché and then I'm gonna open it that way and I walked away from that feeling defeated. But you know what? It still achieved the goal of extending the amount of time it took him to eat his food and he definitely problem-solved. He just problem-solved in a way I didn't expect. 

Dr. Biology:

22:33

Yeah, very quick. When we talk about well-being, we talk about play, and these are all going to come together. It's about exercise. So, one of the things I'd like to know is how do you develop these activities that make sure that an animal is getting the right amount of exercise so that they can keep their health up? 

Danielle: 

22:56 

A lot of it relies on experience that the keepers have. Well, you know, I've done this at a different zoo with this animal. Maybe this can work with this animal. It takes a lot about their natural history. Well, how would they naturally move through their environment? How can we encourage that? 

23:11 

It also takes into account safety. Safety is important as well. You can put a ball in an exhibit and get an animal to move that ball around. Predators or things like a tiger would be probably the best example of that because a ball could stimulate their prey drive where they see that movement and they want to chase it. But what if the exhibit has a slope in it? And what if that ball runs down and happens to hit the fence or hit the glass? So you do have to consider safety as well, and so a lot of that just relies on the experience of the keepers, the managers, the vet staff to ensure that the activity chosen is going to play into their natural history, their intended goal and their needs, but also be done in an appropriate and safe manner. 

Dr. Biology:

24:02

So, how do you know if an animal is in shape? 

Danielle: 

24:05

That's a great question.  

24:06 

So, our keepers, they form these great relationships with the animals and in general, there are several categories of behavioral enrichment, one of them being social, and social enrichment can include interacting with humans.  

24:20 

So, we do that through training, and so the keepers are able to train their animals to go on a scale, get their weight. But then also, it's not just about the number on the scale, it's also about how they look, and so that's where we rely on the vet staff and their expertise and their knowledge to come in and get a good look at the animal and say well, they're at a decent weight, but maybe their body condition is not where we need it to be, maybe they need to gain more weight, maybe they need to lose a little weight. They do definitely get all the food they could possibly want, but we like to make sure that they're still healthy. So we look at their weight, we look at their body condition, and then they'll make adjustments from there as needed, and that might include diet decreases, that might include more exercise, providing enrichment that will help increase their exercise and movement, and that's not just for their weight as well, that's also can be for their joint health, things like that, so it really is tailored to the individual.  

Dr. Biology: 

25:23 

It's the same thing that we have to do as we get older. We need to make sure that we continue to exercise for our joints for our bone strength for our muscles. After, I'd say, roughly 40 years of age for humans, you start to lose muscle mass. If you don't use it, you are going to lose it. Well on, ask a Biologist. Before my guests can leave, I always ask three questions All right? So are you ready? I'm ready, all right. When did you first know you wanted to work at a zoo?  

Danielle: 

26:00 

I would say probably when I was young, I was probably around 10, 11 years old and I actually went to SeaWorld, and I was inspired from my experience there. And it wasn't the experience of seeing the shows or seeing all of the animals, my experience was at the end of the night, on the way out of the park. We're heading to our car. We just decided to make one last stop over near where the Orca whales were, and just so happened that one of the trainers was out there talking to this animal wasn't really interacting with their animal and any formal capacity, just talking, and you can really see that bond and that trainer spent time talking to me. All about them. 

26:45 

You know their natural history and this individual, what they like, and from there on I was so inspired on how a person could have that great of a relationship with an animal and from there I just knew I wanted to work with animals and it probably wasn't until I was in college that I just happened to start volunteering at an aquarium in their husbandry department taking care of their animals that I realized this is exactly where I want to be in a zoo or an aquarium doing this job. So, what's your degree in? I have a degree in organismal biology. It used to be zoology, but it got combined with botany and ecology, so overall organismal biology and that's what I studied all throughout college and volunteered at the same time, and it was a lot of fun.  

27:40 

Okay.  

Dr. Biology: 

27:41 

Now, I'm always a little bit mean on the second question, because we learned how you got to where you want to be and almost every guest I haven't. I don't think I've ever had a guest that didn't love what they do, yeah, which is great, but I'm going to take it all away for this thought experiment. You're not going to be able to be at a zoo at all, okay, and I'm going to take away probably teaching, because there's a lot of teaching in your, in what you do. What would you be or what would you do if you could do anything?  

Danielle: 

28:18 

Definitely would still be in the realm of science. I'm a science person. I think that what has always fascinated me and where I've lived, I've always been fascinated by them is storms. For some reason I don't know why Storms are very interesting to me. They make me feel very humble about where I live, and so I think I would want to do something related to whether probably not to go as far as storm chasing, but I think that would be really fun and interesting to learn about.  

Dr. Biology: 

28:53 

Well, you talk about unpredictable animals, but storms are about as unpredictable as it gets Exactly. Wow, hmm. Yeah, I was just gonna say you're gonna be a storm chaser, but you're gonna go a little bit short of being a storm chaser. 

Danielle: 

29:04 

Probably. I don't know if I have the gut for that or something.  

Dr. Biology: 

29:10 

I'm with you. I think I'll watch it from afar. So the last question, because we get a lot of questions from young and old or older people, I should say, that really love animals and actually would like to work at a zoo what advice would you have for someone who wants to have your job?  

Danielle: 

29:35 

Yeah, I started out as a zookeeper, and I think to get into where I'm at now which I absolutely love my job I think that you'd have to start out with having that hands-on experience of working with the animals and truly understanding them and their behavior and how you work with them.  

29:53 

In order to become a zookeeper, though, you definitely need to have both the education.  

29:59 

So you'd want to go to school, you'd want to study something like biology, zoology or even psychology, because, again, behavior is a huge part of it and then from there it's getting hands-on experience. So, for me, I started volunteering while I was in college, and I did that on Fridays and I went to class Monday through Thursday and from there I did internships. So, I would take the summer to try and go get more experience with different animals, and that hands-on experience is the most valuable thing that you can have. The education helps fuel your understanding, but the hands-on experience is really the know-how, and so that's the best way to get into the zoo field, to become a zookeeper, and from there, I guess the best piece of advice for anybody is, when you want to get into the zoo field, be open to the animals you want to work with, because there's not always going to be jobs with the very specific animals that you think you want to work with, and so be open to everything, because they might surprise you.  

Dr. Biology: 

31:06 

Right, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, someone might say I only want to work with the rhinos.  

Danielle: 

31:11 

Right.  

Dr. Biology: 

31:12 

That sounded so much fun, but you actually started out. I'm not mistaken as someone who worked with cats the big cats, right.  

Danielle: 

31:21 

So, my first experience was in a children's zoo with more domestic animals, goats and sheep and chickens, things like that and then I did actually quickly move over into a carnivore department, working with tigers and lions and cheetahs, and I definitely think carnivores are my love. Specifically, otters are a huge favorite of mine. But had I not done the other experience, I wouldn't have gotten to learn about other animals and experience other things, and really surprised by how much I enjoyed working with some of the other species that I've gotten to work with.  

Dr. Biology: 

32:01 

Until you actually live and work with them, you really don't know them, do you?

Danielle: 

31:50

Exactly  

Dr. Biology: 

Well, thank you so much for taking time out from your great group of animals that you could spend some time with us.  

Danielle: 

32:14 

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.  

Dr. Biology: 

32:17 

You have been listening to Ask a Biologist and my guest has been Daniel Wong. The behavioral enrichment and animal welfare coordinator at the Phoenix Zoo. Now, like most of our podcasts, we will be sure to add links and additional information in the show notes, so be sure to check those out. The Ask a Biologist podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University and is recorded in the Grass Roots Studio housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. And remember, even though our program is not broadcast live, you can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is askabiologist.asu.edu, or you can just use one of your favorite search tools and enter the words Ask a Biologist. As always, I'm Dr. Biology and I hope you're staying safe and healthy.

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Adventures of a Zoo Veterinarian

Dr. Biology

00:02

This is Ask A Biologist a program about the living world, and I'm Dr Biology. If you joined us for the last episode, you know that we are visiting the Phoenix Zoo. Yep, the animals are around, so you might be hearing them in the background during this podcast. Our guest this time is Dr. Gary West, the Senior Vice President of Animal Health and Living Collections at the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation, which is the group that runs the Phoenix Zoo. 

 00:35

 Now, if you listened to our first episode of our Zoo series with Bert Castro, the President, and CEO of the Zoo, you might remember that there are around 3,000 animals that call the zoo their home. He also mentioned they get free health care. That means Gary has about 3,000 furry, feathery, and sometimes scaly patients because he is the veterinarian of the Phoenix Zoo. With all those animals, you can bet he's a busy person and that no two days are the same. Just what is it like to be a doctor for thousands of animal patients? 

 01:13

 And we also learned last time there are over 300 animal species at the zoo. Can you imagine having that many different types of patients? Oh, and, to make things just a bit more challenging, none of them can talk, at least in the language humans understand, so they can't tell Dr West where it hurts or how they feel Now. That makes for a challenging job and one that I'm excited to learn more about. It's also a popular question for us at Ask A Biologist, especially the younger listeners that love animals and wonder how they can work with them. 

01:51

Many of them actually wanting to become veterinarians. So, let's get started. Welcome, Gary, and thank you for joining me on Ask A Biologist.

 Gary:

 02:00

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

 Dr. Biology:

 02:02

You know I was getting ready for the show, and I was writing down questions and then I wrote down another question, and another question. I probably could come up with a thousand and one questions, so we're probably not going to get to all of them, but we are going to get to some of the core things that I think are really interesting for a lot of our listeners. Just to let everybody know, we have a lot of questions that come in from people that want to know about how they can work with animals because they love animals, and, of course, we get a lot of veterinarian type of questions how do you become a veterinarian? And we haven't had one on the show. So, if you're going to do it, go big right? 

[Laughter]

 02:42

 So, here we are. You are a busy person with so many patients and that got me wondering, are you the only veterinarian on staff at the zoo? 

 Gary:

02:51

No, I'm not. There's a team of three veterinarians and three veterinary technicians, and so we all work together, cover the zoo 24 hours, seven days a week, and really help each other out. So, I have a great team over there. 

 Dr. Biology:

 03:04

Right, and you mentioned the veterinarian technician. This is something that a lot of people may not have the time or the money to go and get a degree so that they can be a veterinarian, but there are other ways to help animals in the basically animal healthcare area. So, the technicians, what do they do at the zoo? 

 Gary:

 03:25

 Well, probably my easiest analogy is really they are like nurses and they're really an integral part of our team. As a doctor I'm a little absent-minded, I forget things. They are really the glue that holds the medical center and the veterinary hospital together. So, they remember things that we forget. They remember the equipment. They're really good at the technical skills putting in intravenous catheters, collecting blood, preparing our lab samples, finding where we can get sometimes complicated medications for zoo animals. We might have to get things that a small animal, a dog, and cat veterinarian might not need to get. We get something for an elephant or a rattlesnake and so they are really integral in helping us find equipment or medications for those. Just really can't do our job without them. Often, they handle the animals and they are really good at collecting the samples. Just like you couldn't go to a hospital and be a hospitalized patient without a really great nursing team and nursing care and lab technicians and things like that at a human hospital. 

 Dr. Biology:

 04:24

I am so glad you mentioned nurses. I agree, I am married to a nurse, a nurse that deals with cancer patients, so I am ever so indebted to all the nurses that are out there Now. Your nurses just like you, they've got to work with the animals, and I had to say that's probably one of the most challenging things. Having just household pets, how do you know when an animal isn't feeling well? That's the challenge. 

 Gary:

 04:56

 That's a great question really brings in part of our other really key component to the team is the keepers, the curators, the animal managers. So, I say they are the first line of defense. They are incredibly dedicated individuals, typically have college degrees in biology or zoology, work with those animals on a day-to-day basis, for hours a day and for years at a time, and they really get to know the animals. So, as you mentioned, I can't go around the zoo and check on 3,000 animals every day. 

 05:24

The keepers can. They're feeding them, they're seeing normal bodily functions. Did they pee, did they poop, how are they feeling? How are they taking care of their babies maybe, and that kind of thing. And so, they’re the ones that really communicate to the veterinarians, just like you would as a pet owner. You know something's wrong with your dog or your cat. Your veterinarian might not know that, and so then you call your veterinarian and say there's just something not right here. He didn't come for his treats like he normally does. He's really quiet, he's not behaving normally. So, the keepers are really an essential part of that team at the zoo. 

 Dr. Biology:

 05:59

You brought up the fact that we know when we're at home, when our animals are a little bit off right. There's got to be different challenges, because of one thing you have so many different species and the other one is some species. Let's pick your primates, your monkeys, much easier to try to figure out when they're not feeling well versus. You mentioned rattlesnakes. How do you know when a rattlesnake isn't feeling well? 

 Gary:

 06:29

There's a lot of different things you’ve got to look at. So, a rattlesnake doesn't move around a lot. It may not eat every day but sometimes we see abnormal poop, fecal material. They may regurgitate a meal, vomit. The keepers weigh them on a regular basis. It's hard to just look at them and know sometimes if they've lost significant amounts of weight, if they're a smaller snake, so weights, body condition, did they eat a meal? When was the last meal? Are they? What I say is coiled tight and sort of had that musculature? That might scare you if you see them in the wild when they're coiled up, but that's what they should look like nice tone to them versus sort of laying abnormally. So, all of those sorts of things behavior, food consumption, body weights, and you know you bring up an interesting species there which I love reptiles. 

 07:16

But a huge challenge for us. Somebody can't just walk into the room with a rattlesnake and here you go, Dr West, like take a look at it. That snake's probably not gonna be too friendly to me and it's not gonna want me examining it, touching it, poking it, prodding it. So, that's where we use some specialized equipment. We have these clear plastic acrylic tubes. We have very experienced handlers. They're trained with venomous animals. 

 07:39

We have things on ground to mitigate risk, such as anti-venom and storage in case somebody gets bitten. We have a whole protocol with Banner [hospital] and the toxicologist at Banner sort of looking at what happens if somebody gets bit by a rattlesnake. All of these things to mitigate dangerous animal risk. But that animal will be gently guided with a pole into a clear plastic acrylic tube, so its head is covered. But then I can feel its tail, I can draw blood from its tail, I can examine it, feel its musculature and kind of goes back to seeing what's normal in that snake. So, I think you brought up a perfect species for a zoo veterinarian, which is a huge challenge, a safety risk, but we also have to provide care. So, there's just a lot of experience on the keeper side and the veterinary side that has to go into care for a snake. 

 Dr. Biology:

 08:20

So, that definitely is a challenge. The other challenge is scale right. You can have a really, really big dog at home, say. You could even have, I suppose, the people that have horses right? What about a rhino and an elephant? 

 Gary:

 08:37

Yep, that's sort of the other end of the spectrum there for challenges. We deal with the largest terrestrial land mammal. We have an Asian elephant, Indu, who's sweet and kind and gentle and really loves her keepers. We can do a lot of things through training and behavioral enrichment and really do a lot with her. But on the other side, if she does not want to do something or she's upset about something, it's a potentially very dangerous situation. 

 09:04

Luckily those animals are highly intelligent, and work well with the keepers. They're typically what I say are friendly animals, not particularly aggressive animals, and so the keepers can do a lot of things with them through training. For an example, Indu had a urinary tract infection. We could do a lot of the work up with her in a sort of a confined space, what we call an elephant chute, so she walks into it and we could do an ultrasound with her awake and that sort of thing. The keepers can draw blood, they can give injections. So, she's trained for all those sorts of things. 

09:35

It's reinforced with a positive manner, usually food. That's the most positive thing for everybody, including myself. She does really well with that. We rarely would have to anesthetize her, or we wouldn't get in the same space with her. Typically, if she was awake, an elephant could accidentally hurt you just by spinning around or accidentally pushing you against a wall or a pole. You're talking about 8-to-9,000-pound animal, so I don't think she would necessarily do it in a malicious way, but she could accidentally really hurt somebody, sit on you, step on you, knock you over and really do some damage. 

 10:04

The rhinoceros another good example. We have a white rhinoceros in the Greater One Horned Asian rhinoceros at the zoo and we have had some recurrent inflammatory eye disease in one of our female rhinos and I would give a lot of credit to the keepers. They can have her come up station. She puts her head through two poles so we don't have to be right next to her. They can allow us to come up again. Positive reinforcement typically food she eats. We can look at her eyes while she has her head down eating. We can flush her eyes out, administer eyewitness and that sort of thing. So, a lot of times, through training in the facilities, we can work around them safely. 

 Dr. Biology:

 10:39

Wow, it just boggles my mind 300 different species. One day you're treating an elephant (thousands of pounds). The next day you're treating a bird in the aviary. And it brings up a question for me. You do have a staff of veterinarians. So, one of the interesting things there is do you specialize in different species? 

 Gary:

 11:02

We don't. That's what's really great about wildlife medicine for me. I probably have a short attention span,  but I have a real interest in wildlife and I've been a veterinarian for I have to think now 28 years and I'm still super excited about it. I don't even think about the years, because we do get to work with such a wide variety of species and work with animals that are often rare and in danger. It takes some training, though. We have a program at the zoo where we actually train graduate veterinarians in zoological medicine. They come to us for a one-year internship, then they go on typically to do more training or get a job in zoo medicine. 

 11:37

So, related to that question, you go to veterinary school. You learn about domestic animals. There are more zoo and wildlife programs now kind of creeping in, but when I was in school in the 90s there really wasn't a whole lot. So, you really have to get some training after veterinary school. But what I tell people I don't want to oversimplify it because a lot of these animals are dangerous and they're different. But a rhinoceros is really like a horse as far as its gastrointestinal tract, its feet. A giraffe I always joke about is a cow with a long neck. It's a ruminant like a cow. It's got a four-chambered stomach. That sort of thing Sea lions we don't have at the zoo but I've worked with. 

 12:13

To me, they're a lot like a dog with flippers. Really, anatomically they're like a dog. I mean they have some adaptations for diving and holding their breath and that sort of thing. Where we get and I say weird, but I say it in a complimentary manner where we get the weird things, is where we really have a lot to learn still and you have to kind of learn on the job or through training with other experienced veterinarians. And those animals are the reptiles, the birds, the stingrays, the fish, the sharks, those sorts of things, because it just really isn't a lot of that when you go to veterinary school. So, those are some of the big challenges. 

 Dr. Biology:

 12:46

Right, and speaking of challenges, we spoke about this on the last episode and, unfortunately, Phoenix is still under an amazing heat wave. 

 Gary:

 12:56

 Yes. 

 Dr. Biology:

 12:57

It's just been incredibly brutal for all animals, which we include humans, and we talked about it on the last show and Bert mentioned that the animals. One of the nice things is you give choice. They can decide whether they want to be out in the heat and there are places where they can get away from it, but it's still a lot of heat even if you are. As Bert mentioned, this is a zoo that specializes in animals that are used to warm climate areas. From your perspective, have some of the animals been struggling? 

 Gary:

 13:33

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think so. People are struggling, the animals are going to struggle Again. We mitigate some of that through misters shading and we have a loud, arid desert species that live at the zoo. Should I specialize in that? And you know, through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums we have very good, scientifically published husbandry manuals talking about temperature parameters. So, a Sumatran tiger, yes, can't really tolerate 118, so we give it access to air-conditioned space. If it wants to go out in the shade or to the pond, it can. But you know, if you come out to the zoo in the afternoon, to be honest, you're probably not going to see a tiger, it's going to be indoors and that's its choice. Orangutans, we have temperature parameters. They're really not going to be out, although we do have indoor space and you've probably seen it where there's glass viewing, and you can see them inside. 

 14:18

But yeah, you know, recently a species that kind of surprised me was our big male Masai giraffe Migu. You know, giraffes obviously are from Africa. They live in hot, dry, arid. They often stand right out in the direct sunlight when it's 100-plus degrees. We're not really sure why, but he did have some issues. He was getting dehydrated. We could tell that through, you know, collecting urine and sort of decreased urine output and decreased fecal output and he wasn't eating as well. Again, some of those things we talked about. And the keepers know that, like you know, he's not doing what he normally should do. And so, we got together as a team the veterinarians and the hoof stock manager and the hoof stock keepers and sort of talked about what we could do, because a big, huge, 12, 13-hundred-pound male giraffe is probably not going to let me do a whole lot awake and the risk of anesthetizing a giraffe is very, very high. It's not easy to anesthetize him. 

 15:08

But kind of cutting to the story, sometimes you forget some of the simple things. So, I know from veterinary school a cow doesn't really want to drink water. That's over 80 degrees. So, we looked at water temperature. It was pretty warm. The other giraffes were drinking and maybe that put him off. So, we iced down his water, we put electrolytes, power-aid type things in his water and some sprinkled on his food. Each stayed inside quite a bit. It's more shaded, there's fans, there's misters, there's not air conditioning in that giraffe barn, which isn't really necessary. They're actually more cold-sensitive than heat-sensitive. But I think once he started getting some of those electrolytes, he started drinking more and then he started eating more and now he's sort of back to normal. But yeah, he was an example that kind of surprised me, but it happened. 

 Dr. Biology:

 15:51

Right, and it's just one of those things that a lot of times, back to humans, we don't always pay attention. Humans run into the same sort of thing where we're just not used to it for this length of time, and so, we might end up a little bit dehydrated. One of the things that I learned in the last episode was that zoos have a much bigger footprint in animal conservation outside of the zoo than I realized, and it was a pleasant surprise. I would say, in your role, are there specific conservation efforts you're involved with? 

 Gary:

 16:29

 Well, certainly with all the animals that have a conservation need at the zoo we work with our conservation department. So, the Black-footed Ferret, which gets reintroduced back to the wild, the offspring from the zoo, the Chiricahua, leopard, frog and those sorts of species. I've also been involved for the last several years down in Paraguay, in Latin America, working with the Chacoan peccary and the Lowland Tapir. So, the Phoenix Zoo has really a lot of great conservation programs that they're involved with and that was one. We've been involved with the Chacoan peccary for many years and if folks don't know, it's sort of the giant peccary. It's related to our javelina, our collared peccary. Here in Arizona, it was thought to be extinct and then rediscovered about 1970. A biologist was in the Chacoan area of South America, which is in Paraguay, Bolivia and even down into Argentina. Really incredibly biodiverse, just a wonderful place. I just love it down there. There's just so many interesting species down there. But the Chacoan Peccary lives in that area. It's a lot like Arizona it's dry, it's arid, but those peccaries don't deal very well with human encroachment. They don't deal very well around people Like you'll see the collared peccaries in your neighborhood and running around here. The Chacoan peccaries just aren't that kind of an animal. They're listed as in danger now. They're very rare now. 

 17:42

 The Phoenix Zoo was the first zoo actually to house that species in North America. Back in the 90s, we imported animals from Paraguay and now they're all throughout North American zoos and very successful breeding programs. I was asked because of our knowledge of working with them in a zoo, we can pass that on to our wild counterparts. Working with wild animals and working with biologists in those countries. I had quite a lot of experience working with the anesthesia of Chacoan peccaries how to immobilize them safely, wake them up and make sure everything's okay. I was invited down and we immobilized about a hundred of them for genetic analysis to look at their blood work, and their parameters and collect some anesthesia data and that sort of thing. Now we're placing radio collars on lowland tapers in the region actually wild animals and tracking their sort of movements in the areas. 

 18:29

 Physiologically, anatomically, they're in the horse rhinoceros family. You may have not seen one, but if you look one up it's sort of a stout, 500-pound, solidly built animal. Some people say they're sort of look like a pig, but they're really more horse-like. They have a long sort of proboscis or nose that they kind of use to navigate the environment. They have three toes, so just sort of a large terrestrial mammal. They're an herbivore. 

18:54

We'd love to see if there's a habitat where Chacoan peccaries might be able to be released back to the wild when we work with the center down there, the only one in the world dedicated to the conservation of Chacoan peccaries, where they breed them in a managed care setting and then we're hoping to re-release them. So, I've been pretty excited about that. You know, in a zoo you want to do everything. I'd love to go work on conservation projects all the time everywhere, but you know I have a job to do. I have the zoo animals to take care of. So, I've learned as I've gotten older to try to concentrate my efforts and expertise maybe in a more limited area. So, the work on Paraguay has really sort of fulfilled that. I really love working with the folks down there and the animals down there and it's an incredible area but just like everywhere in the world, it's in danger from farming, development and deforestation and that sort of thing. So, there's certainly challenges down there. 

 Dr. Biology:

 19:41

 Right, we actually also talked about some of the work that's being done with some jaguars down there and beyond the jaguars, some other animals dealing with animal corridors Lots of really great things going on with conservation outside of the zoo. Yes, a lot With the zoo being involved For this episode, I thought I would pull some of the questions that kids have asked, so we're going to call this kind of a lightning round right, we're going to do this fast. 

 Gary:

 20:05

 Right, think fast, aren't we? 

 Dr. Biology:

 20:07

I'll just start rattling off questions and see what we can do. Alright, what's your favorite animal to take care of, and why? 

 Gary:

 20:14

 Gosh. You know, I knew you're gonna ask that and I don't want to cop out. As a zoo veterinarian, I have to work with a lot of animals and I always feel bad I'm gonna leave somebody out or keepers out with their animal. I've always been infatuated with reptiles and birds, but I was recently talking about maned wolves, met the zoo. They're also found in the Chaco region of South America where I do some work, and so and I like to highlight some of the lesser-known species. So, I'm gonna say this week it's the maned wolf. They call it a fox on stilts. So, it's a big red wolf. It's not really a fox, it's not really a wolf. It's actually 50% of its diet is like a fruit-vegetable type diet, so it's not a particularly dangerous carnivore. They smell kind of like a skunk. I kind of like their smell, though they have kind of a kind of a difference if you go by there in the morning. So, I'm gonna say the maned wolf. 

 Dr. Biology:

 20:58

 Okay, so they're an omnivore if they're eating things? Yeah, exactly, yeah, great, yeah, it's great. All right, next one how do you give medicine to animals? Do they take it like we do? 

 Gary:

 21:08

 No, I mean, they take it probably, maybe like a toddler if you can remember back, you know having kids. You might have to hide it in some juice. It might need to taste good. You might have to hide it in a treat or something like that. But worst case scenario, we sometimes have to pull out the dart gun. That's no fun for the animal and so kind of like if you have to go to the doctor to get a shot, get a vaccine. Animals might be trained for a shot but sometimes they aren't and we might have to actually pull out the dart gun, which is kind of like a projected Syringe into your arm or rear end. We hope they take it orally but you know you can't administer everything orally. Vaccines, most of them, are not oral, except for like the polio vaccine, and so sometimes we have to inject those. 

 Dr. Biology:

 21:50

 Okay, have you ever had to rescue an animal from the wild and bring it to the zoo? 

 Gary:

 21:55

 Well, we have several animals that have come from Rehabilitation facilities, or we've worked with Arizona game and fish. Some examples I think you talked about in your podcast with Burt, our CEO, about the bald eagles. They can't fly, they're injured, can be re-released to the wild so they came from rehabilitation facilities. Our entire group of collared peccaries, our javelinas on the Arizona Trail. Unfortunately, uh, probably a well-meaning person thought he or she was doing a good thing, but they were feeding this group of peccaries in their backyard. They became very habituated to people and then they can become dangerous because they'll kind of try to push you away from the food or come after you for food, and so game and fish said hey, can you please take a group of peccaries and it's three boys, three girls. So, you named them after the Brady bunch kids and we were able to take them all in and they're happy as can be at the zoo. So, we have several animals on the Arizona trail that are native Arizona species, that came from rehabilitation facilities. 

 Dr. Biology:

 22:49

 Yeah. So, the next one, do animals ever get scared when you need to check on them or give them shots? 

 Gary:

 22:55

 Yeah, that's probably the part of the job I don't like most of the animals we love, we care about, they don't really like us. They see us as bringing some sort of uncomfortable situation to them, particularly primates. You know, they're super intelligent. There's an orangutan at the zoo. I love her but I've had to treat her for many medical conditions over the years and she will come running and hitting the glass and spitting at me and does not realize I want to help her. But also, the prey species. 

 23:21

 So, if you look at a lot of the hoofstock species again, which I love. You know, huffstock, big horn sheep, pronghorn, antelope, Nyala, giraffe, oryx , Arabian oryx, that sort of thing they have flight distances and what I mean by that is they don't want you to get too close. You might be a predator. And so, when we go to see them, observe them, try to give them medications, capture them they're often pacing, running, trying to get away. So, yeah, I would, I would say. Unfortunately, they are scared. It makes us feel bad, but we have to just remind ourselves we really are trying to help them, all right. 

 Dr. Biology:

 23:55

 Have you ever been scared while taking care of an animal? 

 Gary:

 24:02

 For sure. We, you know we work with a lot of Potentially dangerous animals. We have to think about all our protocols and our safety measures and have our group meetings and our medical Rounds and talk about what we're gonna do if this happens or that happens. Probably the thing that scares me most is I, you know, I don't want to make a mistake, I want a good outcome for the animal, and I don't want anything bad to happen to the animal. 

 24:22

 But I do have a story from 25 years ago where at another zoo not the Phoenix Zoo a grizzly bear actually got loose on grounds, and I was terrified because this was a bear that had again, we went to go back to the rehabilitation rescue had been a nuisance bear at Yellowstone and she had been kind of on the Strike three list. We need to find her home. She's going after campers. So, she ended up at the zoo I worked at. So, I always in my mind I thought she's not scared of people, grizzly bear, very dangerous. Well, she ended up loose on zoo grounds on a Saturday morning. We had to dart her and put her back in the exhibit and so, yeah, that scared me but luckily everything went well. 

 Dr. Biology:

 24:59

 All right, well, I'm gonna shift gears. Okay, that was great. Okay, that was kind of a lightning round which I haven't had guests do, so you did a great job. Okay, thank you. Let's shift to the last section, and this is where I never let my scientist leave without answering three questions. All right, we'll start with. When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist, and in this case, a veterinarian? 

 Gary:

 25:23

 I always wanted to work with wildlife. So, as a kid my mom always sort of fostered that in me. We raised baby rabbits and squirrels. I had a duck for a while. She would encourage me by getting books on animals. Of course, probably a lot of people in my generation watched Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom with Marlon Perkins and so those sort of nature shows back then and books really sort of got me interested in wildlife and so I knew I wanted to work with wild animals in some sort of capacity conservation and endangered species, helping wildlife. And then, you know, I got into college. I went to undergrad. I was actually an animal ecology biology major and undergrad. 

 26:01

 I really didn't think about veterinary medicine when my high school counselor and when I talked to them a little bit about it they're like well, you have to go to college for eight years. And I thought, geez, there's no way I'm going to do that. I can't go to college for eight years. You know you're thinking about that as a 16, 17-year-old, not realizing you have your whole life ahead of you. So, I went to undergrad. I really loved my zoology, my animal ecology and sort of anatomy and physiology classes and I had a friend and he said you know, I'm going to go into veterinary medicine, like you can work with tigers and lions and bears and gorillas and zoo animals. I never really thought of that and I'm like, well, maybe that's sort of the way to work with wildlife. I had sort of planned to possibly, you know, get a master's degree or PhD if I was able to and study wildlife in the wild. You know, I imagined myself sitting like Jane Goodall, you know, in Africa observing animals and writing about them and sort of falling in love with all of that. 

 26:56

 But then I got an opportunity to spend some time with a zoo veterinarian and I grew up in rural Iowa and I went to Iowa State University and there wasn't a major zoo near me. So, I traveled about three hours to a large zoo and the veterinarian there she was nice enough to. It's funny because now we get a lot of those requests and I'm kind of become the grumpy old vet where I like I don't have time for these young people. But I have to remember somebody did this for me and so she said come on over, Gary and like you can hang out with me for the day, because I'm like I'm thinking about this I don't know if I want to do this, but maybe, and I remember she anesthetized and mobilized a polar bear when I was there and I was just like star struck. This bear was so big, its feet were as big as my head and it could tell she was so happy, the most positive influence, and I felt almost like I was harassing her after that. Can I come back?

 27:45

Can I do something else? Then she worked on a tiger one day and I was just, oh my gosh, this is what I got to do. Like you get to actually touch the animals. You're not in the field looking at them from hundreds of yards away. You get to touch them. You get to get blood samples, you get to safely handle them, wake them back up and possibly save them from a life-threatening illness. And so, I was so inspired by that. 

28:04

 I went back and I really started studying hard because, although I took my studies seriously, you have to take it up a notch if you're going to get into veterinary school and things like organic chemistry and physics and things that I may not have really loved before. I'm like I've got to do well on these courses if I want to do this, and so that's sort of my path. I think a lot of times nowadays, you know people have pets and they go to the veterinarian's office and that's sort of how they want to be a veterinarian and that's great. I didn't really have those role models. 

28:31

I grew up in rural Iowa. Most of it was large animal, food animal type animals. Growing up in the 70s I had pets, but you didn't really think about taking them to the vet and the vet really didn't do a whole lot with dogs, cats or guinea pigs or fish or that sort of thing and in rural Iowa. So, I didn't really have those kind of role models as a kid. As a veterinarian I really was more interested in wildlife, so it kind of took a little bit of a different path that way. 

 Dr. Biology:

 28:56

 Well, I'm going to do the usual thing and I'm going to take it all away from you after all these years, right? Especially, you know, having to go through basically med school and all that work. If you weren't a veterinarian, if I took that away from you and you had to pick some other kind of career, what would you do or be? What would you like to do or be? 

 Gary:

 29:20

 Yeah, that's. That's a great question. I am living a dream, I would have to admit, and so I'm super satisfied and happy with my career and you know, again, after 28 years, I love it, but if I didn't, I would just do something very calming and relaxing about being out in nature. So, if I worked at an, in a park, as a park guide, or if I could be a rock climber and teach people how to do that or something, I'd probably be interested in that. 

 29:45

 As a, you know, 11, 12, 13-year-old, I made some trips to Canada fishing with my father and at that time I dreamed I want to be a fishing guide. I loved catching fish and that sort of thing, but it was being out in nature on a lake and hearing loons, seeing bears and moose in Canada, just something just so very relaxing about being out in nature, and I even have to remind myself of that now. You know I get removed from it and I need to sort of get back into it. So, I think it'd be something related to wildlife, to nature, you know, being out, exploring and that sort of thing, trying to make a living that way, which is tough to do Unless you're really, really good at something, or you're great on social media maybe, or something like that. It's tough to make a living that way. You know, I love to canoe and to kayak and all those sorts of things, so probably some sort of nature-based job, right?  

 Dr. Biology:

 30:36

 Last question.

Gary:

30:51

Okay, 

What advice would you have for a young scientist, a future veterinarian Perhaps, who wanted to follow your footsteps, so to speak? 

Gary:

30:49

 Yeah, I always start off. I mean I want to be encouraging and I sometimes come across as discouraging Because it's difficult. You know a lot of people want to do it. I see why I'm doing it. I love it. I would worry even nowadays, like would I be able to get the job that I have now If I was sort of getting into it now Just because a lot of people want to do it? 

 31:08

 You know, I think a lot of people over-focus on animal experience. Certainly, you want animal experience. You know how to take care of animals, sort of the ups and downs of that. I think veterinary medicine has incredible highs and incredible lows and so you have got to think about that. And I think you know what we see nowadays, some of that emotional toll that it takes on people you have to be prepared for too. So, not to be discouraging, but think about that. You know we get to hug and love animals and save animals and bring them back from life-threatening diseases. Sometimes we lose and that can be very, very sad. I think that even at this point in my life it's an emotional toll. You work day and night with an animal and you still lose to cancer or some bad disease and it's just. It just punches you in the gut. But you know other animals need you, you know your coworkers need you. So, you think you have to think about that, but also thinking about get good grades and stay in school, because I think people overemphasize the animal experience and that's the end goal. 

32:06

 But you've got to get through in college Organic chemistry, physics, physiology, maybe a difficult anatomy class, all of that hard science I say they sort of weed you out and it's kind of a natural weed out, but that is sort of what those classes do. You have to get high GPAs and I worked on a vet school admissions committee when I was a faculty member at a veterinary school and there's a lot of data that shows GPA and those hard science classes Directly correlate to success as a veterinary student. So, you know you think undergrad is hard. I did too. But veterinary school is a notch up. I say it's twice as hard, probably more. I mean you're taking 21, 23 credits a semester, a lot of hard science, a lot of material, 8 to 530 every day. You might have patient care. When you get your third or fourth year on top of that, I sound like somebody who's you know kind of discouraging, but I think you just have to be mentally prepared for that. 

32:58

I think a lot of people think they're going to jump right into Working with animals and that's again the end goal. But there's a lot of hard work that has to be done before that and really working hard on that science. Because I even thought when I was an organic chem Like oh my gosh, like why do I need this? Well, when you take pharmacology class and you're learning about drugs and pharmacokinetics of drugs and how they interact with the body, okay, now I understand why I need chemistry. I didn't really understand that before and that's a hard class. Pharmacology is hard. You're going to go to a medication to an animal. You're going to anesthetize an animal, maybe give it something for pain. You got to know how does that interact with other drugs? How does that interact with the kidneys, the liver, that sort of thing? So, the physiology, the pharmacology it's. 

 Dr. Biology:

 33:43

 You know, there's a lot of science Right, and I would say it's a realistic outlook or a realistic perspective on how to get there. So, yes, I agree, those courses can be tough, but if you're persistent and you're passionate I guess the two P's persistent and passionate that will work well for you. Well, Gary, I want to thank you again for taking time out from your busy job with all the animals and to sit down and have a chat on Ask A Biologist. 

Gary:

 34:14

 Well, thank you, it was a lot of fun and I appreciate you having me. 

 Dr. Biology:

 34:17

 You have been listening to Ask A Biologist, and my guest has been Dr. Gary West, the Senior Vice President of Animal Health and Living Collections at the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation, which is the group that runs the Phoenix Zoo. It also means Gary is the doctor to many animals and many different kinds of animals. As we do with our other episodes, we'll include links to some of the content that you might want to follow up on, like how to go visit the zoo, or maybe you want to go to the Ask A Biologist section on how to become a biologist, because if you want to become a veterinarian, it's not uncommon to get a degree in biology first. The Ask A Biologist podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University and is recorded in the Grassroots Studio Housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Now, obviously, we're not there today. 

 35:18

We're actually at the Phoenix Zoo, but that's where we usually do the recordings. And remember, even though our program is not broadcast live, you can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is askabiologist.asu.edu, or you can just use your favorite search tool and enter the words ask a biologist. As always, I'm Dr. Biology and I hope you're staying safe and healthy.

---

Breathtaking Biology – a metabolome adventure

Ask A Biologist Podcast, Vol 125
Podcast Interview with Heather Bean

 

Dr. Biology:

This is Ask A Biologist. A program about the living world. And I'm Dr. Biology. For some of our listeners, Metabolome is a new word. And if today's episode is going to be an adventure, we should begin with what a metabolome is. So, I want you just to imagine you have a workshop filled with lots of different tools, and each tool represents a molecule in your body. Now think about all the different ways these tools can be used to interact with each other. That's kind of what a metabolome is. 

For a real metabolome, it is a collection of all the different molecules in your body. These molecules called metabolites are important because they help your body do different things. Some metabolites give you energy. Some help your cells grow and others help your body get rid of waste. To name just a few. Just like how different tools can be combined with other tools and used in different ways, the molecules in your body can also be arranged and used in different ways. 

Your body can take in food and break it down into smaller molecules that it needs. It can also change the molecules into different forms to use it in different parts of your body. Some scientists study the metabolome to understand how these molecules work together and how they affect our health. They can look at different metabolites in your body and see if there are any patterns or changes that might be related to certain diseases or conditions. 

Our guide for this episode is Heather Bean. She's a bioanalytical chemist and a faculty member in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. Her research is all about, well, something that takes your breath away and figures out what's in it. Heather, thank you so much for joining me on Ask A Biologist.

Heather:

Thank you so much. Dr. Biology I'm so happy to be here.

Dr. Biology:

Now, I gave my view or my definition of what a metabolome is. Do you agree or would you put a little bit of your own twist on it?

Heather:

I thought that was a really great start. There are different ways that people think about the metabolome often depending on what they are interested in. In the metabolome some people are interested in how the metabolome fits into what we call the central dogma of biology, how our genes encode all the information about how our entire organism is supposed to work, how those genes are transcribed into RNA that are instructions for making proteins. 

The proteins can be structural. They can be enzymatic and perform functions in our body. And then beyond the proteome or the collection of proteins in our body is the metabolome. That is sort of the next link in the chain of going from our genes to our entire phenotype. All the expressions and the ways that our cells function, our organs function, our tissues function, how our entire bodies function, that's our phenotype. 

So, the metabolome is one of the ways I think of it is a link in that chain between our entire being in the genes that lay out the instructions for what we are.

Dr. Biology:

And it's perfect timing because the last episode we had Brandon Ogbunu in here and he's a big fan of RNA, and we actually talked about this central dogma of biology. So, this is the next piece in the story. Well, we talk about metabolomes, and we said animals and plants. So, we're saying all living things.

Heather:

That's true.

Dr. Biology:

So, you have a metabolome and I have metabolome. Yes. Is your metabolism the same as my metabolism?

Heather:

Absolutely not. And my metabolome right now, as I sit at this chair, talking with you is not the same as it was this morning right after I ate breakfast. And it's not the same as it was when I ate the same breakfast yesterday. 

Our metabolome is constantly changing. It's a reflection of everything that we are taking in as far as nutrients. Everything that we are exposed to in our environment, everything that our cells are producing as a process of their day to day living and all of the waste that is being generated. The metabolome is really a very small snapshot in time of how our entire organism is operating. And my metabolism is different than your metabolome is.

Our metabolisms are going to be different from another person's. But part of what I'm interested in is not just the differences, but what are some of the commonalities between metabolomes and what that can tell us about our current physical state at this time?

Dr. Biology:

Could this lead us into some areas such as I mentioned a little bit about disease? Is this one area that would be really important to know about how some metabolisms are very similar?

Heather:

Yes, that's something that I actually specialize in. So, one of my big interests in the metabolome is how we can use metabolic information to diagnose disease or even to just track health. So, one of the things that we routinely do when we go to the doctor's office, particularly once we get a little older, is we give blood samples to monitor our health. And when our blood is taken, there are hormones that are measured checking for the levels of our thyroid or of our insulin. 

There are other markers of inflammation that might be measured or how well our liver is functioning, or our kidney is functioning. Every single one of those measurements that are taken are measuring metabolites. So, these are actually used already in medicine to track our health, to make sure that we are healthy and to look for early indications of signs of problems or of disease. That might tell the doctor that we need some further testing, that our kidneys might be struggling, that our liver might be struggling, and some medications that we might be able to take to help correct that.

Dr. Biology:

When we talk about changes, I'm getting the impression that we have some changes that are really quick, and we have some changes that happen over time.

Heather:

That's a great point.

Dr. Biology:

So, you're focusing on?

Heather:

Both. So, I'll give you a couple of examples of some of the things that we're interested in. One of the aspects of health and disease that is a little bit more long term might be the development of cognitive dysfunctions.

Dr. Biology:

How well we're thinking how well, we’re proecessing...

Heather:

Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, or even just aging or cognitive functions related to fatigue.

Dr. Biology:

Right. Get enough sleep.

Heather:

Right, absolutely. So, let's just follow that idea of fatigue. If we're not thinking clearly because we didn't sleep well last night, that could be something that could be recovered in just one good night's sleep or a really good nap. But there are also cases of chronic fatigue where we're really accumulating lots of missed nights of sleep or interrupted sleep. And that can really impact your thinking and your cognitive abilities. 

One thing I'm interested in and am working on right now is developing measurements of our metabolites. How does that cognitive fatigue, that chronic fatigue? Does it change the metabolites in our blood and our breath in our urine in a way that we can take a sample and determine how fatigued are you today? 

The reason that that's important is that there are some professions that really require excellent, good, sharp thinking. Think about that doctor in the emergency room or that nurse or that EMT going out to an emergency call. A firefighter responding to a fire. Think about our military personnel in high-stress environments and how they need to be good at thinking on their feet, but also how much chronic fatigue they might be building up over weeks and weeks and months and months of time. 

So, one of the things that we're interested in is whether or not that's altering a person's metabolome in a way that we can take a test to actually measure. How fatigued are you and how likely are you to make mistakes in your job? Have you been on a recovery for a long enough period of time to where now you've gotten rid of all of your fatigue, and you can think clearly again? So, some of these things can be acute. It could be one bad night's sleep, or it can be chronic and build up over time. And we're interested in both those short-term metabolic changes, but also the long ones that take a long time to accumulate and we need some ways to measure how quickly those states are accumulating, how much they're impairing the person and how they're able to function.

Dr. Biology:

What are the instruments you use to do this? Because especially if there’s things that are happening really fast, the long-term ones probably a little easier, but those fast changes. What do you do?

Heather:

Yeah, that's a great question. So, I'll take one step back and mention that so far for the human metabolome, we think that there's over 140,000 compounds that could be measured in our body at any given time. And there's lots of different kinds of compounds. Some of them are very water soluble, and these would be the compounds that are circulating easily in your blood.

When we need to eliminate them, they leave our body in our urine. There are some of these metabolites that are very small molecules, and they don't dissolve well in water. And there are actually what we term volatile organic compounds or VOCs. And these can enter our body through the air we breathe. They are also being made by the cells that are making energy and making waste products. Some of those are the VOCs, the volatile organic compounds, or volatile waste, and our body gets rid of those through breath. 

So, when we want to measure these different types of molecules, 140,000, we need lots of different types of instruments to measure these big different classes of compounds, depending if they are they water-soluble? Are they really solid materials? Are they gaseous materials? And what I specialize in are the compounds that are the VOCs. These are going to be really small molecule metabolites. They exist in the gas phase, meaning they are floating around in the air. And our body primarily gets rid of them through our breath. All of the garbage wastes that are circulatory system picks up as it moves through our body, picking up waste from our liver, from our kidneys, from our tissues, from our brain, from that toe infection that we have. As it's moving around the body, the blood is picking up all the waste from all these sites. It goes to the kidneys to get rid of the water-soluble waste and it goes to the lungs to get rid of the gaseous waste. 

And I specialize in that gaseous waste. So, the instruments that we use, we do a lot of work in analyzing breath as one of the major collections of metabolites from our body. We capture breath on the technical term as a thermal desorption cartridge, but what it is is a very fancy Brita filter. It's a cartridge that's packed with carbon and polymers that can grab all of the organic compounds out of our breath and hold on to them until we are ready to analyze them. We can put breath in the mail. We can collect breath from people all around the world. We put them on these very fancy Brita filters. They go into the mail, they come to the lab here at Arizona State, and then we can heat those cartridges to get those volatile compounds back off of that sample so we can reincarnate a breath sample that came from halfway around the world. 

We can put it back into the gas phase back in our lab here. And then we want to know what are the compounds that we trapped on that cartridge. The way we do that is we use an instrument is called a gas chromatograph. Chromatography is the process of separating molecules. That is what every form of chromatography is for, separating different molecules that have different chemical characters. Gas chromatograph are very specifically designed to separate mixtures of volatile compounds. So, we take this reincarnated breath sample, we revive it, we get it back into the gas phase, and then we separate every single breath, sample using a gas chromatograph so we can see all the hundreds of compounds that a single breath sample.

Dr. Biology:

Wow. Hundreds.

Heather:

Hundreds from just a single exhalation. As I'm giving this answer. Hundreds of VOCs are coming out of my mouth and into this room and if you were to collect my breath over the period of a day, you might see thousands of compounds. Again, my metabolome is changing minute by minute. After I've eaten breakfast, after I've eaten lunch, after I've gone for some exercise, after I've taken a nap the VOCs in my breath are changing because those metabolites are reflecting what my body was doing in those few moments before.

Dr. Biology:

We were talking a bit about how the metabolome changes under different conditions. One of them I think that is really important and I think it's important. It doesn't matter what age you are. I think people run into challenges with sleep and I don't think we realize. I think we're still learning how important sleep is. But what's changing when you're not getting enough sleep and you're not getting sleep for a long period of time? And I say that because, you know, those are the classic, you know, I need to catch up on some sleep. Can you really catch up on some sleep?

Heather:

As far as I understand. So, this is really where working with collaborators is important. I'm not the sleep expert on this project. My collaborator who's at Texas A&M University is the sleep expert and the fatigue expert, and her name is Ranjana Mehta. But I'll tell you some of the things that I've learned from her. So, when it comes to sleep, it does seem possible that you can catch up on sleep to a degree, but it depends on how much sleep deprivation you have. 

So, as far as I understand it, if you missed an entire night, sleep stayed up for 24 hours straight and you take a nap to try to recover some of that sleep, you will recover most of that. If you had a really good, long, high quality nap, but not necessarily the entire full functioning that you would have had if you had had a nice restful night's sleep in the first place. When you build up sleep deprivation by not getting enough sleep night after night after night. For college students, it's a big deal cramming for those finals, staying up too late, doing your homework late at night, waking up, trying to make it to that 9 a.m. class. Chronic fatigue is a big problem in the college student population and just crashing during spring break and sleeping as much as you can won't make up for all of those chronic deficits for many, many missed hours of sleep over long periods of time. And some of the ways that that changes our physiology is it changes our hormones. 

There have been some really good studies that have linked nurses and they work overnight shifts in hospital settings, nurses that are working on long term night shifts so that their sleep is really disrupted compared to how the day and night cycles work for our normal biology, our normal circadian rhythms. It alters their hormones and makes them more susceptible to breast cancer, for instance. So, even for those of us who are not getting enough sleep on a nightly basis, our hormones are being altered and our hormones are some of the key metabolites that regulate so many functions and so many organs and so many tissues and cells in our body that a disruption in hormones can really alter downstream metabolism.

Dr. Biology:

So, the question about metabolomics is how can we use those for disease diagnosis and also treatment? 

Heather:

I will start with treatment first. And there's a couple of ways for us to think about this. So, there are some diseases that are fundamentally metabolic diseases. There are some conditions like diabetes, which are an alteration of our metabolism is largely linked to the hormone insulin, but there are a lot of other downstream effects on our metabolism that are a consequence of insulin, not being produced sufficiently, which alters our ability to metabolize glucose. And glucose is a major energy source for our body, a major nutrient. So, when that is disrupted, your entire metabolism is altered. 

So, some diseases are metabolic diseases and the way their diagnosis to measure metabolites, how well is your insulin level functioning when you eat a meal and then the downstream consequences of that would be do we see your cells metabolize in glucose? If they're not, you'll see certain chemicals showing up in the blood and in the breath that indicate that this person is diabetic. And if they're being treated for diabetes, that is not under control, that the medication isn't working sufficiently. So, that's one way to think about treatment. Sometimes a disease is metabolic, and you can monitor the disease and you can alter the metabolism. The underlying metabolism to make them healthier. There's another way to think about using metabolites for treating disease, and it would be to maybe the disease isn't fundamentally a metabolic disease. Not directly, anyway. We can measure metabolites to see how well a drug is working. 

So, whenever we take a medication, it needs to be active and functioning in our bodies. But our bodies, they are designed to get rid of those things. The reason we have to take an antibiotic twice a day for ten days to treat an infection is because our bodies are altering that drug and getting rid of it. Here's another long word for you. That's called pharmacokinetics, pharmaco, meaning drug kinetics, meaning motion or change. So, our bodies are changing those drugs to get rid of them. And it’s important to know when you're trying to dose someone with the proper dose of a drug, how fast their bodies are getting rid of that drug. Your body will get rid of a drug at a different rate than my body will. And so sometimes metabolites are monitored to see how quickly or how slowly is that individual patient's body getting rid of that drug. That tells the doctor how frequently do they need to take that medicine and at what dose? If my body gets rid of the drug really quickly, I might need to take a higher dose in more frequently in order for that medication to work. 

Dr. Biology:

Right. Right. And it's also why it's so important to take your medications on a regular basis, whatever the amount, the dosage and however often you're supposed to take them.

Heather:

That's right. Yep. Our kidneys are constantly working. Our liver is changing that drug into a form that our kidneys can get rid of. That's their primary function. So, we always have to fight against that whenever we are treating with a medication is our natural biology to get rid of that foreign compounds.

Dr. Biology:

Okay, So, we've talked about the way of treating disease. What about diagnosing?

Heather:

So, that is actually a lot of what I am focused on currently in my research is using the volatile organic compounds or VOCs in our breath, all of those metabolites as hundreds of compounds to identify patterns that help us detect disease. There are some obvious applications of this that I do work on. So, let's say someone has a lung infection. That infection is in their lungs, is going to be creating all sorts of metabolites. The bacteria, the fungus, whatever is causing that infection is creating metabolites. Our immune response is creating metabolites as it's trying to fight that infection in our lungs. 

And all of that metabolism comes out in our breath. We're working on developing breath-based diagnostics to be able to detect whether someone has infectious pneumonia or not. And if they have an infection. One basic question is, is that infection, a bacterial infection, a fungal infection, or a viral infection? Those require three different types of treatment. And a lot of times doctors will prescribe an antibiotic without knowing that that's a bacterial infection and hope that that does the job of making the patient better. 

So, one of our basic goals is can we help the doctor know is an antibiotic needed in this case because this patient has a bacterial infection? Should they be prescribed an antifungal because they might have a fungal pneumonia or do they have a viral pneumonia, something like influenza or COVID that should be either treated with antivirals or just with some good old rest and extra fluids and Tylenol to help them control the fever. So, that's one application of diagnostics based on metabolites.

Dr. Biology:

Do you think that there's the possibility that we'll be doing a lot more diagnostics using just a breath sample. 

Heather:

Yes. 

Dr. Biology:

Where do you think it's going to lead to?

Heather:

Well, here's the crazy thing about breath that a lot of us just don't think about. I mentioned before that urine is one of the major waste streams of our body. It gets rid of all of the water-soluble waste from our body. It could be waste from our brains, waste from our skin tissues, waste from our livers. It all exits through the urine because the blood collects all that waste from all over the body goes through the kidneys and dumps all of that water-soluble waste into the urine. 

The same thing happens with our breath. Our blood is collecting gaseous waste from every single cell in our body. It delivers it to our lungs to get rid of that waste there. So, in every single way that a urine test could test for the function of your kidneys or of your liver, or even whether or not you might have a form of cancer that is developing or whether a blood test is looking for certain metabolic markers of cancer or of diabetes. If those diseases have volatile metabolites associated with them, they will show up in breath. So, I sort of think of potentially any disease or condition that a blood test or a urine test could measure or test for. There could be a breath test developed.

Dr. Biology:

So, your fancy Britta filter.

Heather:

Yes,

Dr. Biology:

Possibly, take it at home.

Heather:

Yes.

Dr. Biology:

Mail it in and get some results. We're not there yet, right?

Heather:

No, but I think we are getting close and possibly quickly.

Dr. Biology:

That sounds exciting.

Heather:

Yeah.

Dr. Biology:

Hey, Heather, I heard rumors about Human Breath Atlas.

Heather:

Yes?

Dr. Biology:

Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Heather:

Yeah, I would love to. So, the breath research community is putting together this grassroots effort. It's a collection of scientists across North America, Europe and Asia so far to build the human breath atlas. And what we want to do is to characterize, detect, identify, quantify every single compound that is in human breath. What can we detect in breath? Define it all. That's what we want to do. Ultimately, we think that we would need to sample a quarter of a million people, collect their breath.

Heather:

Maybe even over a period of time, but at least one time point from a quarter million people and then put all the best instruments on that sample, see how many volatile organic compounds we can detect and see if we can name them all, identify every single one. And we want to just basically make a map of all the chemical information, all the metabolites that are in our breath, so that we can know the foundation from which we are investigating and exploring the breath for many different purposes for diagnosing disease and monitoring health.

Dr. Biology:

That sounds exciting.

 Heather:

Stay tuned. I think you'll see more information coming out about that in the next few months.

Dr. Biology:

So, Heather on Ask A Biologist. I never let a scientist leave without answering three questions. The first one I'm going to ask you will kind of modify it a little bit because it basically says, When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist? I want to know that. But I also want to know, when did you really get excited about the world of metabolomics?

Dr. Biology:

So, when did you first know you wanted to be a scientist and when did you really get excited about metabolomics?

Heather:

First, know I wanted to be a scientist. I really wanted to be an astronaut when I was little. The very first clubs that I joined when I was in elementary school, in middle school were astronomy groups. I did Science Olympiad when I was in middle school and was on the astronomy team, but also when I was a kid, I don't remember if I asked for it or if I just received it as a gift. I got a big chemistry set and I thought it was so cool that you could mix things together and see bubbles and reactions and things change colors and follow a recipe to make an experiment happen. 

So, I don't know that I made a conscious decision when I was a kid that I wanted to be a scientist, but I knew that was the direction I was going. When I went to undergrad, I went to school at Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech. I thought I was going to be an engineer. So, I had a lot of family members who are engineers, and I was following in their footsteps, and I thought I was going to be a chemical engineer. I love chemistry and I love math. And then I went to a class, and you got to shadow a student who was a chemical engineer. And I went to one of her classes and I went, Oh, that's not what I thought this is about. She was calculating the flow of liquids through pipes because chemical engineers build reactors. I didn't know that. I thought they thought of chemical experiments to do so I decided I would follow chemistry and in fact, I was a biochemistry major. Biochemistry is the study of metabolites. 

[It] turns out I actually didn't like it very much when I was an undergrad. It was my least favorite class and I think it was because it was a lot of memorization, at least the way it was taught to me then. And that was 20 years ago. And I was a little bit lazy about memorizing all that stuff, but it stuck with me. I understood that biochemistry is really describing how cells function, how they get energy, how they transform molecules into energy, how they transform compounds into proteins and proteins into other metabolites that can be used for energy. And that foundation stuck with me. 

When I finished my undergrad, I went and worked for a pharmaceutical company, and it was just really because it was a good job. They needed a chemist. But once I was there and working there for a few years, I was inspired to go back to school. I saw a job at this pharmaceutical company that I wanted, and it was going to require a Ph.D. in chemistry. So, I went back to school, and I actually joined a Ph.D. group that was investigating origins of life chemistry. So, how do bio molecules, how do RNA get formed before there are enzymes in all of the cells that we have that do all this work? How did all this life happen before there were cells? And fundamentally at the root of that, again, it's biochemistry. I kept coming back to it, even though in undergrad I thought it was the worst class that I was taking. 

And when I was done with my Ph.D., I was really interested in seeing if I could figure out a way to sort of move back to human health. So, I'd worked in pharmaceutical industry for a minute. I sort of took this detour into origins of life chemistry, which I loved, and was fascinating, but I wanted to see if I could apply my science and my knowledge more towards a human health angle. And that's when I had the opportunity to join a lab that was doing breath research, that was working on using breath as a source of metabolites to develop new test for detecting infections and for monitoring health. 

So, I turned back to biochemistry again. And also analytical chemistry. How we learn and understand what all the volatile compounds are in breath. I use those skills too, and that's when I really got fascinated with metabolism and metabolomes. So, it's a long, winding road, lots of detours.

Dr. Biology:

And now I'm going to be a little bit mean to you. We're just going to imagine I'm taking all this stuff away from you. My scientists, also, most of them love to teach, so I'm going to take that away. My question is, what would you be or what would you do if you couldn't be the scientist, you are and you're not going to be able to teach?

Dr. Biology:

What would you do?

Heather:

Last week I told someone I think I would be an accountant because I find a lot of satisfaction in spreadsheets and numbers and data and making two columns of information line up and perfectly synchronized. I don't think I would find as much fulfillment in that as being a scientist, but yeah, that was my answer last week.

Dr. Biology:

Right? A bit of order, right?

Heather:

Yeah. Yeah. And just and I love numbers. They have so many secrets and hidden patterns and they tell us so much about the world that we live in. And fundamentally, most of the science that we do gets converted into a number format at some point in time. And so I guess I can find satisfaction in numbers in lots of different ways.

Dr. Biology:

Yeah, I can see that, absolutely. And I can admire a good spreadsheet.

Heather:

It's a thing of beauty.

Dr. Biology:

Yes All right. So, we have the long winding road, so you should be good on this last question.

Heather:

Okay.

Dr. Biology:

What advice would you have for a young scientist or perhaps someone who always wanted to be working as what? What are we going to say as a bio analytical chemist?

Heather:

Well, I think the first thing is that I could never have predicted when I was a kid, that I would end up being a professor or working at a university. I had no idea what professors did. Even when I was earning my bachelor's degree in chemistry, I had no idea that my professors had this entire other research life that they maintained. So, I think one thing is to keep an open mind. 

There are opportunities or interest or ideas that will float your way that you never saw coming. And if it's interesting to you, pursue it. Never, ever feel like you are locked in on a particular path or trajectory because it's simply not true. If you get to high school and you were developing an interest in biology and then suddenly, you're like, I find physics so much more fascinating, pursue that. 

See if there's some opportunity to join a club or to learn some things from YouTube. What a gift. So, much great stuff that you can explore and learn about from information that's online and just learn more. See what it is about that particular topic or idea that was so fascinating to you and see if there's a way for you to pursue it and learn more about it. You might go down that path and be like, Oh, this isn't what I thought this was going to be. I like it as a Nova program, but in practice taking those particular classes. Now that I understand what that particular topics about, not so interesting to me anymore. 

Okay, so pivot, you're never locked in. There's so many ways to exercise your science brain to pursue things that are interesting to you, even if you don't become a professional scientist. Ways that you can engage as a citizen scientist, help to generate those numbers and collect data that if it's interesting to you, there will be ways for you to participate in that in your professional career or in your hobbies in the future.

Dr. Biology:

Right? I say that everyone is a scientist.

Heather:

That's true.

Dr. Biology:

Heather, thank you so much for being on Ask A Biologist.

Heather:

It's been a pleasure. Dr. Biology Thank you so much.

Dr. Biology:

You have been listening to Ask A Biologist, and my guest has been Heather Bean, a bioanalytical chemist and faculty member in the School of Life Sciences. Now don't forget to check out our companion links and images we include for each podcast. It's a great way to dig deeper into some of these topics. The Ask a Biologist podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University and is recorded in the Grassroots Studio housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

And remember, even though our program is not broadcast live, you can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is askabiologist.asu.edu or you can use your favorite search engine and enter the words Ask A Biologist. As always, I'm Dr. Biology and I hope you're staying safe and healthy.

 

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An A.I. Conversation

---

Chronicles of a Zookeeper

Dr. Biology:

00:00

This is Ask A Biologist, a program about the living world, and I'm Dr Biology. For today's episode, we're getting out of the studio and into the wild. Well, maybe not the wilderness type of wild, but certainly a place where you can see thousands of animals. Yes, we're off to the zoo, and not just any zoo. We are visiting the Phoenix Zoo Now. We may not be able to see all 3,000 animals today, but we will get an introduction into the world of zoos why we have them, what they do for us, and the animals that live at the zoo. 

00:46

My guest today is Bert Castro, the President, and CEO of the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation, which is the group that operates the Phoenix Zoo. Bert's career started in 1985 when he was a volunteer and then, later that year, a keeper at the Tulsa Zoo. He has since then served in many roles at several zoos, including ones in Atlanta, San Antonio, Oklahoma, and now the Phoenix Zoo. For Ask a Biologist, we’re excited to be here because we often get questions from people wanting to work at a zoo. They love animals and they want to find out a way to work with them. Now, this episode is one of a three-part series we're doing about the zoo, and we plan to have other fun and interesting guests to follow. So, before anyone or any animal gets too excited, let's dive in and start exploring the world of zoos. Welcome, Bert, and thank you for sitting down to talk on Ask A Biologist. 

Bert:

01:58

Thanks for having me. 

Dr. Biology:

01:59

Let's get started. We're at the zoo and it's huge. How big is the Phoenix Zoo compared to other zoos? A lot of people hear about the San Diego Zoo. 

Bert:

02:09

You can measure a zoo on different levels. You can measure it by the size of its acreage. You can measure it about the size of its budget, but if you look across all AZA, which is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, we're probably in the top 10 in terms of how large we are. We sit on 125 acres. The San Diego Zoo sits on 90 acres. The difference is the San Diego Zoo has a collection of about 6,000 animals and we have a collection of about 3,000 animals, so we're a little bit more spread out than the San Diego Zoo, but all in all, we're a very, very large, complex zoo. 

Dr. Biology:

02:47

Right, and that's one of the things I've always noted. There are areas in particular, I think, about the giraffes, the habitat for the giraffes. I mean, if I got to be in a zoo and I'm a giraffe, that looks like an amazing place. 

Bert:

03:01

Yeah, it's a five-acre exhibit and I've been to Africa on many occasions and have been out on the savanna and when you walk up to our exhibit, they did a really good job of putting that exhibit together. It's very large, spacious. We have a variety of species in that exhibit and, you know, it allows the animals to kind of do their own thing and have an enjoyable time in that exhibit. 

Dr. Biology:

03:26

I agree. It's just a fantastic habitat. There is one that I've always wondered a little bit about, and that's the one for the bald eagle. Typically, you think of an aviary where it's big enough for the birds to fly, but this is not big enough for a bald eagle to fly, and I was always curious why that kind of a habitat. 

Bert:

03:46

Yeah, we have a couple of bald eagles in that exhibit and you know, the interesting thing is they are not flighted birds. Those are actually rehab birds that can't fly. So even though the exhibit is probably 15 feet by about 30 feet in length, which seems small for bald eagles, it's actually quite appropriate because they cannot fly. 

Dr. Biology:

04:10

Oh, okay, that makes sense. I did not know that. 

Bert:

04:14

We probably should put a sign up to let our guests know that. 

Dr. Biology:

04:18

Well, to be fair, maybe that sign is there and I missed reading it, but it's something for people to think about when they see some animals in habitats that they think maybe aren't big enough for them. It could be for this very reason. So, the next question I'd like to tackle is what should a good zoo be doing. 

Bert:

04:39

Gosh, that's a really good question A good zoo there are good zoos in my opinion, and there are bad zoos. Let me start off by saying there are about 2,500 to 3,000 animal exhibitors in the United States, of which only about 9 or 10% are accredited AZA zoos. And you know, a great zoo has wonderful education programming. You know, at the Phoenix Zoo all our educational programs are aligned to Arizona State standards. So, we want kids to come out to the zoo and have a wonderful time, but we want the science that they're learning to be applicable to the classroom so that when they go back to the classroom they're learning something. And so that's an example of great education and an accredited zoo. 

05:30

Good zoos are conservation centers. 

05:34

They're places where we're working very, very hard on a daily basis to save animals in the wild. 

05:41

Many people don't know this and it's kind of interesting. We've been really good as zoos, in general, to talk about the fun things you can do at a zoo in terms of just a great, wholesome place to bring your family and have a great recreational outing. What I think we've done poorly over the years as a zoo community is not really talk about our mission like we should, and so a lot of people don't know that this last year, zoos and aquariums AZA zoos and aquariums contributed over $250 million to research and conservation around the world. So, every year over $200 million gets poured into conservation so the money that we make from people who come out and enjoy the animals. Many people won't ever have an opportunity to go to Africa to see giraffes in the wild, but they have an opportunity to come to the zoo and our hope is that through our education programs, through our conservation programs, people walk away from the zoo with a better appreciation for wildlife and a better appreciation for nature as a whole. 

Dr. Biology:

06:55

Right, and I think that makes a lot of sense. Some of the people that will have not the best view on zoos. They're thinking about the animals. I think the animals are actually. 

Bert:

07:09

They feel like they're maybe in jail or they're you know, they're not, yeah biologists think at least from my perspective we think about the species and the survival of the species, whereas other groups think about the individuality of the animal and how is that animal being treated? You know, through our accreditation process we have very, very rigorous standards on how we maintain, exhibit, and take care of our animals, much different than, say, a roadside zoo. But I think one of the biggest problems is certain people clump all zoos together, so sometimes the good zoos get a bad rap from the bad zoos, and so I think it's important that we continue to get our message out. We continue to work with other organizations so that there's a better understanding about what we do as a zoo community, and we've been trying to do that, as the association has been working with a variety of groups out there to find common ground to work to help wildlife. I think that's very important and hopefully, through better understanding, everybody gets to understand everybody better. 

Dr. Biology:

08:22

What I find interesting, and one of the future guests, will be your person that's in charge of Behavioral training. 

Bert:

08:30

Yeah, behavioral training. 

Dr. Biology:

08:33

And there was another term they used was enrichment. 

Bert:

08:37

Oh, behavioral enrichment yeah. 

Dr. Biology:

08:39

And I just thought that was great because I have seen the rhino playing, I have seen Hindu, the Asian elephant playing. They actually have lots of toys and I think about my new grandson and I'm thinking, wow, these elephants get toys, just like my grandson, and they seem to really enjoy playing with them. 

Bert:

09:00

Yeah, when I started in this business some 38 years ago, behavioral enrichment really wasn't a thing, and so it was really about, okay, how do we keep these animals alive, how do we keep them healthy? But in terms of their psychology, in terms of really keeping them in appropriate environments that are good for them, that's been a slow progress in zoos over the last 15 years or so, maybe 20 years. So, it's important to make sure that not only the animals have the appropriate space, but they also have things to do. You know, it's easy for animals, especially intelligent animals, to get bored, and so when I was a keeper, I spent my eight hours a day working, doing projects, cleaning. Now, our keepers today probably spend a third of their day doing routine and the majority of their day working with their animals to ensure that they're having the best possible life that they could possibly have. 

Dr. Biology:

 

10:02

Right, and you know, when we talk about that, one of the things that's going on right now for all animals, including humans. We're in the Phoenix area and the temperatures have been just unbelievably hot. For now over 20 days, over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. What are we doing at the zoo for the animals and again for all animals, I mean going to the zoo. If I was going to go to the zoo, that's going to be pretty tough as a human, but the animals too. What are we doing with this heat? 

Bert:

10:35

Well, as everybody knows, we're in a desert, and so the animals that we keep at the Phoenix Zoo are animals that are found in warm climates. You won't see a polar bear at the Phoenix Zoo, so that's one thing we do. We have animals that are found in desert areas, in tropical areas. We also do a lot with shade, with misters waterers, and we give animals a choice. So, when it gets blisteringly hot, we give them a choice to either stay outside if they want or to go inside where there's air conditioning if they want. So, we give the animals the ability to make up their minds. 

11:15

Sometimes I'll walk out in the zoo. It'll be, you know, 105 degrees and you know the animals are outside because they prefer to be outside. A lot of our African animals love the heat, but when it gets really, really hot like it's been these last few weeks, we make sure that the animals have everything they need and the ability to go inside. One thing we did was close the zoo down earlier. We felt that that was important not only for our animals but for our guests. We were finding our keepers were struggling in the heat. Our guests were struggling. We weren't really seeing our animals struggle as much, but we wanted to make sure that we keep everybody safe while they're in the zoo. 

Dr. Biology:

11:59

Right, you start early hours right? 

Bert:

12:01

We do. We open the gates at six in the morning for our members, seven o'clock in the morning for our regular guests, and we are now closing at 11. It used to be one o'clock, so through the month of July and August we'll close at 11. 

Dr. Biology:

12:15

Right Makes perfect sense. You talked about your keepers and actually, your career is really a fascinating one because you've done I wouldn't say you've done it all, but you've done a lot of different roles in the world of zoo management and zoos. So, let's talk a little bit about life when you're working at a zoo. What's it like? 

Bert:

12:38

Well, it's all I know. It's all I've done in my entire career. Shortly after college, I started sending resumes all over the country and I would get these little thin letters that said thanks but no thanks. Congratulations on getting your degree. But you had no experience and so I ended up volunteering at my local zoo and there was a job that nobody liked to do and I said I'll do it and we had a mammal building there and down in the basement. At that time we had about 2,000 feeder rats and mice and my job was once a week I would come in on Saturdays and for eight hours clean the rat and mice cages. So, that was my start in Zeus. You know I did that for almost a year and I think a couple of positions opened up and they said well, you know what this guy? He's dependable, he shows up, he does the dirty work, he's a pretty good guy and they hired me as a zookeeper and I've been in Zeus ever since. So, I was a zookeeper for about eight years at the Tulsa Zoo. 

13:47

While I was there I went back to a small university in Wichita, Kansas, that offered an adult program in environmental studies with an emphasis in zoological administration. I did an internship at the Sedgwick County Zoo while I was still working at the Tulsa Zoo, and then from there, I went to New Orleans. I went to the Audubon Park Zoo as an assistant curator, spent a few years there, and from there on to Zoo Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia, as a curator of birds and mammals, and then from there I took a general curator job at the San Antonio Zoo, and that's really where I learned how to not only take care of an entire animal collection, but I really learned a lot about the business side of zoos. As a biologist, I came up through the animal ranks and did know a whole lot about what it would take from a business standpoint to run a zoo, and so I learned quite a bit there. 

14:43

From there I went to Oklahoma City as executive director at the Oklahoma City Zoo, and that was a. It was a public non-profit. So, I had a board of nine individuals six of them came from the private sector, three of them were the mayor, the city council person, and city manager and so spent about seven years there. And then I came to the Phoenix Zoo. It's a non-profit zoo, a 501C3, which was much different than the previous zoo I was at. That zoo received a 1-8th penny sales tax. That generated quite a bit of money for the zoo. The Phoenix Zoo, being a non-profit zoo, receives no public funding for its operation, so it's run much differently, and I've been at the Phoenix Zoo for about 15 years now. 

Dr. Biology:

15:32

So, if someone wants to get started in the world of zoos and let's pick a student, let's pick one of our students that sends questions to us. It's usually a middle school or high school student that says I love animals and I've always wanted to work at the zoo. What's the best career path for them to go on? 

Bert:

 

15:56

So, from a biologist's perspective right, because now zoos are so complex we've got accountants, we've got development people, we've got marketing people, pr people there's so many facets to running a zoo nowadays. So, we have a lot of people that are not biologists but are critically needed to help us with our mission. But if I'm talking to somebody who wants to be a biologist, I say, first of all, stay in school, get your degree. It's so competitive. You know, we were hiring for a position a few months ago and we had about 150 applicants for the position, many of them with master's degrees, applying for a front-line keeper position. So, it's extremely competitive, much more competitive than I think it was when I became a keeper. And so I would say stay in school and if there's any way, you can get experience. That's key because school is great and you learn a lot at school. But having that hands-on experience will just help you in the long run, especially when you're trying to get that job. 

Dr. Biology:

17:03

The zoos. To me, one of the amazing things is to spend time observing the animals. Why I find that interesting is I often wonder if the animals are also observing me, In particular some of them, as you say, some of the more intelligent animals. I really have always wondered if they're spending time looking at me, and the only reason I'm asking you this kind of a crazy question because obviously, you're not in the mind of animals is have you ever had that feeling when you're walking around the zoo, that they get to actually know you? 

Bert:

17:42

They do. And as a keeper, you can be standing out there with 200 people and you'll walk in the midst of those people and that animal will pick you out and you know, it knows you. And it was quite interesting during COVID, you know, we had to close down for 161 days. Covid was tough for everyone. What we saw with a lot of our animals mostly our primates, a lot of our petting zoo animals, you know, our domestic goats was that they really missed seeing people, and so our keepers were actually spending more time with the animals. They'd go down to the exhibits and have lunch with the animals, because the animals at least, you know and this is anecdotal, this is not, you know, research by any stretch but we felt that the animals missed seeing people and we saw that, without being too anthropomorphic, that they were down a little bit, you know, and that having that connection was good for them, as well as with our keepers. So, I'm with you. I think animals do know who you are and they can certainly pick out individuals and they're very, very intelligent. 

Dr. Biology:

18:55

I actually was fortunate earlier before you and I got to take some time out to talk. I met Indu, the Asian elephant, and she gave me a rock with her trunk. She picked it up and handed it to me. The caretaker was there, by the way, I wasn't breaking any rules and it was interesting because she told me that's a present. 

Bert:

19:21

That is a present, and she doesn't do that often Wow. You must have impressed her in some way. 

Dr. Biology:

19:29

I guess, did impress me, and I'm pleased to know that that was something special, because that felt special to me. Alright, so if it wasn't so hot, we could be wandering around the zoo and doing more talking rather than just being isolated in one place. But we're just like the animals. We have to regulate and, by the way, thermal regulation is the term we use so that you can be cool when it's hot and warm when it's cold. Animals have to do the same thing. We have a podcast about thermal regulation. So, along with animals, do you have a favorite animal, or maybe a couple favorite animals? 

Bert:

20:12

I do. I love elephants. I was an elephant keeper for many years and everything they say about elephants about them being so intelligent and smart is exactly true. They're just amazing animals and just incredible to work with. I also have an affinity for jaguars. 

20:30

We have been working on a long-term project in Costa Rica. Dr. Jan Skipper, who's an associate professor here at ASU and was also our director of conservation, has been doing a lot of work there On a jaguar corridor. There's in southern Costa Rica there's an international park called La Amistad International Park, and then down by the Osa Peninsula about 30 miles away, there's another smaller park and there's a very vibrant population of jaguars in the very large park, and a stagnant, so to speak, a very bottlenecked population in the Osa Peninsula, and so we have been working with their government, farmers, landowners to build a wildlife corridor, to allow the jaguars and other wildlife to utilize a corridor so that jaguars can move back and forth because the land is so fragmented, the animals can't move from one park to the other, and so we've been working on that project for quite some time and I've been down in Costa Rica and had an opportunity to work with Dr. Skipper and it's just such a cool project and I've learned a lot about jaguars, so very cool animal. 

Dr. Biology:

21:45

Right yeah, animal corridors. It's a really good topic because a lot of times we don't think about it as humans. We build these freeways, we build walls, we do all sorts of things not thinking about the animals that might use that as their normal passageway. And while humans can figure out how to get around obstacles, animals don't. And that's problematic unless you're a bird, and then you probably have half a chance of flying over those, but that's correct. 

22:13

That's really an interesting one. It also comes to the discussion about conservation is one of the things that AZA. They contribute to conservation. This also deals with threatened and endangered species. That's true, guys, and so this is another role that I put the good zoos into is the fact that it's not just to bring animals closer to humans so humans get the benefit. It's also how do you ensure the survival of a species through these conservation efforts. And if you go to even Wikipedia I think is one of the nice things about Wikipedia now if you go to it and you look on the right-hand column, you'll see that there is a ranking there that shows you what the status of that particular animal you might be looking into, and it'll tell you whether it's threatened or endangered or, in some cases, there are some that are listed that are extinct as far as we know. So, let's talk a little bit about how the zoos are working in this realm of conservation and dealing with threatened and endangered species. 

Bert:

23:24

So, ex-situ (off-site) working in zoos, we work through SSP programs, which are species survival plan programs. So, if you can think of it as maybe sort of like a pedigree, we have management committees that will focus on one species. To give you an example, today something came across my desk we have six African porcupines and the SSP. Once a year they make the recommendations for breeding. The whole idea is really trying to keep as much genetic diversity in the captive population as possible, and so we were asked to hold no breeding this year from our animals. But you know, they know everything about every animal in the population, what its health records are, what its genetic background is, where it's from, and we basically follow those recommendations. 

24:16

So, if they were to say, well, gosh, this certain animal who's been at your zoo for five years needs to go to Omaha to be paired with another animal, We'd immediately start working on making that transfer, because we're trying to sustain these captive populations. On the flip side of that, in terms of in-situ conservation, the AZA has developed a program called SAFE, Saving Animals from Extinction, and we have been I've been part of raising quite a bit of money for this program and it's really a way that we, as zoos and aquariums and individuals can work together to help save some of these species out in the wild. And so we've really kind of compiled our resources, have done a tremendous amount of fundraising, and then working with those researchers out in the wild and trying to support their efforts, their conservation efforts in the wild. 

Dr. Biology:

25:14

So, when I go to the zoo and I pay my entry fee or I'm even better I get my annual membership. Part of that money is going to these programs, that's correct. Yeah, that's great. It is great, that is really good. Well, Bert, before I let my scientists get out of here, I always ask three questions. I might modify the third one because we kind of covered it, but the first one is when did you first know you wanted to be a biologist and then when did you become very interested in working in a zoo? 

Bert:

25:53

So, my story starts when I was really young. My family immigrated from Havana, Cuba, and so we came to the United States. I was born there. We came when I was two years old and when I was about six my mother started taking me to the zoo. It was a free place to go to and it was a fun place for me to go. And I can remember at around age seven I had two of my dear friends who I went to school with. They had birthdays around the same time and we had a birthday party at the Tulsa Zoo. As part of that birthday party, we were able to go and meet Gundah the elephant at that zoo, and my mother tells me that when she came to pick me up she just said I just wouldn't stop saying that, Mom, I want to be a zookeeper. 

26:41

I didn't know what a biologist was. All I knew was I had this amazing experience with this giant animal that was so smart and I told her I wanted to be a zookeeper. Well, 17 years later, I became that animal zookeeper and that has been my love ever since. That's all I've ever done. Zoos are part of who I am and I've learned a lot. You know you go into zookeeping for the love of animals, and then you start learning about all the complex issues around animals and those issues are big issues and how do you work with other people to help these animals. And so I'm still learning. I've been doing this for 38 years. I'm still learning every day on how we can conserve and give these animals a better life in the wild. 

Dr. Biology:

27:29

Right, what was the name of the elephant? Her name was Gundah Gundah. 

Bert:

27:35

She just passed away, about a year ago. 

Dr. Biology:

27:37

Oh OK. 

Bert:

27:39

Yeah, she was, I think, 70 in her 70s, so it's pretty amazing yeah. 

Dr. Biology:

27:45

Right. Well, that's another thing that I've noticed that we do these virtual tours on biomes, and often there are animals part of that, these virtual tours, these VR tours that we go into and I'm always doing the research on the animals that we happen to have captured in these VR tours, and when they show life spans, it's in captivity versus in the wild. I have yet to find one that doesn't live a lot longer in captivity than it does in the wild, that's for sure. 

Bert:

28:17

I think you've got really good health care in zoos. You have no predators, so that probably has something to do with it. Yeah. 

Dr. Biology:

28:27

All right, so this is something you've done your whole life. I can tell you were basically imprinted by that elephant, which is really, really pretty cool, but I'm going to take it all away, for this question. So, your life in zoos is gone? Oh gosh, I know that's horrible. It's just a thought experiment here. We're not going to really take it away. Obviously. My question is what would you be or what would you do if you didn't have this? 

Bert:

28:54

career. The one thing in the back of my mind that I thought I would like and I was intrigued by but don't know a whole lot about, was wastewater management and I thought, gosh, how do you take all this really dirty water and get it to a point where people can drink it? But I thought about it for about a day or two and then get back to zoos. 

Dr. Biology:

29:17

And today this is a really important topic. 

Bert:

29:20

It really is. 

Dr. Biology:

29:22

Water is going to be key for many people around the world. Some will have too much and, like in the desert, we don't have enough right? 

29:32

The last question is typically what advice would you have for someone who wanted to start working in the zoos and pretty much covered that earlier on? So, I was going to ask you if there was something that you thought your young zookeepers forget to do or learn before they come, what would it be? What would be the thing that you would say will serve them well in their career that they may not be doing because they just don't think about it. They've done the usual stuff and there's something they're just not thinking about. 

Bert:

30:17

You know, the thing I had to learn as a zookeeper was to be detailed, and what I mean by that is that when you're working with wild animals, it's important to be detailed in terms of how you take care of them, in terms of how you clean for them, in terms of safety, lock safety. You have to really be attuned to those animals and be attuned to what you're doing on a daily basis, because a lot of what keepers do is very redundant. I think the animals like that redundancy, they like routine, they're familiar with it, even though, you know, from a visitor's perspective, a lot of visitors come to the zoo and they say, oh gosh, that zebra looks so tame and it's a wild animal. And so it's important, as a zookeeper, to know that you have to be very detailed in what you're doing for your safety, for the public safety and for the animal safety. 

Dr. Biology:

31:15

Right, okay, for the young zookeepers out there that might have their pets at home, you could start your own project on that by creating your own log sheet to make sure when you feed them, how often you feed them. 

Bert:

31:29

Clean that litter box. Clean that litter box. Yes, yes. 

Dr. Biology:

31:33

I will triple agree with that one there, one who has cats and loves them dearly. Well, on that note, Bert, thank you so much for visiting with me. On Ask A Biologist. 

Bert:

31:45

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me here. 

Dr. Biology:

31:49

You have been listening to Ask A Biologist and my guest has been Bert Castro, the President and CEO of the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation, which is the group that runs the Phoenix Zoo. For those that live in the Phoenix area, I hope this podcast has you thinking about going to visit the zoo. Just remember, if it's in the summer, do it really early in the morning, and we'll also include a link to the zoo in the show notes so that you can get all the details about parking and other things that you might need to know for your visit. Keep in mind this is the first of a three-part series and if you have not subscribed to the Ask a Biologist podcast, you might want to do that right now so you don't miss the other really fun and interesting guests we're going to have on the show. 

32:44

The Ask a Biologist podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University and is recorded in the Grassroots Studio housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. And remember, even though our program is not broadcast live, you can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is askabiologist.asu.edu, or you can just use your favorite search tool and enter the words Ask A Biologist. As always, I'm Dr Biology and I hope you're staying safe and healthy.

Making Life Happen

Dr. Biology:

This is Ask A Biologist. A program about the living world. And I'm Dr. Biology. On this podcast, we talk a lot about DNA - deoxyribonucleic acid. It seems to grab our attention because it stores all the information about living things. It is the ultimate instruction manual, packaged in an unbelievably small size inside almost every living cell. But DNA is only the start of the story of 'life' because it needs something to actually help build things and give instructions to do the work inside living organisms. It needs RNA - ribonucleic acid.

Our guest today is a big fan of RNA and he is also a scientist who has a storyteller writing for Wired magazine The Atlantic, as well as other publications. And I found out yesterday he is a fan of history. Brandon Ogbunu is a professor at Yale University. He's a computational biologist who spends his time researching ecology and evolutionary biology. His work explores a wide range of areas, including the causes of disease. His career path and his numerous accomplishments are worth a visit to Wikipedia, and we'll include a link in the show notes. So, you can read about them.

Today, we're fortunate to have him in the studio because he is visiting ASU to give a talk titled “Interactions versus Everything Complexity, Disease, Contact Genes (and the space in between). I'm looking forward to our conversation and I hope we learn a bit more about the story of RNA. We might even get into some wordplay in this episode.

Welcome to Ask a Biologist. Brandon, I really appreciate you sitting down and talking with us.

Brandon:

Dr. Biology Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Biology:

Let's just start off with the big question. We talked about DNA and more importantly, RNA, but not about the important job that RNA has in cell function and the evolution of life. So, can we talk a little bit about RNA? Can we set the stage? So to speak, as a storyteller?

Brandon:

Yeah. And to this, you know, I hearken back to my undergraduate thesis, right, which is entitled The Liberation of RNA, which some of you have become familiar with. And part of the reason why I called it that when I was in college and part of the reason why I think about RNA in that way is because you think about the way we talk about certain aspects of biology in life. 

And I feel like DNA has always been center stage. Everybody loves DNA. Your DNA is on the marquee at the show. DNA feature in DNA. DNA is on the cover of the magazine. Everybody knows DNA. And I feel like RNA has been this kid sibling that hasn't quite gotten the attention it deserves. And I think the good news is, in the last 20 years, that's begun to change. People now understand what makes it so powerful and important because we have a new understanding now of the way information works in life.

Dr. Biology:

Right. You know, you go back to your DNA and I said, you know, it's an instruction set, it's an encyclopedia. But if it sits in the library and never gets used, what good is it? So here we bring in RNA and messenger RNA, and they're actually doing the work.

Brandon:

That's exactly right. So, like long-term storage DNA is powerful. And you know what? I'll go ahead and say it. DNA, I think, is the most powerful and important piece of information in the universe. So, I’m not against DNA. I'm on its team. I love it. I'm with it. There’s a reason why It's the basis for all cellular life on Earth that we know of at the moment because it does this remarkable job of encoding this information, but by itself, it just sits in the cell and doesn't do anything. 

We think about the exciting and dynamic process of the way a cell works and the way a person works and the way a plant works and the way a microbe works. That's because biology is dictated by turning things on and off at very particular times. From the breakfast that you ate to the dinner that you eat to sleeping and walking, it requires that you turn genes on and off in these very, very rapid ways in response to the world that we're living in. And RNA is really a very critical component to taking that information in DNA and actualizing it and animating it. Right. So, that we can actually do these things. 

Dr. Biology:

Right. For example, RNA is out there, but especially messenger RNA goes out working with ribosomes. What are we going to do? We're going to make things right. We're going to make some proteins without those proteins, without those signals, without those things that are going throughout your cell and then outside of your cell to the rest of the organism, whether it be a human, a cat, a plant, you know, fungi, whatever you want to talk about, without that, it all stops.

Brandon:

Yeah. So, when we think about the flow of information from DNA to RNA to protein, and you might have seen a picture where you have DNA with an arrow to RNA with an arrow to protein. We call that the central dogma of molecular biology. And really all it means is just a picture that tells you how information flow happens in a cell. And so protein is another one that's gotten a lot of attention. You know, we know about protein from our diet. They're actually doing the work in the cell. They're the ones that are actually breaking down the sugar in your diet. And they're the ones that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting physically in a cell. 

So, we know them. RNA has been caught in the middle, and that's one of the reasons why it's been underappreciated. And part of the reason why it's under-appreciated is that like messenger RNA, it, relatively speaking, short-lived DNA is engineered to last a long time. That's why it's the basis of heredity. RNA on the other hand is relatively short-lived. It does its job; it provides instructions for proteins to make typically and has other functions as well. But the main one is messenger RNA is basically saying, hey, this is what we need to make protein-wise, let's make it. And then RNA disappears. Right.

Dr. Biology:

Unsung hero.

Brandon:

That's right. You don't see it, even though it's responsible for all the things that are happening.

Dr. Biology:

That's when it's doing everything. Well, let's say as according to plan. But sometimes things don't go according to plan. And that's where we talk about mutations. And I always have to say this when I bring up the word mutations, a lot of people have a very negative view of mutation. The reality is mutations are both good and bad, and sometimes they're just they don't do anything. Let's talk a little bit about mutations and evolution because actually, those mistakes were important.

Brandon:

Oh, I mean, it's like a lot like life, right? I think to make any discovery of anything you want to meet a new friend, you can identify a new recipe that you like. It's oftentimes because you didn't have what you needed it. You tried something else, but you put some applesauce in your pasta by mistake and all of a sudden you got a special new recipe. And I think biology works the same way. 

Mutations, the vast majority of them do nothing. We think they don't actually bother anything. When you get one of these kinds of changes in your DNA, for example, we don't notice them at all. Mutations are happening all the time in our bodies, and we don't notice them because they don't have an effect. But a small fraction of mutations can do one of two things. They can cause problems, right? They can cause errors, or occasionally they can actually do something like we talked about with this apple pie. You know, with this pasta. They could actually do something good. And those are a very small fraction of them. So, this is why studying mutations is so critical is they're responsible for a lot of problems. 

So, for example, genetic disease is caused by mutations in DNA that is then transcribed into RNA that often gives you proteins. So, you might have heard of sickle cell anemia, for example, which is a disease caused by a mutation in hemoglobin [found in blood]. Right. A very important protein. But sometimes evolution works because it identifies a novelty, a mutation that allows you to do something different or better, right? Or allows you to kind of survive a condition that's very, very challenging. So, we shouldn't look at mutations as all negative. It's just kind of a change. And depending on where you are and what context you're in the world you're in and where you're occupied, it can be good or bad, right?

Dr. Biology:

And when you talk about mutations, they have to have some kind of final form that actually is still functional. And the reason I bring that up is you're introduced - we're at a lecture at a major university with a roomful of scientists and you introduce a word game. I had not played this game. I have to admit it was really interesting because it's you know; it's called the Ladder game or some people might know it as doublets or word links. 

And what was interesting about that is it really made it clear that you could make changes in this game. But they have to be changes with meaning. So, let's talk a little bit about this word game and mutations and how this becomes so important when we're doing our science and we're looking at how biology works.

Brandon:

Yeah, I mean, I think there's many important lessons in this word game. I first read it from one of my scientific heroes in evolution who used this word game to describe how evolution happens little bit by a little bit. And that's important for a bunch of reasons. This was a fancy, smart mathematician, a biologist named John Maynard Smith, and instead of using fancy mathematics, he used this word game to explain a critical concept.

And so I borrowed that as a way to talk about my science. You never want to talk about it any more complicated than you have to. Sometimes, you know, you have to actually use the math because you're talking to mathematicians. So, you try to make a particular point. And if you talk about RNA, sometimes you have to talk about kind of, you know, you know, individual atoms depending on who you're talking to, but not even sometimes you can actually describe things in basic terms. So, what he said was this you take the game word ladder where the idea is you start with a word and let's just say word w-o-r-d, right. 

And the goal of the game is to take this word and go to another word, changing one letter at a time. So, you have w-o-r-d and I want to change that to g-e-n-e and gene. Now, those are different words. The question is, how do I get from one of these words to the other changing one letter at a time? And what he said is and this is the way evolution actually works, how mutations work is you can identify steps that gets you from word to gene. One letter at a time. Where all the words in between make sense. So, for example, we can go from word to wore, change that D to E to wore to gore. Right? g-o-r-e, gore to gone g-o-n-e. And then you flip that o to an e, you get g-e-n-e. 

And those are mutations that do that. And like I said, just like with some mutations, some mutations you're talking about word w-o-r-d, maybe the first mutation is, I don't know, you know, gord and you know, in American English, right? That's not really a word we use. Not really. You know, maybe sometimes, but like, not really. You know, that's not like a common word, g-o-r-d. That'd be a mutation that gives us a mistake. Doesn't help us either. Doesn't help us or even maybe harms us. Right. 

So, there's a lot of mutations that aren't helpful, but sometimes you find that w-o-r-d to wore, and that now makes sense that next word makes sense. And so evolution works by moving step to step such that each of those individual words make sense. And those mutations mean genes that makes sense are RNAs that make sense and proteins that make sense. And using an algorithm like that, using a tool like that works like the word game evolution could come up with all kinds of new solutions for problems.

Dr. Biology:

Right. And I'll actually leave the audience with one to play with. They can start with cells. Right. And try to end up with human.

Brandon:

Oooh...

Dr. Biology:

Okay, how many? Not going to give an answer here. You guys can try it out.

Brandon:

That’s a good one.

Dr. Biology:

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So, if you have a mutation that doesn't do anything, fine. But most importantly is you need to have something that doesn't basically cause enough harm that the cell can no longer function. So, I mean, basically, we're talking about back to the words. The words had to have some meaning. They have to still work. I love that. 

So, you're a storyteller. And I suspect that in the world of evolution because that's where you, your view on the world comes from that perspective. But you're a storyteller. Are there some unexpected plot twists that you have seen past, present, or future phases of evolution? Let's talk a little about those unexpected twists.

Brandon:

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. I think the great thing about evolution as a science and I think the challenge of evolution of a science is that there are rules that govern the way things evolve. Right. We understand, like I just told you about the word game, right? There are things that we can understand about what the rules are, how mutations happen, what the rate of mutations is, for example. And we can describe evolution and populations of things. So, we have a lot of fancy and smart rules and tools to understand [how] evolution works. But the beauty of it is that it's nothing but surprise. 

I can't tell you for sure what's going to happen with a given species of bird. There's a lot of things that I have to learn and understand about the world in order to be able to make a prediction, right? So, evolution is full of surprises and, you know, there's an old analogy, right? Like they say that if you replayed the tape of life is and you started it over again, you would get a completely different set of solutions. Maybe we may not be here, or we would look completely different. And that's what makes evolution so exciting. 

It's a story of surprise and kind of like drama and excitement. And so, I think it's full of it. I think we see it everywhere. We think about even serious things like COVID-19 pandemic, for example, right? Which, you know, was such a serious, serious thing and a lot of other diseases. And being able to understand, for example, how those populations went from Beta to Delta to Omicron, I think Omicron in particular was a very, very surprising one because Omicron acquired all of these different mutations that did not exist in the Beta strain or the Delta strain or the original strain 

And that was very, very surprising to us. And I think we're still trying to understand how that happened. And we do have some ideas about going back to HIV. Right. Which, you know, of course, was a major, major problem. Part of what made our understanding of HIV so important from an evolutionary perspective is not only the origin of it, which was a big, big mystery. Where it came from is related to a virus SIV. Right. Simian immunodeficiency virus. 

But the reason why we've been able to treat HIV effectively is because we identified combinations of drugs that actually make it very difficult for HIV to evolve. So, by understanding evolution, we now can engineer drugs to prevent resistance, and that's helped a lot of people live a lot of healthy and happy lives. And I think it's a triumph of this kind of science. So, I think that's the beauty of evolution, is there's so much surprise in it. It's all these glorious things. It's responsible for the diversity of life and all the beauty and the plants that we see and the beauty in the animal species that we see. 

But it's also responsible for a lot of the problems that we're having. And even though it's surprising, there's a lot of things that are hard to predict, there's still rules that we can learn that can help us understand it, to help treat disease and perhaps even understanding how we'll respond to things like climate change.

Dr. Biology:

Climate change. How is evolution going to have an impact on climate change?

Brandon:

Yeah, So I mean, I think climate change describes a whole host of global changes that are going to happen in a lot of different places. So, it won't look like one thing in one place. But for example, you take the, you know, the term global warming. Let's just say in some setting you're going to have higher average temperatures than you would have. Right. We now know because of the way the world works, because of warm places, the types of adaptations that organisms have to have in order to be successful in warm climates. 

We know how cells evolve. We know how bird feeding evolves. We know how diets evolve in high temperatures versus cold temperatures. We know that. And so, we can begin to think about, okay, so maybe now we'll see more adaptations. So, for example, in a hot climate organisms have to retain water. Water is scarce in a lot of places, right? And the hotter it is, you risk losing your water. So, we could actually make the prediction now that, okay, we're going to have species that adapt by retaining more water. Another thing we can predict is things like, okay, well, this is an issue for disease, right? Because mosquitoes only live in certain climates typically. And, you know, they're pretty adaptable and we see them in many parts of the world. But if you see the climate associated with mosquito temperature, we see that expanding. 

Well, then we can expect to see mosquito-borne illnesses potentially in more settings. And so now we're going to need a new generation of insect experts, not just people in the tropics, but people who are in other parts of the world. So, now we can respond by saying, you know what? We need more young people to get interested in insects and to learn how insects evolve and learn how mosquitoes evolve and why they feed on certain species, etc. So, we can actually see that as a thing to think about. So, thinking about processes that change globally allows us on the scientific side and the public health side to be able to prepare for how we can help us.

Dr. Biology:

Interesting enough about mosquitoes. We had Sylvie Huijben on the podcast, and the title of that episode is The World's Deadliest Animal. Most people don't know that it is the mosquito, so there's a lot to that story. We'll put the link in as usual. Okay. During your lecture, one of the things that you emphasized, and I think this is really important for all scientists and especially all the young scientists because you were talking about context. Let's just talk a little bit about context and why that becomes so important in the world of science.

Brandon:

Yeah, I mean, I think context includes all of the settings, environments, things you're experiencing, the world that you're in. And one of my fascinations and obsessions scientifically is how that changes scientific phenomena. So, for example, one of the things that we've learned about the world and one of the reasons why we admire people like Isaac Newton is they came up with rules. Right. Like fundamental rules of motion. And that's what makes him such a genius, is that he was able to distill down all of this world into a bunch of simple rules that describe the way the world works. 

The problem is you take those rules and we think they apply everywhere the same way in terms of physics they do. But even those rules in terms of motion, for example, can be influenced by friction, for example, or depending on how far away you are from the earth. Right. You know, the gravitational pull is slightly, slightly different. And that can kind of meaningful impacts the way objects move on Earth. And so, what I'm saying is, even for the most basic and fundamental rules on earth, you have to know something more about where you are. Right. 

So, now let's move on to something like biology. Right. When we talk about genetics and I have, you know, genes that are associated with me being tall or risk for disease or having eyes of a certain color, it's not unlike the physics laws. Some of those things are really, really important. They tell you a lot of information about the way a biological organism will work, and I think that's why it's important to understand genetics. But the more and more we learn about biology, it's you have to understand more than just that information. You have to understand where that organism was raised, how it was raised when its diet was right. 

These other things that have an influence on the way the genes are working. And in my view, this is the hidden dimension that we haven't focused on enough in fields like biology. And I think once we learn to appreciate these things, like what's friction in biology, how is that influencing the biological laws of motion? I think we'll understand a lot more about who we are as people and the way the biological world works.

Dr. Biology:

Especially today, because we're talking about going to Mars, Right? All right. You just mentioned gravity. Well, that's what our cells what everything is used to is gravity on Earth. You're out in space. You have no gravity. Context has changed exactly what's going to happen? 

Brandon:

Exactly. No, this is a good question. There's you know, there is space medicine, there is astrobiology there are fields that actually specifically ask the question of, well, how does a microorganism or organism, a microorganism like human beings, what actually happens to bone density and stuff like that in microgravity? And this is a good question because that is not the environment or context in which Homo sapiens, have ever had to experience. And it certainly isn't one where Homo sapiens evolved. 

And so, this is a completely different environment. In fact, one of the main things we're worried about when it comes to space travel, we've always been worried about space travel isn't so much like the physical or muscular things, it's actually the psychological influences. 

So, for example, like I don't know about you all, but being by yourself, you know, I like being myself at times. But even if you're introverted, who wants to be up in outer space for six and ten and 12 months and two years with nobody or with the same person in one small area, relatively speaking? That's actually a stressor on us psychologically, and that's a different context. And so the more we understand these dimensions, I think the better off will be for predicting disease, for being able to treat disease, for being able to go to outer space, for being able to understand climate change. I mean, there's a host of problems on Earth that being able to understand context and environment will help us.

Dr. Biology:

 That is so true… and suspect a pretty good hint for some future scientists or at least some future science careers. 

Now I was doing some research on you, in preparation for our conversation today – And I found out that you are a history buff.

Brandon:

Yes.

Dr. Biology:

Is there a part of history you really love? I know science [history].

Brandon:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do love history. I think it just allows us to think a lot about who we are and where we've gone. And I think it allows us to think about the future. And I think for me, yeah, the history of science and ideas, obviously, because that's the practice. But for me, yeah, I mean, it's African-American history. I think African-American history is it is American history. It's that you can't really understand America without the history of African and other groups. 

But this is the one that I've studied the most. And I think it's just such a great experience of triumph and perseverance and creativity. And in fact, a lot of the creativity that I apply in my basic science I got from studying the Harlem Renaissance, and I got that from studying the birth of jazz and the birth of hip hop and these kind of, you know, creative movements in the African-American community. I actually embraced that in my science now. So, I think that's the great thing about history. You can kind of borrow things and ideas and you can animate them in your life in ways that, you know, might be surprising.

Dr. Biology:

Right? So learn from history, but don't have it dictate to your future.

Brandon:

That's exactly right. I think you borrow things from it, and I think you certainly learn the mistakes that were made as well. But the idea is building a future. So, I'm a futurist, ultimately. I want to build an exciting and healthy and happy future for people. And I think history gives me the tools to help get there.

Dr. Biology:

Yeah, Great. Okay. Okay. So, you're a fan of RNA. You're a fan of evolution. You're a storyteller. I'm going to shift to a place where I ask all my guests three questions. So, you ready?

Brandon:

Let's do it.

Dr. Biology:

When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist?

Brandon:

Well, you know, I think for me, there's a moment that I can use, but it really is a series of conversations and experiences with my mother. I think my mother is the biggest influence on who I am. I consider myself to be like a carbon copy of her in many ways. But I think fortunately I have many more opportunities than she had, and I think I became a scientist because she would have been one. Could she have done it in her day. 

And I think from around the house she was putting New York Times science articles on the refrigerator when I was a child, and she was telling us, Look at this discovery here. Look at this discovery here. She had us watching science fiction when I was a young person. Right. But I remember when I ran outside, we lived in a low-income housing unit in New York City, and there was a dead mouse on the ground. And I was six years old. And I walked up to the mouse, and I just picked it up in my hand and like brought it to my face and looked at it. And she says that's the moment. 

She says you were so inquisitive was the word she used. And who knows? I was probably just being a silly little six-year-old being a six-year-old, and that's what six-year-olds do. They do little silly stuff like that. But I think she encoded that as this is a person who wants to understand the way the world works. And I carried that one with me for my whole life. And so that's like the moment that I can focus on where I learned that being a scientist is a thing. And I think through her influence, I've always carried this as my lifelong dream.

Dr. Biology:

Aahh. Well, so now I'm going to be what I say a bit on the evil side because I'm taking it all away. You don't get to be a scientist. I know you're a writer and a storyteller, so I'm going to take that away.

Brandon:

All right.

Dr. Biology:

I want you to think about if you weren't in this space now, what would you be or what would you do?

Brandon:

So if I couldn't be a scientist or writer or storyteller, all those are off the board. So, I'll give a cheat answer and then I'll give you a not cheat answer. And I think the cheating answer is my mother was a schoolteacher, okay? And I think that's about as far as people went in her demographic in that day. You know, there weren't a lot of women scientists and they certainly weren't a lot of African-American scientists, and she taught.

But through that, I saw a lot of her goodness, she did a lot of good for people. And she reached and connected with people and she was able to leverage her love of ideas. And I think that's very much a part of why. So, I could see myself teaching young people and helping young people. So, that's, you know, I said that's probably my answer, but it's a little bit cheating because I'm borrowing for my mother.

I think otherwise I get personal joy out of doing good for people who are in need. I think that's just fun to do that, and I try to do that as much as I can in my profession. So, I look at fields, professions like social work, for example, where people, you know, they help keep families together, that you're having a hard time and they, you know, provide people with needs and people who are struggling with disability or illness or other challenges, particularly young people, you know, I know social workers that dedicate their life to just keeping households together and they do it successfully.

Brandon:

I look at that craft and I have a lot of admiration for them. And I think I would also find very, very meaningful.

Dr. Biology:

Yeah, a bit of the RNA of the human roles or jobs, right?

Brandon:

Oh, it's a great analogy. Absolutely. 

Dr. Biology:

The unsung heroes, right? 

Brandon:

Absolutely!

Dr. Biology:

You bring up this point about going out and helping people. I also noticed in your lecture you flipped something, something really important. And I haven't seen this before. I've seen people, some scientists just say there are a lot of people behind the scenes, but they don't really bring it upfront. So, for those that don't go to scientific lectures, which isn't on everybody's schedule, you come in, you meet the audience, you give your talk. At the end of the talk, you give a list of the people that made you successful because science is a team sport, I would call it. Right? 

So, it's interesting. It's always left to the end. You didn't do that. You start off with gratitude, but I think it kind of leads into my last question. And the last question is what advice would you have for someone who wants to be a scientist, especially the ones that don't think they have a chance of being a scientist? What would you say to them?

Brandon:

Yeah, So I think on one end, a lot of the things that you've heard about, you know, learning science are true. Do your studies and working hard and doing your homework. And I think that's important because science is challenging and requires that you understand a lot of technical things. And so, your math I'm working English, I'm working and writing so that part's true. Okay? And I really recommend that to young people. 

I think what you don't learn, and I think part of what you're asking me, these other set of tools and things that have made one successful. I appreciate that you notice how I thanked people upfront because what I learned from my mother, it's something that I've kind of activated in my career, and that is being a gracious and decent and thankful person is the most powerful tool we have in science. That's how you get students to care. That's how you get your mentors to care. That's how you get people wanting to work with you. It's being excited about your work in the world, being grateful of the people that have helped you, and paying that forward by being good to other people. Those are my secret weapons in science. 

I feel like those end up being as important as any equations or any mathematical method or any experiment is how do you build a community of people in science? And that's the fun part. Science and in medicine and engineering and all these fields that I've participated in, all of them, it's the community of friends and colleagues that I've built that's the most fun. And that's only because I've tried to exude positive energy and gratitude and generosity wherever I could. So, that's the secret weapon. It's not a not a long time ago. It's not decades ago was individual people making discoveries. Science doesn't work that way anymore. If you can't get a group of people to help you or believe in you, you're not going to succeed in earlier, you learn that I think the more successful you're going to be.

Dr. Biology:

Well, Brandon, I want to thank you so much for sitting down with me on Ask A Biologist. It's been a pleasure.

Brandon:

Dr. Biology, a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. This was a blast.

Dr. Biology:

You have been listening to Ask A Biologist, and my guest has been Brandon Ogbunu, a professor at Yale University and a computational biologist who spends his time researching ecology and evolutionary biology. And when he's not doing that, he's big into storytelling. And you can imagine parts of those stories have to do with evolution. But he has other tales to tell. Will be sure to give you some links in the notes on the podcast. 

The Ask A Biologist podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University and is recorded in the Grassroots Studio housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. And remember, even though our program is not broadcast live, you can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is askabiologist.asu.edu or you can just use your favorite search engine to search for Ask A Biologist. As always, I'm Dr. Biology and I hope you're staying safe and healthy.