Kyle Kittleson is a former marine mammal trainer and the author of Wear a Wetsuit at Work, a guide book to help aspiring trainers how to land their first job. These days, Kyle has left the zoological field in favor of serving as a mental health advocate. Diagnosed with depression since he was nine, Kyle now combines his past training and media work with his own mental health journey interviewing renown therapists and physicians for MedCircle.com, an online community of individuals and professionals to "learn, share and heal."

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Tom Otten and Glenn Young have been working in key leadership roles with marine mammals such as orcas and terrestrial animals like elephants for decades. They share their insights into where zoos and aquariums have been and where they might want to go while we still have time to preserve what's left of Nature.

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At nearly 150 years old, the American Humane Society is the world's oldest animal welfare organization. Its Associate Vice President of Conservation, Jill Nizan joins Zoo Logic to discuss its many programs designed to support improved welfare anywhere and everywhere through science-backed and evidence-based tools. Using independent experts across farm, zoological, entertainment, domestic, and working animal sectors, American Humane Society and its international brand, Global Humane Society, are improving the lives and helping to ensure the survival of millions of animals and those that care for them.

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After five years and nearly 300 weekly episodes on animals, training, human behavior and much more, Natural Encounters' TEC podcast is hitting the long pause. Show hosts Ari Bailey and Chris Jenkins have decided now may be the right time to sunset the long-running, keeper-trainer favorite, now that Chris has accepted an executive director role at another zoo. The hosts discuss their mutual long history at NEI training animals and people, as well as, their favorite episodes and guests, as well as, a few that didn't quite make it!

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Dr. Tony Monahan is an artist, writer and professional educator at City University of New York. His fascination with turtles from an artistic and conservation perspective led him on a nearly four-year journey to write: The Turtle Lovers' Guidebook. With more than 500 photographs, the book features 164 public facilities across the U.S. where one can see these amazing creatures. In addition to celebrating the zoos and aquariums that exhibit turtles and tortoises, Tony provides readers with resources to learn more, including ways to conserve and protect wild populations.

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Before even graduating high school, a young Randy Wells worked as an intern at Mote Marine Lab training dolphins as part of shark-dolphin interaction study. He would eventually become part of the world's longest running study of a population of wild dolphins known as the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP). For decades, Dr. Wells has led the collaborative effort of veterinarians, researchers, students and volunteers to monitor and assess the behavior, biology and ecology of generations of resident bottlenose dolphins along the west central Florida coast. To date he has trained about 100 graduate students, written several books and chapters, and published well over 300 peer-reviewed papers on dolphin social structure, auditory function, physiology, anthropogenic threats to these animals, and more. In addition to serving as the program's director, Dr. Wells is VP of marine mammal conservation at Brookfield Zoo Chicago which has overseen the program since the late 1980's.

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Dr. Paul Ling is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. He also serves as an advisor to Colossal Biosciences. Following the death in 2010 of a 2-year-old elephant at the Houston zoo due to elephant endotheliotropic herpes virus (EEHV), Dr. Ling formed a cooperative effort with the zoo and others within the community to address this highly lethal disease. Thanks to this partnership and significant funding from the Houston zoo, a mRNA vaccine was successfully introduced last year to a few vulnerable individuals at the Cincinnati zoo.

Other key partners in the development of diagnostics, therapeutics and ultimately, the vaccine include: Dr. Jeroen Pollet of the National School for Tropical Medicine, the International Elephant Foundation (IEF), Colossal Biosciences, and the Houston Methodist Center for RNA Therapeutics.

https://www.houstonzoo.org/houston-zoo-leads-the-way-in-eehv-research/

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After a long career as a wildlife manager and educator, David Kleven turned his zoological expertise and attention to improving animal welfare through better electronic recordkeeping. As President of Animal Care Software, he works with a range of animal facilities to use the power of smart phones to track animal behavior and health in the field and in real time. Recently, the cloud-based platform has been enhanced to include more than a dozen languages to better ensure accurate and detailed records by staff members whose first language may not be english.

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