Greenville Zoo intern walks on the wild side

Lanie Crumpton ’27 had no idea how coarse the whiskers on a giraffe’s chin are until she started her internship at the Greenville Zoo. The first time she held out a snack for one of the world’s tallest animals, she felt the rough, brush-like bristles designed to detect and protect against thorns and knew she was doing something special.

Crumpton, a Furman University biology major, is among more than 280 Furman students working as interns this summer across the country and around the world. Furman’s Internship Office staff helped pair her curiosity and passion with the zoo’s needs to get some experience working with large, exotic animals on her path to becoming a veterinarian or a zoo keeper.

“This was my first big opportunity to get into the field,” said Crumpton, who used to help her neighbors in Blanche, North Carolina vaccinate their cattle, whose whiskers were much softer than giraffes’. “If I’m applying to veterinary school, experiences like this can help a lot.”

Lanie Crumpton ’27, a biology major at Furman University, feeds a Masai giraffe at the Greenville Zoo, where she works as an intern, on July 11, 2025.

Her mentor at the zoo is Sierra Stine, an animal care specialist. Crumpton began her internship in late May, and Stine walked her through all the tasks a zookeeper takes on: wellness checks, feeding routines, cleaning schedules and enrichment activities for the animals.

“I started out as an intern in a different zoo myself, and it’s just the best way to get into this field,” Stine said. “It’s a really rewarding experience, and you know if you show up with these zookeepers and give 100%, they’re your helping hand in getting a job in this field.”

Crumpton’s experience has been like none other. She’s held out crackers for the long, prehensile tongues of giraffes to scoop up during snack time. She had to take off a shiny pair of earrings that a mischievous rhea, a flightless bird from South America, kept pecking. The African “painted dogs” in one enclosure put on a show for her, wrestling over a bone tossed in for them to play with.

Crumpton feeds, cleans and prepares enrichment activities for the animals. A hollow ball makes for a perfect place to stuff fistfuls of dried hay, and giraffes love to chase the ball around and work their treat out from the inside. “It just gets their brains firing to make them work for it a little bit,” she said.

The animals aren’t the only ones being enriched. Crumpton’s internship has made her more confident than ever in a career path involving animal care. This fall she’ll participate in another experience teeming with wildlife; Furman’s 16-week immersive wilderness and environmental biology program in New Mexico called The Wild Semester.