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Jay: I would say my main responsibilities are overseeing the animal collection and what
animals we have here, as well as overseeing the animal care staff and the job that they’re
doing taking care of the animals. It’s [the aquarium] probably [has] close to 1200 individual
animals, a little over 200 different species.
CJ: I pretty much just maintain all the exhibits and all the animals within the exhibits, which
entails actual feeding, all the feeding schedules, noticing any problems with the
actual animals themselves.
Jay: When I was a kid I was always the one out there with a dip net and a bucket, you know out on the
streams in my neighborhood, you know going to parks and stuff. And always very active
in the outdoors and everything. But I guess I really didn’t think about working with
animals as a career until probably my sophomore year in college.
Jay: We have the Albino Alligator on exhibit right now.
CJ: She’s about 3 years old now. She’s roughly 4 ½ feet. Usually we stick to mice
as a staple, frozen mice of course.
Well, the technical term is amelanistic, which if you break that down a little bit, the melanin
is actually the dark pigment (color) in your skin. So if you say amelanistic it means that
it does not have this dark pigment. So albino alligators just means that it has none of
that black pigment.
CJ: Get in the environment. Look around at all the creepy crawlies that are underneath
rocks and logs and in the streams. Get access to as many animals as you can. You know, don’t
bug your parents for a lot of animals, but you know, just volunteer at nature centers.
Volunteering, once you get to the right age, volunteering at places like this, like that
National Aquarium or the National Zoo.
The national aquarium is a non-profit organization at the Department of Commerce in Washington
DC.
For more information, visit www.national aquarium.org
And for more information about other careers, go to Kids.gov