Fresh Loaf

If you see a non-human meat eater loping about Zoo Atlanta, chances are Rebecca Snyder knows the animal personally. Snyder, 39, hails from Iowa but relocated to Atlanta to pursue a doctorate in psychology. She’s journeyed as far as China to study maternal behavior in pandas, researching everything from the way the gender of the cub affects parental care to how the amount of time with its mother affects a cub. With Lun Lun’s recent delivery, Snyder is seeing 11 years of research come full circle.

“I have gotten to study Yang Yang and Lun Lun since they were born [in China]. I have known them their whole lives. I knew their mothers really well and now I am able to watch Lun Lun as a mother herself.”

Pandas weren’t the only animals to get busy recently. “The lioness just gave birth. It was great to see her as a mother. It is fun to watch [the lions] interact as a family.”

What does she find weird? When exposed to an object with a unique scent, a panda will pick the object up and rub it all over itself, “It’s fun. We expose them to lots of scents. Yang Yang loves Tobasco and mouthwash.”

“I have never been in danger. We work with captive animals so I’ve not felt like I wasn’t safe — though I do have nightmares about tigers escaping.”

A zoo PR rep didn’t want Snyder to talk about last year’s tiger escape at the San Francisco Zoo, which resulted in a visitor’s death. But Snyder did say a tiger couldn’t escape in Atlanta: “Our fencing is taller than San Francisco. We have measured since then and decided to [raise it] higher than what is regulation.”

- Mary Moore

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