I'm curious, how much goes on behind the scenes at zoos that people don't know about?

There's just so much, I mean, even like what we feed the animals we do research on, how they're feeling today,

I look at the hormones levels, so are they stressed? You stressed now we look at reproduction and they may

be pregnant there's not standard pregnancy tests for these animals so we had to

use science to develop these methods. Hi, I'm Cody Gough from the stress-free curiosity.

Hi, I'm Cody Gough from the Stress-Free Curiosity.com.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today we're going to learn what we don't know about the zoo.

Because curiosity makes you smarter.

This is the Curiosity Podcast. Your local zoo does a lot more than show off cute animals.

Behind the scenes, a lot of research is going on to help animals and the environment.

And sometimes it's a dirty job.

Dr. Rachel Santeyer is the director of the Davy Center for Epidemiology and

endocrinology at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

And she has quite the alias.

Want to really get to know your animals?

Never fear.

Dr. Poop is here.

Talk about your specific role and your expertise a little bit. Sure, yeah.

They call me Dr. Poop because we use fecal samples to study what's going on inside the

animal.

So I'm a physiologist and I look at hormone levels and these are a little chemical messengers. a And so because they don't have standard tests like they do for humans, they use me to figure out if their animals are pregnant.

...