“The Smell Is Not Worth The Cuteness”: 58 Animals That Zookeepers Dread Looking After

Any of the bigs cats (I worked with cheetahs and lions) the smell of their [feces] is just horrendous. Sometimes I’d be gagging picking it up. Their diet of raw meat causes this. I heard similar sentiment about the bears.

Also there was a hornbill in the giraffe yard. It was actually the worst animal I’ve ever met. Pure, total evil. Would follow me around and sneak up on me and peck at my [bottom] (have you seen those beaks) as I was cleaning. So okay, I’ll walk sideways or backwards right? To keep an eye on him? He’d stay a bit further back but if you look away for a SECOND, now you have a baseball sized bruise on your thigh.

Beavers. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE them. They are so interesting, their dam building skills are often innate so they do so many cool behaviors to observe, and they have the cutest little hands. They make adorable little grunting noises when they eat.  

They are also 50+ pound rodents who are built to haul LOGS. They are basically little bulldozers, so good luck pushing a beaver anywhere it doesn't want to go. Their teeth are reinforced with iron - if they can chew through a tree, imagine the damage they can do to your squishy human calves.  

I worked with a female who was hand raised. 80% of the time she was a wittle baby. The other 20% she was a hormonal nightmare who would chase you around the exhibit to keep you away from the den. Nothing worked a a deterrent because she could just push right through it or grab and drag it. She loved exactly one keeper and hated another one to the point where that person couldn't even go into the enclosure any more for her own safety.  

They also stink.

Hippos look goofy and chill in photos but they’re aggressive tanks that produce more manure than you can shovel in a lifetime.

Former zookeeper. (Though I only worked the petting zoo area)

For me it was alpacas. Super cute. Super soft. Super easy to clean up after. But they never, ever want to be friends with you no matter how much you feed them. They hate being touched. They try to hump you if they're male. No amount of trying to tame them will ever get them past aloof indifference.

Maybe it was some missed socialization window when they were babies, but all three of them wanted nothing to do with anyone.

Every other farm critter from rabbits to chickens to cows was more personable.

Giraffes—they're the idiots of the animal kingdom. In zoos, their only pastime is figuring out how to [harm] themselves or each other in the dumbest way possible.

Not a zookeeper, my family worked with wildlife rehabs and exotic animal rescues since we had a farm.

Emus. They will [mess] you up. Yeah they look cool out in a field or something and the babies are precious, but if you piss them off once, they’ll remember you and lock in any time they see you! We had one stay with us that I swear was trying to figure out where I slept at night. All I did was move his big ole head over while trying to get a goat loose from the fence and since that day, he’d charge me any chance he got.

We rehabbed the big birds mostly and vultures are still my favorite. Yes, they smell like deceased things, but they’re so cool up close.

My cousin worked at an aquarium and swore octopuses were the biggest divas. constantly escaping, flooding their tanks, dismantling equipment for fun. they'd look her in the eye while doing it too. smartest little jerks she ever met, zero respect for the concept of captivity.

My personal least favourite was red pandas. Don't get me wrong, they're so cute. Beautiful creatures. But my god they [defecate] so much. It's equal parts unreasonable and impressive that so much can come out of an animal that size in 24 hours.

Dolphins. Agressive and capable of causing great bodily harm in and out of the water.

Sloths. An animal adapted to barely move and defecate as rarely as possible- instead they save all up for an entire week. There are no words to describe how horrid that mixture smells when they finally meander down and make it happen. Literally eye watering and gag inducing.

AdvisorTotal404:

Sloths are surprisingly high maintenance, they need a lot of specific care and food to keep them happy and healthy.

Ex-keeper. Any primates. Did not care for them at all. Too effing clever, they could be bullies (mostly to each other), and you've gotta be seriously conscientious of transmitting diseases back and forth. Like sociopath children who were often vastly stronger than you. Coolest I worked with, though - Tapirs.

Everyone thinks seals are cute sea puppies, they smell worse than you can possible imagine.

Not a zookeeper but I work as a zoo educator so I know first hand stories. Just throwing an animal species in here that is less fun not because they are crazy, aggressive or dirty but they are just so easily scared and you would not expect it. Drumroll... it's the cinereous vulture. These birds are huge, have strong beaks, rip apart carcasses in the wild. But in the zoo they are scared of EVERYTHING. If we introduce a new food item, they will not eat it. If you dare to cut the plants, they will cower in a corner. Honestly it's actually kind of funny and cute. But it can be a challenge to care for them and give them variety. Neophobia is their middle name.

I’ve worked with elephants, camels, and a llama (not a zookeeper). The elephants were super chill, and the llama was a giant jerks who only tolerated me if I had soft pretzel pieces to give him. The camels though, they were giant loves and definitely my favorites. And no, they never spit on me, but anytime I’d have to groom the llama, he’d spit and try to stomp on my feet.

I worked summers at my local zoo as a teenager, and I made friends with a few of the zookeepers.

My favourite was the pachyderms, elephants in particular, I got to help hose them down and clean their enclosure. Enormous, quite smelly... and *glorious* creatures. So clever, gentle and I swear they had a sense of humour. It's true they never forget, I came back many years later and they all remembered me.

I loved the red pandas. They just looked like cuddly toys and were very chill.

The cheetahs liked to chase my golf cart with their food on it from behind the fence, they acted like giant puppies.

The worst we're the hippos. They were permanently cranky and are kind of gross. We had a special 'code red' announcement if one was ever to escape. (Fortunately that never happened.)

Former wildlife rehabber, Loons. There is a reason they are called that. Absolutely filled with crazy.

Honestly shocked that I've only seen one mention of cassowaries in this entire thread. Unless they're just not kept in zoos very much because nobody wants to actually try to work with the modern-day dinosaurs.

Ex zoo volunteer. Lemurs in walk-through enclosures will [urinate] on your head if you're not careful, and male ringtails really like to look you in the eye while spanking it.

Former zookeeper.

I would say any of the primates or monkeys but more specifically Baboons.

They live for destruction, the episode of the Simpsons where Ned ends up in a Baboon enclosure is 100% accurate.

They are just total [jerks] with no redeeming qualities.

I once watched as the alpha female and her cronies stole a baby of one of the low ranking females and proceeded to rip it apart in front of her. Just evil.

Female Emus are raging [jerks] who will attack with zero provocation.

On a more personal level there was this one specific Burmese Python call Princess who had a personal vendetta against me, she hated people, but wanted me [gone] in particular.

She was dumped outside the gates in a wheelie bin that had been duck taped shut, with the word Snake on the front. So she had every right to be angry with the world.

Then again the only animal to hospitalise me other than falling of horses was a Ferret.

snickthehedge:

Baboons, a lot of people don’t know the difference between larger primates and their temperaments so they assume they can be “gentle giants” a la gorilla or orangutan. No, the hamadryas baboon society is built on violence and we frequently come in to them having beat the [hell] out of each other overnight, they threaten you and visitors through the glass, not to mention that smell lol!

Not a zookeeper but speaking as someone who’s rescued and dealt with a wide variety of exotic pets, I’ll always say sugar gliders. They market them as cute, sweet, naturally scentless, this and that. No. They are LOUD, getting them to like you is some sort of ritual where is you misstep in the slightest it’s game over, they have a really specific diet, they bite SO hard like a tiny cat mouth with more bite force than you’d imagine, and the smell HORRID.