Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 206

managing diets day-to-day, coordinating the physical exams, determining proper water quality, supervising training programs, discussing procedures with other zoo workers, keeping up with laws such as the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act and Animal Welfare Act that are designed to protect the animals, and keeping up with the state of the art by meeting with other marine mammal experts. I Vjt (One such meeting will be held in Bloomington Oct. 24 to 28 the 1 1th annual conference of the International Marine Animal Trainers Association, of which McDevitt is vice president. There will be speakers, conferences, presentations of papers and other activities including, presumably, visits to the zoo in Apple Valley. It will be the first time the conference has been held inland.

Nonmembers can attend by paying the The rewards include food, petting, scratching of backs and stomachs, a cool squirt from a hose on the whale's sensitive skin. There is no negative reinforcement, no punishment, no hitting, no taking away of food. If the animal does something unacceptable, it simply is not rewarded. McDevitt takes care of the dolphins at the zoo, too, and his job is many-faceted same fee that members do.) Part of McDevitt's job is public relations-after all, the zoo exists primarily for the public to come and see the animals and learn something about them. McDevitt believes that keeping the animals in a compatible environment that generally means something close to their natural environment is not just the more humane way to treat them, but serves to present them to the public at their best.

McDevitt realizes that "there is a certain amount of stress for animals in a captive situation." The pacing and rocking of some caged beasts are not their normal behavior in the wild. What the Minnesota Zoo and most modern zoos try to do is keep their environment as authentic as possible to reduce that stress. One way to make the environment more homelike is to make it more variable-give an animal someplace to go within the bounds of confinement, someplace for a Career research scientist Dr. U.S. Seal assisted in the physical examination of the belugas.

change of pace, which would be available to it in the wilds. Another way is to provide stimulation that will keep the animals' minds off that fact that they are being kept in relatively small enclosures. Continued page 20 V) h-" I ft j'S r' During the physical examination McDevitt monitored the whales' behavior and assisted in the procedure. During the whales' semi-annual physical McDevitt held one of the belugas as veterinarian Frank Wright inserted a tube to take a sample of stomach IB.