- Zoos: A Historical Perspective from Smithsonian Institution Libraries
The National Zoological Park is an accredited member of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums.
AZA
Erika Bauer, Ph.D., Fujifilm Curatorial Resident in Animal Care
Animals
Education
John Carroll University, B.S., Biology, 1997
University of Michigan, M.S., Psychology (Biopsychology), 2002
University of Michigan, Ph.D., Psychology (Biopsychology), 2007
Professional History and Interests
Erika Bauer joined the National Zoo's Animal Care staff in 2007 through the generous support of a fellowship funded by Fujifilm. She is an animal behaviorist who has focused on the complex social interactions of animals for much of her career. Her dissertation research, which was partially funded through a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, was a comparative study examining social play behavior in three species of social mammals: domestic dogs, chimpanzees, and bonobos (a species of great ape very closely related to chimpanzees but with a markedly different social system). That work has taken her from the local dog parks of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Ohio's Columbus Zoo, to a sanctuary for chimpanzees in Zambia.
A native of Pittsburgh, Erika began working directly with animals by volunteering on weekends during high school to walk dogs at a local animal shelter. In college, she took every course she could that was related to animal behavior, ecology, and conservation, and volunteered to work on a variety of research and education projects. Since then, she has worked in animal shelters, veterinary clinics, primate centers, zoological parks, and animal sanctuaries, as well as in the field. In addition to her graduate work, she has studied conflict resolution in elephants and orangutans, scent-marking behavior in cotton-top tamarins, dolphin intelligence, and maternal behavior in wild degus (a South American rodent).
Just prior to coming to the National Zoo, she completed a Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship at the National Academies, learning about policies related to science education and focusing on educational issues related to learning science in informal environments such as zoological parks and aquariums. She is currently interested in applying science-based ethological methods to better understand how we can improve and enhance our care of zoo animals and best elicit the natural behaviors of animals in captivity.
