Valarie Neiman—Academic Researcher

Valarie Neiman formed EVN Flow Services in 1993. Through her home-based business, she does academic, business, and creative writing and provides research and editing services. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration (transportation) from Arizona State University in Tempe and her master’s in human resources development from Ottawa University in Phoenix.

“Research isn’t what I do, it’s part of who I am,”Valarie explains. “As one of the original latchkey kids in the 1950s, I spent a lot of time reading when I got home from school. To avoid being bored in class, I’d always read ahead in the textbooks.”

Getting Started. Her first job after high school was typing resumes. Eventually her boss began to let Valarie write them, and soon she was also conducting interviews. After working in a variety of clerical and secretarial jobs, she returned to school in her mid-twenties and earned a bachelor’s degree in business. Later, while working for a major defense contractor, she began studying for her master’s. When she was let go by the employer who had been paying her tuition, she started to work in temporary positions, from management consultant to typist.

Valarie’s final temp assignment was researching and writing warehouse procedures, and she convinced the manager that it would be less expensive to hire her as an independent contractor than to pay the temp agency. At the same time, she put up a notice at her alma mater offering to help students with their research projects.

When she began EVN Flow (Ellwood and Valarie Neiman keep work flowing), she expected to help students format and type papers. But she soon found that many adult learners (twenty-five and older) haven’t had training or don’t remember how to write research papers, and her work soon evolved into filling in the gaps in their abilities. Valarie says that part of the job is reassuring clients that they aren’t stupid and letting them know that she has developed a unique (and marketable) talent for pulling their work together into a package that makes them look good.

She tutors adult learners in planning, researching, and writing academic papers. She also edits master’s research and graduation review projects and is under contract with Ottawa University to read and edit first drafts of master’s candidates’ theses.

In addition, she collaborates on researching and writing a series of booklets on pricing, niche marketing, networking, outsourcing, tax tips, and how to start a home-based business (published by the Home-Based Business Council of Arizona).

Valarie finds her work enjoyable because every day is different and every project leads her in a new direction. She prefers to work alone, without supervision, focusing on the task at hand until its completion, when she can move on to the next project.

“People may think of researchers as scientists or academics,” Valarie says. “I believe research is an element in almost every job, whether dealing with things, people, or ideas. Most of the time, though, it isn’t thought of as research.

“To me, the distinction of a job as a researcher is that the goal is to present knowledge in a different way, consolidate facts and assemble them to make a point, discover new relationships in existing knowledge, or develop background and authenticity—in creative writing, for example.”

One of the things Valarie likes least about her work is that it isn’t full-time and can be seasonal—although the part-time nature of the work is also one of the things she likes best. She began writing a novel to fill those unbillable hours and explains that, by her own choice, she earns enough to pay business expenses and to pay herself a small stipend. Fortunately, travel, postage, supplies, and capital equipment associated with writing are all considered tax-deductible expenses.

Valarie shares a large office at home with her husband, who is her financial manager. She can use her time however she wishes.

Since she likes variety and big projects, she often works for an hour or so on one, then shifts to another, and so forth. On some days, she catches up on phone calls or maintenance, but always remains focused on paying clients. She occasionally works up to fourteen hours a day and some days works for only three or four hours.

Advice from a Professional. Valarie offers some very specific advice: “Read, read, read, research, research, research. Go to the library, get online, practice finding things. Interview people, create questionnaires, read magazines.

“The key requirement for a life of research is a desire, not to say compulsion, to know. In addition, a researcher (whether scientific, academic, or journalistic) needs persistence, judgment, empathy, and intuition. A researcher must establish limits and develop shortcuts, or the process goes on forever, each step leading to another source, ad infinitum.”

Based on her own experience, Valarie believes that a researcher with broad experience is more likely to be exposed to a variety of information sources. She has worked in government, major corporations, and small businesses, and each job provided a new set of resources that she is now able to draw upon.

She advises that, while there are many possible ways to get a research job, chances are that you won’t find one by answering a classified ad. Researcher is more an activity than a job title, so it’s important to network, create an excellent resume, and research your prospects. She does recommend a college degree, up to and including a Ph.D. or postdoctoral experience. The academic major doesn’t really matter, since a student who thrives in any academic environment will likely have the curiosity and temperament to excel as a researcher.

Strong writing skills are also very important, since research is useless without presenting results. Facts are just data, and a successful researcher must be able to interpret the facts and consolidate or extrapolate them into usable information.

Finally, Valarie says, “And remember, in scientific or social research, especially, the honesty and ethics of a researcher must be unquestioned. A researcher must maintain the confidentiality of people and ideas.”

Susan Broadwater-Chen—Information Specialist and Freelance Writer

Susan Broadwater-Chen owns Moonstone Research and Publications, her home-based business in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, and a master’s in theological studies from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

“I have an insatiable curiosity about just about everything, and I love to write,” she says. “I especially like the challenge of having to find something and the excitement that comes when I find it. I love libraries, books, and puzzles, and some of the searches that I do are very much like putting puzzles together.”

Getting Started. Susan attended Mountain Empire Community College in Southwest Virginia, taking as many computer courses as possible, including programming. After finishing those courses, she took a job at the University of Virginia (UVA) as a program support technician, and part of her job was to do a lot of editing and spend time working with research assistants.

She eventually took courses through UVA on how to navigate the Internet and create Web pages. She worked at UVA for ten years and ran a business out of her home, doing everything from research to editing.

Susan started her business in 1986 on a part-time, moonlighting basis, and she has been working at it full-time since 1995. When she had built up enough contacts and customers to become independent, she quit her job at UVA and started publishing a monthly newsletter and running a Web page. Once she realized that she could support herself by using her skills to expand her client base, she decided to devote herself full-time to the business.

Susan publishes a monthly newsletter that focuses on Internet materials of use to writers. She also accepts individual research projects from authors who are looking for information that they have difficulty finding on their own.

In addition, she works with some online author colonies or work groups in developing content for research libraries. This includes going through antiquarian books, microfilm, and other sources to provide both primary source materials and bibliographic information. Her company has a storefront on the Internet where writers or anyone else can download some materials for free and pay for others. Susan also offers a clipping service for subscribers and holds a weekly online workshop to help people with questions about finding what they are looking for.

She finds the job demanding, since most clients can’t wait a week or two for what they are looking for. In addition, putting out a large newsletter each month and submitting articles to at least one online magazine each month is very time-consuming. The day begins at 6 A.M. with checking e-mail and noting requests while her son has breakfast.Next she checks newsgroups and news services for anything that she’ll need to come back to later.

After getting her son on the school bus, she prints the articles she wants to read or save and files them in topical folders. Susan says that you must be organized in this type of work in order to keep paper to a minimum and to know where items are when you need them. She keeps a current folder of things she may want to review or talk about in her newsletter, and the rest is filed by topic.

Next Susan works on the products she intends to sell. This involves reading and writing articles or finding out-of-copyright primary source material that can be edited and reprinted for sale. When this is finished, she turns to the content she is developing for the online services and then checks e-mail again and starts working on the requests she received overnight.

After taking a walk to give herself time away from her desk, she writes at least one review or article for the newsletter and then starts exploring potential Internet sources that she may want to review. She takes notes and makes printouts and puts this information aside to be written up the next day. Then she searches library card catalogs looking for materials to request on interlibrary loan and makes notes on information in those books.

Although working at home means the atmosphere is relaxed, Susan sometimes feels pressured because there seems to be so much to do in a limited amount of time. She usually works about eighty hours a week, which is twice what she did working for someone else. The job is not boring, but it’s also hard work.

Susan likes being able to help clients, and she is very pleased when they are happy with what she’s found for them. She says, “When I’ve helped a person who is publishing books and he or she sends me a copy of the book, I get personal satisfaction knowing that I’ve helped them with the research that the book required. I also like the feeling I get when I find some really obscure fact and pull the needle out of the haystack. The downside is that sometimes I can’t help someone because the facts won’t bear out what they want to write about.”

Advice from a Professional. Based on her experience as a researcher, Susan advises that it’s not an easy job.You need to learn all you can about electronic databases and the Internet without forgetting the basic skills of library research and interviewing.

Although the options for Internet research seem infinite, she recommends that you can’t have a successful research business if you rely solely on the Internet. “You have to cultivate as many skills as possible and know where to look for specific material,” she says. “It’s also important to build up a client base and connections before you take this on full-time. Volunteer to do things for groups who might need your services on the Internet and online services. Submit articles to online publications and start networking with people in professions or with interests who might need your services.”

Clay Reynolds—Novelist

Clay Reynolds is the author of half a dozen novels in genres such as psychological suspense, crime, and historical.He has been writing fiction professionally since 1984.

Getting Started. Clay’s writing career began for an interesting reason. He had worked in scholarship, research, and literary criticism for several years, but he found himself the sole caregiver of his two young children when his wife worked at night outside the home. Since he couldn’t get out to the library for research and needed to be alert for most of the evening, he began writing fiction as a way of occupying the hours after his children were asleep.

He completed two novels, The Vigil and Agatite, which were published by St.Martin’s Press. Clay spent three years researching and writing his third novel, Franklin’s Crossing, which was published by Dutton in 1992. The publisher entered it in the Pulitzer Prize competition, and Franklin’s Crossing won the Violet Crown Award and was runner-up for the Spur Award for Best Western Novel. The novel was reissued by Signet in 1993.

He next wrote Players, a high-tech psychological thriller with strong crime novel elements, which was first published by Carroll and Graf in 1997 then reissued by Pinnacle in 1998. The novel Monuments was published by Texas Tech University Press in 2000.

Between writing novels, Clay has also written and edited several nonfiction books and has published short fiction, poetry, original essays, and scholarly material. One nonfiction book is 20 Questions: Answers for Aspiring Writers, published by Browden Springs Press in 1998.

For most of his writing career, Clay divided his time between writing and teaching at the University of Texas at Dallas, where the administration was accommodating in allowing him to arrange his schedule so that he would have blocks of time for writing.

Although he’s never bored, Clay finds that the work does become tedious at times, especially when he’s facing deadlines and feeling the general insecurities that can result from balancing inspiration and talent against craft and ability. He recognizes that writing is a solo occupation and that it is hard work that doesn’t respond well to interruptions, distractions, or limitations.He says, “There is no worse enemy of mine than telephone solicitors and telemarketers.”

Clay works in a home office, away from television and other distractions.He works exclusively with a computer, which helps to facilitate his other writing and editing work. He generally works eight to twelve hours a day, taking occasional breaks for walks, and he may nap if he can’t come up with an idea. He also reads a great deal. If he feels that he’s on a roll with something, he might work eighteen to twenty-four hours straight.

“Writer’s block is a constant and real companion,” Clay says. “It can strike at any time, even in the middle of a sentence. Emotions in writing are very close to the surface and are often very real. They have to be generated and nurtured, but they can never override the intellect. This is hard work, and it requires a daily commitment. Writing is not a hobby. It can be fun—it can be marvelous fun—but it’s always work, even when it’s the most fun.”

Advice from a Professional. Clay recommends a strong command of the language and a solid foundation in the rules of grammar. And he suggests that you read as a vital part of your research “You cannot read enough, even if you do nothing else for every waking minute of the rest of your life,” he says. “Read, read, read. Read history, sociology, chemistry, poetry, plays, novels, short stories, quantum physics, geography, psychology, sports accounts, daily newspapers, weekly magazines, monthly journals, and high school yearbooks. Read. Especially read literature. Bestsellers only teach you what’s hot, not what’s good. You cannot write originally if you don’t know what’s been written. Then sit down and tell a story. Fiction is a lie with which we tell the truth. Tell your lie. Tell it well. But tell it as a story.”

According to the Society for Technical Communication, the median annual salary for entry-level technical writers was $42,500 in 2004.

Salaries of genealogists vary depending on the institution where they work and on the level of expertise he or she has attained. Most self-employed genealogists earn anywhere from $25 to $50 an hour.

Genealogists are also employed in historical societies and libraries with special genealogy rooms. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City, for example, has a huge repository of family information in a subterranean library and maintains an extensive database of genealogical records. The church employs genealogists all over the world, including many who have been accredited through its own program on a list of freelance researchers. You can request information from the Accreditation Program of the Family History Library at the address listed in the Appendix.

Other genealogists find work teaching their skills in adult education classes, editing genealogy magazines, or writing books or newspaper genealogy columns.

How to Get Started

The National Genealogy Society makes the following suggestions for beginners:

1. Question older family members. Encourage them to talk about their childhoods and relatives and listen carefully for clues they might inadvertently drop. Learn good interviewing techniques so you ask questions that elicit the most productive answers. Use a tape recorder or video recorder and try to verify each fact through a separate source.
2. Visit your local library. Become familiar with historical and genealogical publications and contact local historical societies and the state library and archives in your state capital. Seek out any specialty ethnic or religious libraries and visit cemeteries.
3. Visit courthouses. Cultivate friendships with busy court clerks. Ask to see source records such as wills, deeds, marriage books, and birth and death certificates.
4. Enter into correspondence. Contact other individuals or societies involved with the same families or regions. Contact foreign embassies in Washington, D.C. Restrict yourself to asking only one question in each letter or e-mail you send. Include the information you have already uncovered. Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope to encourage replies.
5. Use the Internet. Members of the National Genealogical Society can participate in a special computer interest section that encourages the use of computers in research, record management, and data sharing.
6. Keep painstaking records. Use printed family group sheets or pedigree charts. Develop a well-organized filing system so you’ll be able to easily find your information. Keep separate records for each family you research. Special software packages are available to help you keep track of all of your records, and websites such as Anecestry.com and Genealogy.com offer extensive resources for your search.
7. Contact the National Genealogical Society. The organization offers publications such as Genealogy 101: How to Trace Your Family’s History and Heritage and Planting Your Family Tree Online: How to Create Your Own Family History Website. The society also offers a home study course and online courses.

Although most genealogists are not formally trained, specializing in genealogy is possible through some university history and library science programs. Board certification is also an option. For information on certification requirements and procedures, contact
the Board for Certification of Genealogists. The address is listed in the Appendix.

Some writers specialize in fields that require specific research skills, such as technical writers or science and medical writers. Technical writers put technical information into easily understandable language, working on projects such as operating and maintenance manuals, catalogs, parts lists, assembly instructions, sales promotion materials, and project proposals.Many work with engineers on technical subject matters to prepare written interpretations of engineering and design specifications and other information.

Science and medical writers prepare a range of formal documents presenting detailed information on the physical or medical sciences. They convey research findings for scientific or medical professions and organize information for advertising or public relations needs.Many work with researchers on technical subjects to prepare written interpretations of data and other information for the general public.

Most writers and researchers are familiar with technology, and many couldn’t imagine working without laptop computers, desktop or electronic publishing systems, scanners, and software that helps them to organize their material. Some writers prepare material directly for the Internet, which may include writing for electronic newspapers or magazines, creating short fiction or poetry, or producing technical documentation that is available only online. Those who write text for websites are comfortable working with graphic design, page layout, and multimedia software.

Nonfiction writers either propose a topic or are assigned one by an editor or publisher. Combining their research skills with personal observation and interviews, they select and organize the material they want to use to express ideas and convey information in the final piece.

Freelance writers work independently. They write novels, nonfiction books, magazine and newspaper articles, and advertising copy, selling their work to the appropriate clients. Some contract with a publisher to write a book or an article; others are hired to complete specific assignments, such as writing about a new product or technology.

In this chapter you will learn about scholars whose careers are built on their skills as researchers and writers. You’ll also learn about the field of genealogy, which is an interesting example of a career that requires a combination of strong research and writing skills and that also lends itself to freelancing. In addition, you will read the accounts of a professional writer and two freelance researchers.

Mary Lee Nitschke—Animal Behaviorist

Mary Lee Nitschke has a Ph.D. in comparative developmental psychobiology from Michigan State University and more than thirty years of experience in this exciting field. She feels that the most important training for an animal behaviorist is hands-on experience, and the more time spent observing animals and learning to interact with them, the better. In addition, she recommends formal education that teaches you to understand, evaluate, and think like a scientist.

In her opinion, the best approach is to take a lot of experimental courses in psychology or in other fields. Some anthropology courses are good preparation for this kind of work, and there are disciplines of animal behavior in both psychology and zoology. A good psychology background is important because it will expose you to experimental psychology and statistics.

Dr.Nitschke uses applied statistics on a daily basis. “I’ll give you an example,” she says.“Every time a client comes in to me and says ‘this is happening,’ in my mind I run that through a statistical analysis, and I say, given that situation, what is the probability this is happening for these reasons. That’s where my training and my knowledge of animal behavior allows me to put that in a framework instantly.”

Getting Started. Dr. Nitschke grew up on the range in Texas, where her primary entertainment and stimulation came from observing animals. She spent a great deal of time with animals, particularly showing and training horses. When she started college, she was attracted to both engineering and psychology because she loved both machines and animal behavior.

She was very interested in the realization that her theoretical learning in psychology seemed to be wasted if it wasn’t applied. She found that her professors knew very little about training and were teaching learning theory. On the other hand, trainers knew nothing about learning theory. She believed that both of these areas could be enriched by the other, and she kept bouncing back and forth between the world of training and the world of academics. When she got to graduate school and discovered that she could actually study this as an academic subject, she was fascinated with putting the two together.

Most of her research in graduate school was aimed at the interspecific communication of distress. For her dissertation, she conducted research with bobwhite quail, jackrabbits, coyotes, blue jays, and human babies, looking for whether there was some universality of understanding of the distress call between species.

After graduation, Dr. Nitschke taught at Michigan State University. Her subjects included operant behavior and pet communication patterns in the veterinary school. She also taught developmental psychobiology with a specialization in toxicology, again looking across species at the common elements in how toxins affect behavior in various species.

“Before I even went to college, I trained horses,” she says. “What I later realized is that I trained every animal I came into contact with—I just didn’t realize that’s what it was called.

“While I was an undergraduate, one of the things that fueled my interest in applied psychology was that I started out working in a kennel that bred and trained collies. It was really one of the golden fortunes of my life that the couple I worked for had incredible integrity and ethics about breeding. They bred for the love of the dog and could not be bought by local fashions and current fads. They knew exactly what they were breeding for—solid temperaments. I learned an incredible amount from them. I started there just cleaning dog runs, and by the time I left I was handling the line of collies professionally.”

The Work. Dr. Nitschke wears many hats. She is a full-time, tenured professor in the psychology department at Linfield College in Portland, Oregon. Her courses range from Applied Animal Behavior and Human Animal Relationships to People Pet Partnerships in Health Care. She is also owner of Animal School Incorporated (in Beaverton, Oregon) and, through private consultations and classes, provides clients with help in solving pet behavior problems.

Here is an example of the kinds of problems she sees.“Recently, a fellow came in with a six-year-old bulldog mix. It looked an awful lot like a pit bull—big dog, ninety pounds, and he has bitten about seven people. I went through each bite. Some of these bites are almost to be expected because they resulted from inappropriate behavior on the part of the owner. In one instance, the owner sent a plumber carrying a pipe into the dog’s territory without announcing him.Well, he already knew the dog was territorial and didn’t usually admit strangers. I don’t count that bite. That was to be expected. In another instance, a teenage boy had been playing with the dog, then turned very abruptly and jumped on his bike, and the dog went for him. Given this particular dog, the probability of that happening is pretty high, and, when you
add all those bites up, the probability that the dog is going to bite  again is also very high. Putting the dog to sleep is one of the major  options I counseled him about, but you can’t make that decision for the client. My job in that situation is to say, here are the likely scenarios—what will happen if you do nothing or if you do this, that, or the other.”

What the owner wanted was a training program that would guarantee that the dog wouldn’t bite anyone again, but Dr. Nitschke explains that there is no such program.Most of the time you’re working with the person, not the animal, and that’s why you must have some grounding in counseling to do this work.

Dr.Nitschke is also a consultant to the Oregon Zoo in Portland. She works with the zoo’s full-time animal behaviorist, running training seminars for zookeepers on how to interact with and handle animals.

She also gives talks on wolf-dog crosses because the zoo gets many questions about them. Since the zoo has wolves, people bring their concerns about their own pets, and she helps to answer the questions.Many people living in the Northwest own wolves as pets, which can be a dangerous situation. To an animal behaviorist such as Dr. Nitschke, the biggest problem is the quality of life for the animal. If it’s high percentage wolf, it’s likely to be terrified of people and unpredictable. There is no way of knowing when the wolf part is going to be operative and when the dog part is. These wolf-dog crosses have a reputation very similar to pit bulls and rottweilers. Although it’s not the same problem, it looks the same because they maul children frequently.

Dr. Nitschke also does training with the zookeepers, teaching them to manage animals in the zoo environment and to understand and use operant behavior and clicker training, in which the animal is trained to click a bar that delivers food as a reward. One of her colleagues was working with an ape that was diabetic and needed to have a blood sample drawn every day. Through clicker training, she taught the chimp to put its arm in a sleeve outside the cage and grasp a bar so that the blood sample could be taken quickly and efficiently without endangering anyone. The reward was food, and the animal was fine about it.

This colleague also taught an elephant to present its feet for cleaning through a fence. This was an aggressive male elephant that would not allow anyone to enter its territory for cleaning. Through operant conditioning, it was taught to hold its feet up to a little panel where they could be cleaned.

In addition, Dr. Nitschke does a lot of public speaking and is also a consultant for the invisible fencing industry. She also does occasional training for animal-control workers, teaching them how to handle animals and how to approach an animal when they have to go onto a property, which is extremely dangerous.

The ability to think critically is probably one of the most valuable assets an animal behaviorist should have. That also includes the ability to evaluate—to be able to tell what the results you see mean and to evaluate them without reference to your personal prejudices. Some animal behaviorists earn a doctorate degree in animal behavior programs in university psychology or zoology departments. They also must combine hands-on experience with their research interests.

Salaries

Salaries vary widely depending on the specific work you do and the area in which you live. Those working for a university would expect to be on the same pay scale as any other faculty member of the same rank and experience, ranging from about $46,000 for lecturers to more than $90,000 for full professors.

Those who work independently, whether as trainers or teachers, can set their own fees. Most charge an hourly rate for animal training, and a set fee for classes. In general, rates start at about $100 per hour.

Independent Trainers

Many animal behaviorists work independently and offer training programs to pet owners. If you want to get started on your own, veterinarians are the best referral sources.

Teachers

Some animal behaviorists stay in the academic world, where they conduct research and pass on their knowledge and experience to university-level students. Just as with any professorial post, you need a doctorate and must meet the specific requirements of the hiring department.

Animal-Assisted Therapists

Another career option is animal-assisted therapy, in which animals become part of the therapeutic process. They can be used to help people with a wide range of needs, such as a social dog for a child with emotional or social problems, or a dog that acts as a prosthesis, such as Seeing Eye, hearing ear, or seizure-alert dogs, for example. Animal behaviorists train animals for these roles.

For example, Dr.Mary Lee Nitschke (see her profile later in this chapter) teaches others about hippotherapy, which involves working with horses to help humans with neuromuscular difficulties. Hippotherapy is horseback riding directed by a physical therapist or kinesiologist, where the movement of the horse is used as a way of stimulating neuromuscular interaction patterns in the rider. Dr.Nitschke’s goal is to teach people in the medical field about the many possibilities that are available therapeutically with animals. “I hope I’m carving out a path that will become more common as the years go by—teaching people to use animals therapeutically,” she says.

Another application of animal-assisted therapy is showcased by the work of Dr. Mary Birch, who works with babies who were born addicted to crack cocaine. These infants have no inhibitory control and scream most of the time, making it very hard for the nurses to care for them. It is also very difficult to have an impact on them in any way.

Dr. Birch uses a concept called entrainment, in which the rhythm that occurs in the patient is matched to a corresponding rhythm, with the goal of bringing down the higher rhythm of the patient. She started with little, active finches in a cage right next to the baby, who is eventually entrained on the birds. Then she substituted the finches with birds that moved more slowly, to the point where she could finally use a chinchilla to soothe the baby. The concept combines biofeedback, animal behavior, and circadian rhythm. These are just some examples of the many ways that animal behavior can be used therapeutically.

Medical Researchers

As any animal lover knows, research using animals is a controversial subject, to say the least. An animal behaviorist working with scientists for the betterment of animals can ensure that humane practices are followed.

Animal Training Instructors

Teaching other people how to train animals is a viable career path for animal behaviorists. Although the notion of training animals for circuses or television or film work might be abhorrent to some (there are many who believe that animals should be left in the wild and not used for any purposes related to people’s needs), animals can humanely be trained to interact with humans in a therapeutic setting.

Zoo Specialists

Many zoos hire animal behaviorists or work with consultants to train zookeepers how to handle and interact well with the animals. More and more zoos operate open park facilities as opposed to keeping animals in cement-floored cages. Animal behaviorists teach zoo owners about the needs of the different animals—for example, which animals can be kept in the same park spaces together and which must be kept separated.