New Jersey zoo gives visitors front-row seats to watch veterinarians treat the animals
WEST ORANGE, N.J.— Forget the giraffes, gibbons and leopards.
About a dozen visitors at the Turtle Back Zoo gathered one recent morning around the most unusual sight of all.It was a small, light-brown tortoise getting a veterinary checkup.Over the next half-hour, spectators watched through a plate-glass window as the young sulcata tortoise — an endangered species also known as the African spurred tortoise — underwent measurements, X-rays, a blood draw, microchipping and more.Inside the northern New Jersey zoo’s spacious new, publicly visible treatment room, Dr.Kailey Anderson tucked the gel-covered wand of a Doppler machine between the top and bottom of the tortoise’s shell to listen to its heart.The nonplussed reptile pulled its head and thick-scaled front legs around the wand, trapping it in the wrong position.
After Anderson coaxed the creature to relinquish the instrument, she got the chelonian equivalent of the cold shoulder when she tried to insert it again.“You have to be really patient with tortoises,” Anderson explained.“Because if it’s ‘no, thank you,’ then it’s no.”If the experience was new for the recently arrived tortoise, it was also a novelty for the onlookers.The Turtle Back Zoo this year joined the relatively few U.S.
zoos — perhaps a dozen or fewer among the 250 accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums — that routinely give the public a view of veterinary care, said veterinarian and former accreditation commission member Dr.Scott Terrell.“It’s a very easy way for the public to really understand and appreciate the care that these animals get,” said Terrell, who oversees animal care for Disney, where Animal Kingdom has let visitors observe veterinary care since 1998.In an era when social media campaigns and lawsuits have questioned the well-being of captive animals, some zoos see putting vets on view as a form of transparency.“Anytime things are out of sight, then people make up a narrative abo...