Who knew there was a zoo on campus?

Animals such as anacondas, tigers and macaws are just a few of the species zoological veterinarians on campus have to be prepared to treat at a moment’s notice.

The diversity of possible case loads is so great, in fact, that exotics veterinarian Steve Divers said he could not choose a favorite animal.

“There’s so much variation, you want to be able to apply yourself,” he said in an interview Monday.

Divers, an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, entered vet school when he was 18, after deciding that being a “human doctor” was not his calling.

“I love the variety of species we deal with and the quality of hospital we have,” he said of the University’s Small Animal Teaching Hospital. “I hate bureaucracy and losing a patient.”

Christine Fiorello is also an exotics veterinarian and an associate professor in the small animal medicine department. She said she chose her profession because of her interest in research and wildlife conservation, but still wanted to get some clinical experience.

Fiorello went to Tufts University for veterinary school. She finished her residency at University of Florida, after which she worked at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for a year – where she was able to work with what became one of her favorite species.

“I have a lot of favorites,” she said in an interview Monday. “Otters are definitely my favorite to watch; medically to work with, I like rhinos – especially white rhinos.”

She said the white rhinos are easily trainable and have their own personality quirks.

One of the differences between working with animals on exhibit and working with pets, Fiorello said, is scheduling a procedure.

“It can be hard in a public aquarium or zoo situation,” she said. “You have to deal with how the treatment of the animal affects the exhibit.”

She said procedures usually were done outside of regular business hours, and it was sometimes a challenge to get specialist attention to animals in need, as transporting a patient could be difficult – something that outside veterinarians had trouble understanding.

Working at the hospital, however, allows Fiorello and other veterinarians to work with such specialists, students and other vets on a daily basis.

Divers, whose experience includes time at an aquarium, a zoo and a raptor center in London, said he feels the main difference between treating public animals and pets is the amount of direction he has over the outcome of the animals’ treatment.

At the raptor center, he said he had direct input in the patients’ management and preventing medical problems and injuries from happening. Working in a hospital, he said, is “kind of a lot of the time putting out fires,” as most of the patients he sees come in already sick, which he has no control over.

The common animals that come into the exotics area of the hospital, Divers said, are rabbits, ferrets, rodents, parrots and non-venomous snakes.

One such snake that came in was from an Alabama zoo.

“We had a 20-foot anaconda that came in, suffering from retained fetuses, basically suffering from dystocia,” he said, adding the fetuses had been retained for at least a year.

Fiorello said the more unusual cases are rare.

“Mostly what we see are owned pets,” she said.

However, she said, there is a wildlife treatment program in place that handles between 250 and 300 native wildlife species each year, for which there are no clients to pay.

The salary for zoological veterinarians differs, depending on where they work and what cases they take.

“I read in a [Doctor of Veterinary Medicine] magazine about a year ago that the lowest paid jobs in veterinary medicine are behaviorists and zoological medicine [vets],” Divers said.

He and Fiorello said exotic pet practitioners, depending on how long they have been in practice, make between $75,000 and $130,000 a year. Professors of veterinary medicine earn at least $85,000.

Veterinarians who actually work at zoos, Fiorello said, tend to make a little less, between $50,000 and $75,000 a year.

Despite the comparatively lower salary, freshman Lauren Robinson is considering becoming an exotics veterinarian, especially to work with primates.

“It’s something you don’t see every day,” she said. “It’s a huge opportunity to interact with things that other people can’t, and to take care of things we take for granted.”

Divers said students interested in veterinary medicine should work at a vet’s office over the summer to find out what the profession is all about.

“I think undergraduates should concentrate about excelling in undergraduate courses and become competitive,” he said.

Fiorello said pre-vet students should not take these four years for granted.

“I would encourage undergraduates to not just be a biology major, but become a global citizen,” she said.