Bonus: Werribee Zookeeper Reveals The Hardest Animal To Train

The experts with Jason Lauren, your vessel specialists who specialize in very special things.

Hi.

I'm Kelly Hopps and I'm an animal behavior specialist at Werribee Open Range.

Soon let's hear from the expert.

So, yes, we are joined by an animal behavior expert.

Hopefully she can teach us how to deal with Lauren. Kelly. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Morning Kelly morning. All right, we have many questions.

Firstly, favorite animal.

Lion or why love lions? I love the way that they have a really kind of tight knit group. The females run the show. The guys are kind of the brute strength, Okay, whatever, but the females are the brains, and they're so good at raising. They're young, and they're just a really cool animal and so smart.

You're a behavior specialist, can you tell by looking at an animal when it's going to attack?

They give us look animals to communicate effectively.

This is what she does. She would be able to.

Tell animals are really really fantastic communicators. We are not so great at picking up on their ques. Yeah, so they give us lots and lots of signals that they're not feeling that they're not feeling good or they're feeling uncomfortable in a situation, and it's up to us to be able to read those cues and say, all right, you're not feeling comfortable, I'm going to back off and leave.

You see them colp and you know they're going to go.

Just don't go near them, No, leave them alone. I reckon, Are there any animals that are untrainable or what is the hardest animal?

Absolutely? No animal is untrainable. Say humans are the hardest animal to train. Every organism that is living learns. That's how we survive.

You're telling me we could try. I could train an ant, absolutely absolutely.

We've trained crocodiles, frogs. What's the hardest, I'd say there's there's It depends on the individual. Depends on the individual, and.

You know, get like a smart crocodile or a dumb crocodile. Crocodiles are so smart.

They were one of the animals when I first kind of started doing this role that just blew my mind at their intelligence.

What are you training them to do? Like jump? I could see, well with the dolphins, no.

Care, so it's all for their kind of healthcare. So we're able to we're able to medicate them or weigh them, because that's a really important part of their care.

How do you weigh a crocodile, Well, you.

Can ask them to station. So a station or a target is when you ask them to move to a space.

Can they just walk there? Okay, exactly walk.

It's pretty much exactly the same way as you'd call a dog over, But you're doing it in a way that the crocodile might understand or recognize.

Can you give me an example, sure, so if.

So, Let's say we're training our crocodiles, we would use a station which was like a red reflector on the end of a stick. Pretty simple thing that we just banged together. But when we presented that to the glass of the crocodile's enclosure, the crocodile will come over and investigate that. As soon as it touched its nose to that bit of class where the reflectors give it a bit of food.

Throwing a little bit of fish.

It's always yeah, good boy, he's a muffin.

Follow that reflector Anywhay, Hey, Kelly, did the animals recognize you or remember you?

The reason I.

Asked you loved because I love the videos where the animal is reunited with its handler and they they.

Pretty orphan lie and then we got brought up by that family and they released it to the wild and came back.

Do you have any reunion moments.

I definitely have moments that the animals recognized me reunion moments.

Okay, So I used to work.

With a gorilla when I was young and the gorilla was a baby, and so I was very lucky enough to work with this beautiful young gorilla. And then about fifteen years later I got to work with him again, and would I would very much like to think there was some recognition there that might just be my If there was, I think there was because there was a lot of communication and from that gorilla that was very comfortable, there were pleasure grumbles.

So they kind of do this like gorilla.

So I do think that the animals, again, they're so good at recognizing different things of different people.

And one hundred when Missouri me, so what did that mean? Because Clint met Missouri the gorilla and.

It picked up to visit him in the UK Poopy.

When it got relocated to the UK. I think he recognized you from from home and.

Dislike he grabbed his turds and he threw them.

Is that in love or hate? It could be both.

When we really don't know, you'd have to ask Missouri and be like, was he trying to get your attention? It literally could have been an attention seeking behavior. So he might have been like, I can see Clint, and I'm going to throw some pooda get him to look at me.

Is that it was?

Let's just say, do you throw yours back?

Missouri Kelly. Some people are very critical of.

Because obviously we've seen a big movement and we don't make dolphins dance anymore, and we don't keep whales, we don't do any of those things that people did in the eighties, and then Tiger King came around, and we shouldn't be keeping tight like we know that. So a lot of people don't think zoos are good places.

Is there a place for zoos? Why these animals in a zoo not in the wild?

I totally understand your question, Lauren, and I think it's a really good one because there are a lot of zoos around the world, and people are in animals that probably aren't doing it in the best way that they could. I do think there's a great place for zoos and zee's Victoria. We have such a high welfare standard and we're constantly improving that nobody does everything at one hundred percent. We're constantly learning about new ways that we can improve

Okay, Kelly, is it true. I've told this to many many people here that giraffe I went on this funny story.

Actually I went on a date ones.

And years ago and this guy asked me, like what I my hobbies were, and I said, I studied to be zoologists.

I don't know why I made it up. I panicked and I started reeling off giraffe facts.

And giraffes have the biggest hearts of all the land animals, Kelly.

Kelly is not agreeing with it.

They need very well the blood very well be the case.

They need to beat their heart and it needs to go all the waut their neck to the heads and when they bend down, the valve in the neck.

Shuts it off so the blood doesn't rush to their head.

Lauren, you've got it like you've got it right.

That was you should be a zoologist.

Thank you.

You're basically did it work out with the shocked I didn't.

Hey, Kelly, thank you so much coming in this morning. Wear we open range zoo. Get out there. The animal's on in the zoo, you know. Yeah, We're at a zoo the other day and before they put the lions out in the enclosure, people were paying to walk through the lion enclosure and see the environment.

I didn't get that, did you.

I and the people's family were watching, taking photos, and my eight year old was like, now's a good time to release the lions.

I'm I'm so sorry. Hey Kelly, thanks for coming in. Good to see you, kel.

Lauren wake up feeling good on number one hundred. Lauren on social