Jennifer Swanson - Zoology: Cool Women Who Work With Animals

Nomad Press

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How to Use This Book

In this book youll find a few different ways to explore the topic of women in zoology.

The essential questions in each Ask & Answer box encourage you to think further. You probably wont find the answers to these questions in the text, and sometimes there are no right or wrong answers! Instead, these questions are here to help you think more deeply about what youre reading and how the material connects to your own life.

Theres a lot of new vocabulary in this book! Can you figure out a words meaning from the paragraph? Look in the glossary in the back of the book to find the definitions of words you dont know.

Are you interested in what women have to say about zoology? Youll find quotes from women who are professionals in the zoology field. You can learn a lot by listening to people who have worked hard to succeed!

Primary sources come from people who were eyewitnesses to events. They might write about the event, take pictures, or record the event for radio or video. Why are primary sources important?

Use a QR code reader app on your tablet or other device to find online primary sources. You can find a list of URLs on the Resources page. If the QR code doesnt work, try searching the Internet with the Keyword Prompts to find other helpful sources.

CONTENTS

Animals are everywhere. You can find them high in the sky, up in a tree, running through the forest, swimming deep in the ocean, and burrowed far under the dirt. They swim, crawl, fly, scoot, run, walk, and soar. Maybe youve tracked ants as they made a line across the sidewalk or followed the footprints of a rabbit or fox into the wilderness. Perhaps youve watched animals as they live and interact in a zoo.

Imagine being the one person who is responsible for raising a baby tiger. Sound interesting? Become a zoologist!

Zoology is the study of everything having to do with animals. Zoologists examine how and why animals look, act, and behave, in their environments and with other animals. There is much to learn about animals. Sometimes, learning about animals can teach us about ourselvesthe human animal!

In Zoology: Cool Women Who Work with Animals , you will learn about three women who have made great strides in a field that has been around for hundreds of years. These women have faced many challenges and achieved success as zoologists through hard work and determination.

Studying zoology requires commitment, courage, and patience. Sometimes, it takes days just to capture a glimpse of a new animal in the wild or to see a flock of birds fly overhead. These women have all of these qualities and use them to improve their skills.

Stephanie Kim is a graduate student at the Queens University Biological Station (QUBS), where she is finishing up her masters degree in zoology. She is collecting data on the interactions and natural history of song and swamp sparrows.

On her graduate field trips, she has experiences that she will never forget. These include seeing rattlesnakes and blue-footed boobies. She has held whiskered screech owls and eaten the freshest fruits from the trees on the way to the biology station.

Elise Newman currently works at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park as a zookeeper, primarily with tigers and lions. Before moving to San Diego, California, she was a zookeeper at the Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park in New York. She worked with a variety of animals, including tigers, red pandas, and river otters. Elise has also studied in Kenya and Tanzania, tracking elephants.

I was brought up to understand Darwins theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gradually more and more and more and more like the modern fossil.

Jane Goodall,

primatologist, anthropologist, expert on chimpanzees

Erin Seney has a PhD in wildlife and fisheries science. She currently works as an assistant research scientist with the University of Central Florida. Erins research has involved tracking and observing marine turtles. She helped develop a safe and animal-friendly transmitter to attach to the turtles. Overall, she has done more than 14 years of sea turtle and ecological research in the field.

In this book, youll read all about the challenges these zoologists have faced. Youll learn what types of animals they like to study and how they are constantly on the hunt for new information. Their stories might even inspire you to become a zoologist!

But first, lets take a look at how the field of zoology has developed throughout the years. After all, humans have been studying animals since we first appeared on the planet.

Why is zoology an important career for women and men? What would science be like if only one gender worked at it?

Zoology is a part of a science called biology. Biology simply means the study of living things. Biology can include plants, animals, and humans. Zoology is the study of the structure and make-up of animalshow they look, live, and interact with other species or groups. Zoologists also study how animals function in an environment. All kinds of animals are included in the field of zoologysnakes, whales, tigers, birds, elephants, and even cats and dogs.

A zoologist can study pretty much any type of animal they want. The science of zoology has been around for thousands of years. Humans have always wanted to learn more about animals.

Some zoologists study the entire organism. This means that they learn everything they can about a certain type of animalhow it sleeps, eats, and moves. They study its relationship with the world and other animals of its own species or different species.

Other zoologists study just a certain part of an organism. For example, a zoologist might be interested in how diseases develop and spread within a group of animals. Perhaps they want to know more about how the animal developed certain traits, such as eye color, hair color, and body size.