Zoo Medicine

Zoo medicine is exciting and challenging. Many zoos maintain collections of hundreds of species, and most veterinarians in zoos work on almost any animal you can think of.

On any given day, a zoo vet’s patients might range from fish and birds to reptiles and mammals, and sometimes even invertebrates!

It takes a lot of knowledge and cooperation to treat the animals kept in zoos, so help from the zoo hospital’s medical staff and sometimes even help from other veterinary specialists (like dentists, eye doctors, or cardiologists) is important in keeping these animals healthy.

Wild animals are tricky to work on. They often hide their illnesses as they would in nature to prevent being eaten by predators.

Zookeepers become very familiar with the animals that they take care every day. They work closely with the vets to catch illnesses or problems as early as possible.

Zoo vets also support and perform conservation research that will benefit wild and captive animals all over the world. Zoos play a very important role in teaching people not only about all of the amazing animals of the world, but about the importance of taking care of our earth so that these animals can continue to prosper in the wild.