Minnesota Zoo keepers discuss their animals

"Let me entertain you" is her dolphin promise

Melanie Oerter, a zoologist for the marine mammals, heads the crew of six trainers that works with two Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. The dolphins get five training sessions daily for mental stimulation and exercise.

"Semo is an adult male that's well over 40 years old. He's a great animal. He's very solid with all his behaviors, and even for an animal this old, he is very playful. We have the complete opposite in his daughter, Spree. She's 5 years old and she's very much the juvenile, playful animal. If we're not doing something fun and exciting enough to engage her, she'll go find her own thing to do that's more fun and exciting than we are.

"All of the training that we do involves positive reinforcement or operant conditioning, meaning that if the animal does something that we like, we give them a reward, whether it's playing with them or giving them fish. ... Through that, we build really strong relationships with our animals.

"I know them better than I know a lot of people and sometimes I prefer to spend time with them."

The snow monkeys are best experienced from a distance

As the supervisor of the Tropics area and the Minnesota Trail, Tom Ness takes care of a diverse group of animals, including Japanese snow monkeys. Snow monkeys are aggressive with people -- the keepers are never in the enclosure with them at the same time.

"They're the northernmost nonhuman primate. They're found farther north than any other monkey." But humans "kind of cheat with clothing and housing and that kind of thing.

"These guys have short, dense bodies, short fingers, short tails that help them stay warmer in the colder months.

"These guys are really tough. They're really tough on each other because of their dominance structure. ... They're always challenging each other. So they can have some wounds that look pretty serious and the next day they're fine. They're pretty good healers."

"Camel affection is a hard thing to classify"

Keepers Tim Hill and Amber Dunaway take care of the ungulates -- hooved animals -- on the Northern Trail. Among their charges is a herd of eight Bactrian camels. More than 1 million Bactrian camels are used as beasts of burden across central Asia, and a few hundred of their wild counterparts roam the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and northern China. Hill and Dunaway monitor their health, feed them and herd them between their holding pens and the exhibit spaces.

Tim Hill: "I've known this was what I wanted to do since I was 4 or 5 years old ... so I'm basically fulfilling my ambitions. These animals have always been a special interest of mine, more so than tigers or wolves or something. I'd rather work with animals that can't eat me. And not with monkeys, either, because I'd rather work with something that I'm smarter than.

"They are up to a ton in weight, especially the big males. You certainly have to watch out when you're around them, to be sure you don't get squashed or stepped on or kicked or bitten."

Amber Dunaway: "Camel affection is a hard thing to classify. If they don't try to attack you or bite you or kick you or spit at you and they allow you to handle them, then I would call that affection, maybe. ... I went on an extended leave, a few weeks this summer, and honestly camels were the one thing I missed. On this trail they're relatively charismatic."

The lynx in winter

Tom Ness takes care of the Tropics area, the Japanese snow monkeys and the Minnesota Trail. The zoo's three lynxes -- carnivorous cats native to the boreal forests of northern Minnesota -- are some of his charges. Two kittens and an adult male rotate in the exhibit space.

The lynx was "at one time very common in Minnesota and around the Great Lakes region and now there are fewer than 500 in Minnesota. So they're a key species for us.

"When the kittens were little we occasionally had to go in there with them when we were trying to teach them to come on and off exhibit, but they're now 7 months old and they're a little bit more than we can handle. They're really strong and fast -- they have to be to catch a rabbit.

"A lot of people ask us 'What can we do to try to save the tiger? What can we do to save the rhino?' ... The nice thing about lynx and the Minnesota Trail is we can talk about things people can do in their own back yards here in Minnesota to help conserve the species that are here ... things to preserve their habitat."