Illustration by Be Fernández
When working in the mouth of Tucker—a 23-year-old, nearly 4,800-pound hippo—Jenna Wingate, head keeper at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Africa department, always keeps her hands just barely in the front of his mouth, away from the powerful back molars. Hippos have one of the strongest bite forces of any mammal at 1,800 to 2,000 pounds per square inch.
Safety protocols are important for handlers, especially when working with an animal that could severely injure or even kill someone. Precautions are constantly taken, from double locks on doors to barriers kept between human and animal.
Before keepers ever work with dangerous animals, they start off with Savannah animals, birds, and giraffes so that if a mistake is made, it likely won’t be a deadly one. From there, they learn the proper techniques to move up the food chain.
As an animal expert, Wingate can tell when it’s safe to proceed with tusk trims or blood draws by looking at a hippo’s movements.
While hippos and keepers never share a space, something like snake handling is the opposite. Tiffany Johnson, founder and owner of Dino Buddies, which facilitates reptile encounters, lets her snakes twine around her hands. She says the handling of snakes is based on training, respect, and awareness. “A 2-year-old can hold our snakes,” she says.
Handling doesn’t happen without proper preparation, however. Dino Buddies’s system involves an initial six- to eight-month quarantine period to let the animal to come out of its shell. Not all the snakes in Johnson’s non-venomous collection are fit to be handled, and she evaluates their behavior and temperament during this period. While intensive, she says this process has led to zero incidents after five years of operations. Disagreeable behavior presents itself in darting movements, biting, and the release of an odor called musk.
Hippos and snakes can be dangerous, but Johnson and Wingate say being fearful of them isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “In order to be a safe zookeeper, I feel like you have to, at the very least, have a clear understanding of how dangerous animals can be and respect animals in their power,” says Wingate.
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