Christina Nicholas has been a full-time zoo keeper working with Asian Elephants at Taronga Western Plains Zoo for the past four years.
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What is it like working with animals?
Every day is a new set of challenges and every animal has their own personalities which makes this job so interesting. It is just like building a relationship with people, and it takes a lot of time and patience to build a trusting relationship with any animals.
What do you enjoy about your job?
I love training and conditioning husbandry behaviours with the Elephants, learning how to encourage specific behaviours and what positively reinforces each individual as they all have their own likes and dislikes.
I also love to watch natural behaviour especially with the Elephants as they are extremely social animals. A highlight is listening to the vocal ranges of the herd.
What has been a career highlight?
A career highlight has to be witnessing the birth of Asian Elephant calf Kanlaya on the 14 June 2018. Kanlaya was born at 3:07am and she was standing within 10 minutes. Waiting for the moment was an exhilarating time, and to actually witness it was a moment I will never forget.
What is something people might not know about your role or a unique aspect of your job?
Probably how physical and demanding our jobs can be. We work in every type of weather condition and through every holiday to provide the best welfare for the animals housed here.
A major part of our job is husbandry for the animals and a lot of that includes physical jobs such as raking, shovelling, cutting browse from trees, and handling a lot of hay.
What's a unique fact about a species you work with people may not know?
That Asian Elephants are more closely related to Woolly Mammoths than they are to African Elephants.