(bright music)
- [Bonnie] How do you know if the giraffe is okay?
What is good, what is bad?
We are familiar with animals that look like us
or act like us.
It's easier for us as humans to understand
if a gorilla is behaving as we expect,
because that's familiar to us.
They're other primates.
We recognize their body language and their behavior.
But how do we know if a snake is having a happy life?
(logo whirring)
(light music)
- [Narrator] Bonnie Baird is a translator
for her patients.
- Good job.
- [Narrator] But the can't speak any languages we know.
They communicate in a wide array of chirps, growls,
roars, and squeaks.
- [Bonnie] I am an animal welfare scientist,
and it is my job to use data
to make sure the animals at Woodland Park Zoo
are happy and healthy.
It's just really questioning what you're seeing,
and trying to think, take the animal's perspective,
try to shape your brain as a primate
and mold it into what is a snake brain.
Where do they live?
What do they need?
What do they want?
If I was a snake, what would I want?
So I feel like I'm constantly trying to put myself
in the shoes, paws, hooves,
whatever it is (laughs) of other creatures.
It's understanding how each animal communicates,
and our human bias as a zoo visitor or any other human,
myself included,
is to see another creature and project our needs
and feelings onto them.
That's just our natural tendency;
that's a psychology thing that we do involuntarily.
We have to kinda train ourselves not to do that.
- [Narrator] Using observation
and physiological measurements,
Bonnie watches for when an animal's feeling stressed,
tired, or excited,
and then she searches for the source of it.
- Since our animals can't tell us
if they're having a good life or not,
we have to look at all these other measures,
and use that data together to understand
what's really going on inside the animals.
Finding the patterns that you can only find
when you spend a lot of time objectively looking.
So I've watched an animal.
I've sat there for hours, and hours, and hours,
and I get a bunch of numbers,
and then it doesn't feel like you're doing anything
at the moment.
And then at some point, you analyze data,
and there's always that one graph that you make,
and you're like, oh, my gosh,
that's exactly what it is.
Converting behaviors, and health,
and all of this stuff that we kind of produce
without even realizing that,
and the things that we do,
and the things that we kinda feel,
and our body produces,
and to turn that into a currency like a language,
like numbers, and data,
is what math is like the universal language, right?
That's a good way to translate another species
into something that humans can understand.
So like the subtle social things of that one walked by
and their ears positions both changed,
and she watched her.
It looked like nothin' happened,
but there was a whole thing,
a conversation going on between those two
that I don't understand or interpret,
but I can see that somethin' happened.
I love being the person that can spend that time
and then give the answer,
and then ultimately improves the animal's life, too.
So every time I see that new graph,
and I'm like, oh, my God, data's never this perfect,
look how perfect it is!
It's just great.
So I just had that this week with our wolves,
so that was one of those moments where I was like,
yes, let's fix that thing,
and then it did exactly what we hoped it would do.
Fantastic.
We were seeing a lot of negative social behaviors,
and then when we transferred out
our most dominant individual,
we saw an immediate increase in change
in more positive behaviors.
That one data point is where that whole trend shifted.
So I feel really validated every time that happens.
- [Narrator] Data helps other zoo animals, too.
Keepers use wearable technology to measure fitness
and sleep patterns of their petting zoo's Katahdin sheep.
This allows staff to create an exercise regimen
and make sure the sheep get a good night's rest.
- [Bonnie] Sophia!
These particular sheep that we're talking about,
they are actually raised to be meat sheep.
That's the kind of breed they are.
They're not really designed to live a long time, one,
and also to be very svelte and healthy
so they can live a long time.
But they have a whole different purpose
where we aren't looking to eat them.
So we want them to live a long time,
and we were able to record their, essentially, steps.
- [Narrator] This step data allows zookeepers
to make sure sheep are active and healthy.
They're losing weight and gaining muscle mass,
and the challenge keeps them mentally stimulated.
- [Bonnie] Now that we know that this works
really well on the sheep,
our new challenge is to figure out how to apply
this same technology to all the other animals in the zoo.
We wanna monitor their activity and exercise.
These Humboldt penguins,
does it get too hot for them in the summer,
or not?
I don't know.
So we're gonna see what their activity level looks like.
It's really hard to follow all 40 penguins.
There's 40 penguins in there, and they swim really fast,
and it's a big exhibit.
Me running back and forth, not practical,
'cause like, I've tried.
So we're looking at wearable technologies.
- [Narrator] Zoo animals' lives are not the same
as their wild counterparts.
Far from their natural habitat,
they live longer and closer to humans
in conditions that may be completely foreign to them.
Every new creature that arrives at the zoo
brings its own challenges,
and a unique language for Bonnie to learn.
- [Bonnie] I've always, for some reason,
been drawn to animals
and vice versa.
So, kid pictures, right, growing up,
and every picture is, oh, look,
there's Bonnie with an animal.
She found like a squirrel in the park,
and why would it come up to her?
That's so weird.
And I don't know how to explain it, or articulate it,
but it's always just been so important to me,
and it's felt, like, right.
Like, I talk to animals, I talk to my dogs,
I have whole conversations with my cats (laughs).
I've never thought of animals as an "other",
but like, just like me, but you're just different.
(laughs) You're just kind of a different thing.
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