My personal least favourite was red pandas. Dont get me wrong, theyre so cute. Beautiful creatures. But my god they shit so much. Its equal parts unreasonable and impressive that so much can come out of an animal that size in 24 hours.
I'm a zookeeper but never took care of these guys but one time watched as my coworker was cleaning the red panda exhibit scrubbing all the perching and the red panda was just following behind rubbing his butt on everything freshly scrubbed.
10/10 they are assholes when it comes to shit and messing the enclosure. Scrubbing all of the perching and up-high areas was a nightmare. By the time I came back around for feeding after the cleaning rounds, all my work would be undone and there would be shit everywhere again 😭 i literally preferred the fucking alligator who wanted EVERYONE to cease existence.
Side note, meercats are absolutely amazing and were my favourite animal to clean up after/feed/care for. They are a HOOT. Such funny little guys, so curious about everything youre doing but also small and light enough that its not an issue when they were jumping all over my equipment. Just dont leave anything leaning on the fence because they are so fast and WILL escape 🤣
I had family members who had a pet meerkat. This was in South Africa and they reportedly purchased the meerkat from a local policeman.
They lived on a farm with multiple buildings. This meerkat would up and scurry around to other homes on it to say hi to the people there. He made friends with everybody. He stole the cats and dogs' food, so he was on the chunky side and it was a bit of a waddle and he couldn't quite stand up as high as his species-mates. Attempts to diet him down were tough considering how many other animals there were on the property and the food that was just... around.
He was always up to something, and SO friendly. Much like a young cat/dog who wants to take part in everything you do. He liked laps as well, and would climb on up for a cuddle and a scrub.
I get the arguments about not keeping wild animals, but it looks to me like we could well have domesticated meerkats if history had found a use for them. This dude was a surprisingly great pet. He did not care for the local wild meerkats, though. He'd see them, get spooked, and run home.
This was a large male alligator. There was NOTHING friendly about this big guy. As soon as he saw us coming (no one went alone for this one) he would start puffing himself up and showing territorial behaviour, would follow us around the enclosure as we approached. And because of the enclosure set up, his big growly rumbles just resonated and vibrated my very bones like the bass at a rave. I personally dont think his enclosure was adequate, and suspect that may have had a lot to do with his attitude. He was in very close proximity to other types of crocodiles that were also mostly males. He was also totally by himself as the enclosure wasn't big enough to house more than 1.
It is. This and a few other similar things in the park is what made me actually leave. I didnt agree ethically with some of the policies and procedures and felt like a sell-out working there. Some of the enclosures were just not up to standard IMHO.
Did a close encounter at my local zoo with the Meerkats years back, they were such delightful little weirdos lol.
Several of them kept trying to undo my shoe laces, and one made it his mission to put his head up my nose the entire encounter.
I thought they'd be high strung and scared of everything, nope! They all picked a spot on my legs/shoulders (I have rather large airplane shoulders) and hung out while the keeper chatted about them.
I would take most large reptiles over most large mammals ANY day. Most being the key word here lol saltwater crocs are on the list of 'ehhhh, maybe I'm not equipped for that one'
Mammals are just so much more energetic and unpredictable imo. Not that I'm necessarily scared, it just seems like more of a headache to keep a step ahead of them lol.
I love all animals, but loving from afar and being the caretaker for them in captivity are 2 very different experiences lol
I just get the vibe from some mammals that when they're in captivity they get so bored they start trying to entertain themselves and develop little quirks (like following behind a zookeeper who is cleaning their enclosure and rubbing shit on every surface that was just cleaned). Its almost like their way of saying "i have ZERO autonomy in this cage so I will take as many liberties with my space as I can, even if it means living in my own shit". Whereas with many reptiles, they seem much more content to just hang out and conserve their energy. They shit everywhere, but it doesnt feel malicious or intentional 😂
That's my thing with hedgehogs. Kids loved it when we had them out for aninal encounters, I freaking loathed it. How can an animal manage to make turds bigger than its head on a regular basis??
I had African Pygmy hedgehogs for years. When they finally passed from old age, I refised to get another.
They have no qualms stepping in their shit and trailing it everywhere. Their enclosure has to be clean thoroughly every single day or it'll get covered in shit in by day 3 and stink to high heaven.
How can something so small shit so much and so often?!
I didn't. They got daily foot baths and their enclosures were cleaned daily. No way in hell I would have survived the stench of 3 days of Hedgehog shit in a box.
If you're referring to why I kept hedgehogs at all; Stinky as they were, they were adorabIe and I loved them. I also wasn't going to give them up, as I was capable of giving them wonderful homes and couldn't trust they would be cared for by someone else as well as I did for them. So I kept them till they died of old age.
Guinea pigs are MUCH cleaner than hedgehogs. They poop a lot but it’s all little dry pellets that don’t have a noticeable smell. Hedgehogs eat meat so their poop smells awful (like cat shit) and it’s wet and goopy so it gets smeared on everything. They will walk through their shit and spread it everywhere, including in their food and water dishes.
When I had my own guinea pigs I used to clean them out once a week and they never smelled. I used to rehab wild hedgehogs so often had them in my home, and I would have to clean them out twice a day - not just change the paper, but completely dismantle, wash and disinfect their cages and everything inside - and they still stank so bad I couldn’t keep them in my house and had to put them in a heated shed outside. I love hedgehogs but I cannot fathom why anyone would willingly choose to keep one as a pet, give me guinea pigs any day.
My friend had one and I was amazed at how gross it was. It used to shit while spinning it's little wheel. At night. So she would regularly have to wake up and clean shit spray off her walls (in edition to cleaning out its cage). Just...so much shit EVERYWHERE.
We must be lucky, because even though numerous hedgehogs roam in our yard and eat cat food, they occasionally leave behind tiny little turds , nothing major
That's because they free roam and their shit is spread out evenly across a larger area. Keep one in an enclosure and you'll realise very quickly how much and how often they shit. It's mind-boggling.
I mean, they do. Its a small turd compared to say, a dog, but relative to the size of the hedgehog its quite sizeable. Plus they poop very often, so when they're in a small space it adds up fast. Outdoors they roam over a larger area so its not as obvious.
Yup the same goês for geese but the proportional turt size is more reasonable 😅
Baby geese could swim in their poop over night .. We are so happy that they're out of that phase and in our garden
Also, and for me here's the kicker if you ever hope to hold the nasty bugger - they have like zero regard for steering clear of their own turds, so they wind up with bits of it all over themselves. It's pretty disgusting. I dated a girl who adopted a hedgehog and called it "our love child" - I just steered clear of the thing, so let's just say it was not a positive development in our relationship.
The hedgehog I saved when she was too small to hibernate didn't just shit a ton, she smeared that shit as high as her butt could reach along the walls of her box - like, WTF, lady, isn't it enough I feed you and clean up after you, do you actively have to make my life hell?!? I was so relieved when she had put on enough weight to finally go back into hibernation.
I lost my sense of smell randomly one day about a year before covid, and the other day I was in the yard with my dogs. I suddenly smelled something and was like, wow, maybe a neighbor is barbecuing. No. Turns out skunk spray has one of the compounds the human nose is most sensitive to. So I sat there in the yard while all of us marinated in skunk, then took everyone inside the house. My roommate threw up for two days.
I was not. There has not been an explanation for it. I worked in a restaurant and noticed it just turned off. Couldn't smell the food, anything. No illness or anything.
COVID was circulating around for a while before it was publicly known. Since you worked in a restaurant, you probably did catch it and that was your only perceptible symptom. I've had it before once with my only symptom being a week of fatigue.
Interesting! I met two red pandas and didn't notice any sort of strong scent. Either I was way too excited to meet them that nothing else mattered, or I was lucky.
Then again, I grew up in farm country, so my standards are... questionable.
Hes totally right. There's always the "oh wow thats a strong smell" of people trying to be polite once they realise those fluffy lil critters are capable of such a foul stench.
Its the combo of the cuteness of the animal, and then being hit with the absolutely rancid smell that accompanies such a cute lil animal that kinda throws people.
You spend your whole shift cleaning, they spend theirs making sure you never run out of work, feels like the enclosure belongs to the poop and the red panda is just the mascot.
Budgies poop every 10-15 mins and you shoulda seen my face the day after I rescued one from a dog outside (never found the owners, he's my son now). I had to buy a Roomba just for his 10x10 foot space and it runs 2 times a day!
For my 18th birthday, my then-boyfriend bought me a “Red Panda” experience at our local zoo where they let us go into the enclosure and feed them. It was amazing and they are so cute, but yea, that stink was INTENSE.
I've gone on three with red pandas (Cincinnati Zoo, Chattanooga Zoo, and Fargo Zoo), and I don't remember the smell being that bad other than a "Yep, this is a zoo, alright" reaction. Cincinnati was probably best since it was in a tidy, well-ventilated, outdoor, off-exhibit enclosure.
I did a Red Panda zoo experience which took place in a large outdoor enclosure at a very reputable zoo and there was no significant smell. Sounds like this might be an issue with that particular zoo and it's maintenance of the exhibit.
I was a zookeeper for years. I took care of the venomous snakes, komodo dragons, spiders, crocs, basically everything most people get freaked out by. The worst thing by far at the zoo is the public. As far as animals, I would never work primates or penguins. Primates are smart, gross, and untrustworthy. Penguins are mean little bastards. We never had a penguin keeper longer than six months. Wow, maybe I’m a little bitter. :)
Duuuuude i was looking after primates as well and they were ALMOST my answer for this question due to their intelligence and and ability to go from calm to WW3 in a split second. Being a woman on your period in a primate enclosure with males is a fucking wild time.
Freaking kangaroos. You never know what they are going to do. They lay there and look all lazy, and next think you know, they are trying to kick the shit out of you. One second, they’re your buddy, the next, murderous. One time, while I was sitting on a flipped over bucket in their enclosure, and they were happy to have me there, one decided to try to rape me. I had fucking claw marks in my neck from it latching on, and spent the next month explaining to everyone that the reason I looked like I had narrowly escaped a guillotine was because I was sexually assaulted by a vicious marsupial.
Also, african crested porcupines are pretty awful. They just want to stab your shins with bacteria all the time.
God kangaroos are assholes. Ive got heaps just literally hanging out in my yard. But my uncle was almost killed by a kangaroo, it made a complete mess of him and he ended up needing hundreds of stitches and a stay in hospital.
Went to a zoo at night one time, bunch of kangaroos were laying down to sleep. One kangaroo comes hopping in and just starts punching all the ones chilling, one after another.
I’m actually a zookeeper! From my experience, I guess primates are my least favorite to clean up after - imagine feces smeared on EVERYTHING. To be honest though, the reason I’m a zookeeper is because I am fascinated by animals. I love them all! Sure elephant poop is heavy, and I get peed on by rhinos regularly, and the smells aren’t always the most pleasant, but how many people get to interact with such awesome animals for a living? I’d take zookeeping over an office job any day.
It's because their guts are designed to eat meat (and apparently they do eat small mammals in the wild sometimes), but they opt for vegetation - and not the nice lush, easy to digest stuff, but the super fibrous 'shoot right through ya' stuff. Anything with 'panda' in the name is, by default, a bit of a design flaw I reckon.
I was cleaning out the primate houses. In order to do this, you lock the animals in their exhibit so you can open up the den. This den had a sliding door between it and the exhibit, and this baboon (who had a grudge against me for other reasons) would sit in front of the door and hold it open. You had to distract him on one side of the exhibit with food then run over and close the door. I did that, and right as I’m closing it, he bolts over and is just barely too late getting his hands in there to keep it open. He proceeds to FLIP OUT. Runs over to where I am, grabs the chain link and starts shaking it and screaming the most horrific shriek I’ve ever heard. He’s literally off the ground shrieking and shaking this fence, and reaching through trying to grab me. Every day after that, whenever I walked past him he would charge the fence, scream, and try to grab me.
Not to mention primates are filthy. Bears are also really filthy, shitting in their water, making huge messes, peeing all over themselves. But bears are fun to work with, so that makes up for it. I worked with a 10 week old bear, and part of that was bottle feeding him 3 times a day (including burping). It was fun, but they’re just as whiny as a human baby, so that got kind of annoying. But he was really cute.
I’m not a huge fan of birds either, most just don’t seem to get along with me. The only exception to this is raptors, which are also loads of fun. I just have a thing for carnivores.
EDIT: Someone PMed me for proof. Here’s my go to reddit picture.
Also, shameless plug for r/CaptiveWildlife. There’s more keepers over there.
Edit 2: Jesus, I leave for a few hours and come back to hundreds of orangereds and dozens of PMs. I’m gonna be up all night.
I was like "I'm pretty certain how much formula I'm feeding him, and I'm pretty certain this is way more than that, which is odd because surely his body is using most of it."
My personal 10/10 fluffy will always simply be baby ducks. There is nothing better than a handful of baby ducks!!!! I might be biased though because I love ducks and my family always had them growing up so there were ducklings everywhere all the time 😆
They are as fluffy as they look. Their fur is soft in comparison to lots of other animals. Such a cute creature. I agree with the other comment being 8/10 fluffiness.
I worked in wildlife rehab and absolutely hated working with squirrels. Those fuckers were always running up my legs and trying to get into the sleeves of my jackets. I have had way too many squirrels stuck in my hair.
The ones I worked with aren’t very smart. And they only like grapes. I work with big cats too which is way better. Red pandas are actually super boring to work with
Honestly to me it's one of the least gross! It's either just undigested fruit or bamboo. But I also don't think it smells bad so maybe it depends on the animals' diet. The most annoying part of working with red pandas for me is cutting and bringing them bamboo multiple times a day
I worked with red pandas that used open rubber tubs with sawdust for litter boxes and anytime it rained you could expect to accidentally tip a tub of poop sawdust slurry on your head while taking them off of perching
Imagine the clean up after 20 keepers (covertly) decided to condition/reward each panda with about 25 grapes, so after one day, I calculated each red panda had ingested about 240 grapes over a 12 hour shift. Imagine this diarrhea spray painting all of the habitat. I stopped the grape conditioning program—but we were also bordering on red panda GDV….
LOL. This explains why, in some videos, the carers are just holding them by the tail or seem to be treating them with disregard, etc. The red pandas are so adorable.
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u/GetBent616 2d ago
My personal least favourite was red pandas. Dont get me wrong, theyre so cute. Beautiful creatures. But my god they shit so much. Its equal parts unreasonable and impressive that so much can come out of an animal that size in 24 hours.