Farmyard Egg-citement!

Chicken eggs come in all sorts of colors aside from the typical brown or white you see in the grocery store. There are 6 bantam (miniature) hens in the farmyard who lay 6 different colored eggs! To help other keepers out, I took a photo of all the eggs together (above) and one of the three white eggs (below) Can you spot the differences? Here are our farmyard ladies, in the same order as the eggs in the first photoRead more

You Can Train a Goat?

One of the many things animal keepers are tasked with aside from the expected poop scooping and wall scrubbing is operant conditioning (aka “animal training”). Nearly all the animals at the museum have a primary trainer who thinks of new behaviors they’d like that animal to learn, then builds a step-by-step program to shape that behavior, and ultimately implements that program over the course of days to months (depending on the complexity and the animal’s response) until we’re at aRead more

Another Alligator Adventure

Roughly every 2 years, we say goodbye to our exhibit and education gators and hello to a few new ones. It is that time of year once again! The Museum has an agreement with Alligator Adventure in South Carolina where we pick up a few hatchlings or small yearlings, raise them up big and strong, and return them when their size has made our exhibit in Carolina Wildlife a little too cramped. Here’s a blog post Sherry did a fewRead more

94% Eclipse!

Where were you during the solar eclipse of 2017? A little over half of the Animal Department works on Mondays. Normally, you might hear a fair bit of grumbling when something cool is happening but “we have to be at work” during it. Not this time! Working at a science museum has a lot of interesting and often unique perks. I don’t think anyone was bummed to be working at the museum on “Eclipse Day,” we were ready for this! ExtraRead more

Baby Goat Hair

If you happen to wander through the goat yard when I’m hanging out training the museum’s little goat herd, I will be the first person to show off the ridiculously long hair that grows along Charlie’s spine. I will also be the first to admit that, despite some research, I have no idea why it grows like this, what it’s for, or if it’s just an extra special characteristic of some baby Nigerian Dwarf goats. Two of our three boysRead more