Do you have a vicious rivalry with people who work at aquariums? Like, yearly softball wars or anything? I just have this vision of people at zoos and aquariums intensely disliking each other.
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Well I can tell you that a number of people that have come to my zoo have come from a marine mammal park, and they are very snobby about it. Like working with land animals is somehow beneath them. We hate them for that.

Stupid guests? Other than the stupid stuff above, and beating on the glass(they don't care they arent looking at you because you are an asshole and they are avoiding you), most of our guests are pretty cool. We have a number of "great ape groupies", regulars to the park who know all our animals by name, their birthdays, their histories etc. These groupies will say
-"Oh Maggie is looking a little sad today, what did you do to her?"
-"Pheona looks a little skinny, I think she had lost weight." Really? Hmm we just weighed her this morning and she has gained 3 lbs. so your analysis isnt correct, thank you.
-"I was looking at Saraka and she signed to me that she wants kiwi fruit and that she wants me to come into the night house so I can tell her about Africa."

They will even ask different keepers the same questions to try and get a different answer, and then will call us on it " oh well your partner said Savvy weighs 222lbs and you said 225 so which is it?"


We had one lady show up everyday for two months with a notebook where she made observations about our chimpanzee introductions, and regularly gave us the 3rd degree about whether the baby chimp was safe or not, and was always in a panic. If one of the chimps was being mean to another chimp, she would beat on the glass and yell at them very loudly by name. "SAM YOU STOP BEING MEAN TO PATTY! YOU HEAR ME!?"

We seem to attract the crazies at the great ape department.

We run the other way when we see them, and warn the other keepers that they are around that day.

Also, king penguins will slowly edge toward you, until they are standing right next to you, and then, keel over and lean against you, putting all their weight on you. They will stand like that until you physically have to lift them off of your leg, otherwise they will nearly fall over when you move. I guess its for warmth.

The big cats get fed throughout the day, ususally to coincide with a talk, but not always. At our zoo we dont feed anything live. They do get whole rabbits, but we arent allowed to feed them in front of guests. It might traumatize a little child. But I say they should learn about nature red in tooth and claw.