{"id":38776,"date":"2025-07-22T11:34:29","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T15:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=38776"},"modified":"2025-07-23T16:34:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T20:34:22","slug":"greenville-zoo-intern-walks-on-the-wild-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/greenville-zoo-intern-walks-on-the-wild-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenville Zoo intern walks on the wild side"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lanie Crumpton \u201927 had no idea how coarse the whiskers on a giraffe\u2019s chin are until she started her internship at the Greenville Zoo<\/a>. The first time she held out a snack for one of the world\u2019s tallest animals, she felt the rough, brush-like bristles designed to detect and protect against thorns and knew she was doing something special.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Internship Office<\/a> staff helped pair her curiosity and passion with the zoo\u2019s needs to get some experience working with large, exotic animals on her path to becoming a veterinarian or a zoo keeper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was my first big opportunity to get into the field,\u201d said Crumpton, who used to help her neighbors in Blanche, North Carolina vaccinate their cattle, whose whiskers were much softer than giraffes\u2019. \u201cIf I\u2019m applying to veterinary school, experiences like this can help a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A

Lanie Crumpton \u201927, a biology major at Furman University, feeds a Masai giraffe at the Greenville Zoo, where she works as an intern, on July 11, 2025.<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started out as an intern in a different zoo myself, and it\u2019s just the best way to get into this field,\u201d Stine said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really rewarding experience, and you know if you show up with these zookeepers and give 100%, they\u2019re your helping hand in getting a job in this field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crumpton\u2019s experience has been like none other. She\u2019s 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 \u201cpainted dogs\u201d in one enclosure put on a show for her, wrestling over a bone tossed in for them to play with.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIt just gets their brains firing to make them work for it a little bit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The animals aren\u2019t the only ones being enriched. Crumpton\u2019s internship has made her more confident than ever in a career path involving animal care. This fall she\u2019ll participate in another experience teeming with wildlife; Furman\u2019s 16-week immersive wilderness and environmental biology program in New Mexico called The Wild Semester<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giraffes, tortoises and wild dogs, oh my! Lanie Crumpton \u201927 is fueling her passion for animal care by interning at the Greenville Zoo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":38696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,2711,58],"tags":[950,3468,293,3469],"class_list":["post-38776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-engaged-learning","category-internships","tag-biology","tag-greenville-zoo","tag-internship","tag-veterinary-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38803,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776\/revisions\/38803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}