On November 5, 2018, we visited the Cleveland Metro parks Zoo and we spent some time in the Sarah Allison Steffee Center for Zoological Medicine.
I would consider this somewhat a ‘hidden gem’ inside the Cleveland Zoo. It is nestled back behind the Rising Waters Safari Camp, just past the Rhino exhibit and building. On most of our visits to the zoo, we either spend very minimal time in this building or we’ve skipped it. Since it was a little chillier outside, we decided to spend a bit more time exploring this building and it was well worth it!
According to the Cleveland Zoological Society, the center is “dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment and surgical procedures, has a radiology lab, clinical labs an endocrinology lab and a pharmacy.” And actually, the site map inside the facility shows that their is much more to this facility than the typical visitor actually gets to see.
This center walks through the care of animals from birth to end of life. Along the way, there are interactive activities for kids, for example, filling crates with the appropriate meal items for various animals and a diagnostic challenge. The diagnostic challenge steps you through the process of determining what is wrong with an animal and the diagnostic tools that a veterinarian might use to determine it. My 3 year old especially loved these areas. She loved pretending to care for the animals and prepare their food for the day and she also loved pretending she was a veterinarian problem solving why the animal was sick.
The absolute best part of this center for visitors is being able to see scientists provide veterinary services to the animals. There are 4 rooms visible to guests – 3 surgical / procedural rooms and 1 imaging room (i.e. for x-rays).
We were lucky and a procedure was schedule that day at 11:30am. We were able to observe the veterinary staff provide health services to a scarlet macaw. This was extremely fun. We saw the animal put under anesthesia and the veterinary staff check it’s heart, feathers, skin, talons, and beak. They also took some x-rays of the bird. The veterinary staff briefly brought the animal up to the window for everyone to see it up close also.
My understanding is that a veterinary procedure could be happening at any point depending on the needs of the zoo, however I did speak to another zoo member that day and she has observed many procedures there. She mentioned that the procedures typically occur around 11:30 am or 2pm each day. This particular one was at 11:30am.
So, if you are there, you might want to check out the center around those times of day! This was such a great experience for children. My daughters were able to compare their doctors appointments to what was happening to the animal. My daughter had questions about why the scarlet macaw had to go under anesthesia for a simple procedure, while she did not for her doctor appointments. She was also able to make the connection to some of the interactive exhibits in the center.
I am a member of the Cleveland Metro parks Zoo but I have no other affiliation with them. I was not asked to provide this review and I did not talk directly with any member of the zoo about this blog post. All opinions and viewpoints in this post are 100% my own.
Have you seen this type of procedure at the zoo near you? Which zoo? What other uniques experiences have your children had at the zoo you’ve attended to help introduce various STEM fields to them? Let me know in the comments or at momgineeringthefuture@gmail.com.
When we walked in, there were four display cases that explained how nature works mechanically to push (i.e. snot pushes out dirt and germs from your body), distort (i.e. gravity distorts the discs in your spine but lie down and they expand), bend (collagen, cellulose and/or keratin in nature gives strength to hollow objects in nature like feathers) and press (i.e. coral can withstand pounding waves because it’s made of very hard calcium carbonate).
Next we moved on to learn about the “circulatory” systems in various animals and also in trees. Did you know that trees use xylem in each ring of the tree to pump up nutrients to the rest of the tree? We were able to see through a microscope what the xylem looks like.
Counting to 10 daily with our fingers: When my older child was a baby, I had her in a local “babynastics” class. During that class, the instructor had everyone count to 10 with their fingers. I thought this was important for fine motor development, listening skill development as well as number and counting basics so I adopted this at home. Every morning, my older child and I make it a habit to count to 10 with our fingers in front of my 1 year old. My older child loves this because she is able to do this easily and she is “teaching” her sister and it literally takes 10 seconds to do it!
Food Math: This has been especially fun with leftover Halloween candy like M&M’s and skittles. We count the number in each color from the bag, we count the total number, we use the colors to do simple addition and subtraction. It’s a lot of fun! I also let my kids select and count the food at the grocery store (for example, putting apples into the bag).
Drawing and writing the numbers: There are tons of dry erase books and pads out there to practice with but this 
SETTING UP THE EXPERIMENT:
RESULTS:
SETTING UP THE EXPERIMENT: I layered two cupcake cups together, then punched holes on each side of the cups. I strung some yarn through (I recommend making your string longer than mine to create a more dramatic effect when one cup is filled with candy). I then tied the yard with cups to each end of the coat hanger and hung the coat hanger on a handle.
