Katie Czervionke
Senior, Biological Sciences

This is one of Brookfield Zoo’s ambassador animals, Sheba. Sheba is a binturong, common to south and southwest Asia. She was hand-raised by the keepers at Brookfield Zoo and absolutely loves attention. Here she is giving my face a little sniff before trying to climb on my shoulder.

My name is Katie and I am a senior at DePaul University studying Biology with a concentration in Ecology and Evolution. I spent this past summer working as the Dean’s Undergraduate Fellow at Brookfield Zoo. During my time at Brookfield I worked under the Director of Nutrition, Dr. Jennifer Watts, as she planned and prepared the diets for all 300+ species of animals at the zoo.

Part of my job as a Nutrition Intern consisted of working in the zoo’s commissary where the food for the animal areas are prepared and delivered from. I spent two of my ten weeks working there. My first week I was in the kitchen- cutting and chopping the fruits and veggies that went into the pan diets for most of the animals. You can only imagine how much chopping goes into preparing diets for over 300 different species that live at the zoo. During my second week, I helped with deliveries of food and browse to all the animal areas. For those of you who do not know what browse are, these are large branches from trees cut by ComEd from local neighborhoods around the zoo. Twice a week, ComEd brings these browse to the zoo as a type of enrichment for the animals. Animals like giraffes and bison are just crazy about them!

When I am not working in the commissary, I am assisting Dr. Watts with body condition scoring of the animals. About three to four times a year the animals are observed to see if there are any signs of obesity or malnutrition. This can either be done from a distance while the animal is in its exhibit or up close at the hospital where we can physically examine the animal to see what its body condition score is. The scoring is taken on a scale from one to nine, where a score of nine means the animal is extremely overweight. The most unique animal I had the chance to evaluate was the zoo’s female lion, Isis, when she was getting a CT scan at the hospital. It is so easy for an animal to become overweight when living at a zoo; however, just a small adjustment of their diet could make a huge impact on their health and overall lifestyle at the zoo.

As you can see, I have had a wild adventure working at Brookfield Zoo this summer. Every day, I had the chance to work with a new animal and had the opportunity to get up close and personal with the animals, as well as the keepers that care for them. There is a lot of work that goes into being an animal nutritionist. It is true that all species require different changes in their diet to keep them living a healthy lifestyle; I have also learned that each individual animal is different and sometimes requires personalized changes to their diet. As difficult as it might be to plan the diets for so many different animals, the team at Brookfield Zoo is dedicated to taking care of these animals and has built a community to ensure these animals live the healthiest and most relaxed lifestyle they can.