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

Orangutans. I have my college degree in Physical Anthropology. I was so excited to work with any primate so when I was out with orangutans, I was thrilled. That lasted about 1 day. Females are highly competitive and see human females as a threat. No thanks.

Wife went to LSU and was friends with one of the veterinary students that raised the new mascot. He said it was fun playing with the tiger cub like it was a kitten -- until the day that the half grown tiger came up behind him and knocked him down. Then it tuned into " yeah, he could [end] me any time he chose to.".

Obligatory not a zookeeper, but work at a wildlife hospital. Hedgehogs are little [jerks]. They look all cute, and they're hugely popular among the public here in the UK, but they're demons.

Not only do they curl into a ball and make it impossible to do anything, but they huff, hiss and twitch, jerking their spines towards you in an effort to impale you. And as if that wasn't enough, they bite, too. And when they bite, they latch on and curl into a ball, taking your fingers with them. They then won't let go for 15 minutes.

I worked in the nurseries one year. Pretty much all baby animals start out as your best friend, it's only when they get older that they become wild. Baby hedgehogs are the same, but each group has one [jerk] who was just Born Different. From the time it's a little pink jellybean, it hates you and everyone you love. You try and give it milk, it puffs up and hisses at you. They will starve themselves just to spite god.

They're also disgusting. Most other animals that pass through the emergency room, you can't really tell they've been there unless they're gushing blood all over the floor. But hedgehogs? All they have to do is touch a surface and that surface is disgusting.

And I once saw a hedgehog swimming in its food bowl. Not sitting in it, straight up paddling.

Former zookeeper

Baboons 0 stars do not recommend. I used to work at a zoo that was a drive through experience. All the trucks were supposed to be checked before entering, especially if they had a built in tool box in the cab. Was supposed to be locked. The most terrifying experience of my life having a troop of baboons with tools running around. Took us weeks to get all the tools back because they were smart enough to hide them and hide them well each evening before they went inside.

Also any smaller cat. They are not the top of their respective food chains so they are incredibly viscous.

Worked as an aviculturist (I specialized in exotic birds) for a few years. Someone mentioned penguins already, but I’ll say flamingos simply because of all the birds I cared for, their bite hurt the most. Think: viper strike capability but with a heavy beak and since their mouths don’t open too wide they take a tiny chunk of skin with them when withdrawing, like a very deep paper cut into muscle. It’s not super visible but it hurts soooo much.

Temperaments of flamingos vary of course, but breeding season was a consistently fun time when they’re protecting their mud nests.

Was a volunteer and there was one particular vulture that was such a [jerk]. Raking his enclosure or cleaning his water bowl was always a 2 person job. One cleaning as fast as they possibly could and the other defending them by fending off a evil vulture with a broom.

Also one time a staff member didn't run fast enough during a feeding demonstration and the little [jekr] reached and bit them in that tiny unprotected gap between their shorts and Wellington boots. Apparently the hospital staff were rather bemused when they told them why they needed a tetanus shot.

I work with a lot of birds, including parrots (some of whom are rescues) and man they can be such a pain. They are loud yes, but also extremely smart and they love using that intelligence to be particularly stubborn. They're really good at doing stupid things like breaking stuff (including your fingers), tearing holes in your shirts and sometimes they can be menaces to other parrots and yourself. Little demons...

Now some parrots are amazing but working with 50 of them for some basic training can drive you crazy.

Not a zoo keeper but worked in an exotic pet store that worked very closely with the zoo when I was a teenager.

Iguanas are the worst. They bite and they use their tails like whips. The worst thing is that people believed that dumb idea that they would only grow to the size of their cage. Inevitably they become 6 foot long 20 lb demons from hell. I had so many welts from them every time I had to clean up.

On the snake front people always talked about how big Burmese pythons were and to be careful but I never really had a problem with them. African Rock Pythons in the other hand were just as big and absolutely the meanest sons of biscuits I’d ever encountered. I remember one woman I worked with had one grab and wrap her arm and it wrapped itself around a huge log it was resting on and it was one of the scarier things because she had been on a stool (I can’t remember exactly why) but she just kind of dangled until we were able to get the emergency whiskey in it’s mouth to make it let go.

The ones I hated the most were Tokay Geckos. They would always escape and hide in the places you least expected them. They had jaws like a vice, teeth like broken glass, and you’d put your hand in a cupboard and come out with a gecko attached to it and you’d be bleeding like a stuck pig.

These days I am a professional magician (who does not work with animals) and my hands appear on camera a lot and all of the scars on my fingers are from those Tokay Geckos.

I work in marine conservation, so penguins for me were the worst. They're a bio hazard, and just generally disgusting, fish goo producing [jerks] that hurt when they're nipping you.

However, I did a rotation working with howler monkeys and capuchins at a rehab centre, and you have to be on your guard 24/7 with those little [jerks]. My mate who did rotation with me, ended up with 32 stitches after a howler bit his head because he got too close to me once and they can be very possessive. Also had to strip down to just overalls when entering the capuchin enclosure, because they'd steal whatever they could off you, used to wear a tight elastic band on my glasses as they'd try to rip them off my face.

According to almost every marine keeper thread on here, Otters or Dolphins. People think they are cute, joyful, and wholesome. In reality, they can be incredibly aggressive, highly calculating, and exhibit some of the most dark, territorial behaviors in the animal kingdom. Keepers have to be on extreme alert around them.

Puffins. You’ll smell them from a long way off.

Not a zookeeper but was a volunteer wildlife assistant for a summer.

THE SKUNKS.

we had special cleaning supply on hand just in case and we kept all the skunk ridden clothing in a separate area 🫠

going in to feed them was like stepping into a potential minefield.

Zookeeper who has worked with plenty of different animals. Only one I don't want to ever work with again are squirrel monkeys (and really all monkeys by extension). Smelly and smartly vicious.

We had been watching a bird nest nearby that hatched and we were happy for the baby birds. The fledglings unfortunately landed on the squirrel monkey habitat and were ripped apart :/.

Been a Zookeeper for 15 years, working with Ectotherms (reptiles/amphibians) and aquatic animals during that time. There are a lot of animals in that group that are a pain to work with, but my least favorite are the ones where you can do everything possible, and they might pass for no obvious reason. So some corals, seahorses, freshwater mussels, other molluscs, some other fish, some terrestrial invertebrates, and others.

Elephants. When they get sick it's not an easy task to clean afterwards.

Red-tailed hawk, constantly screaming and diving at my head because I came within 10,000m of their nestbox.

Camels will pick you up by your head and crush your skull with one bite.

Not me personally, but when I was in my early teens, I was friendly with a number of the handlers that worked in a private zoo with a tram-ride where you could feed the exotic animals. They had all sorts of interesting animals like ostriches, camels, gazelles, caribou, pronghorn, zebras and even a few White Rhinos.

They also had a homicidally insane giraffe who would go out of its way to hurt other animals and people. He started out friendly, was raised by the staff, but once he was 1-2 years old, became a monster and started to deliberately injure goats, pigs and other animals he was originally housed with so he wouldn't feel lonely. They had stories of him waiting until these animals were drinking water and then stomp their heads into the trough for no reason. Then he started slamming keepers against walls or just kicking them for no reason. They figured he was possibly stressed out without a female, so they were able to get a second female giraffe to be his mate. He mated with her and seemed to calm down for a while, but then once the calf was born, immediately tried to end his own daughter and then injured his mate. That was it for him, they moved him to the back paddock and he stayed there until he passed away. The mate and calf recovered and ended up being sweethearts. Visitors could hand-feed them and they were a big hit with schools and for birthday celebrations.

I remember them saying that it's like that Simpson's episode, some animals are just jerks.