Making Sense of Animal Milks

This update was written by nutrition lab research assistant Jenna Pastel.

You might be surprised to see someone walking around the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in a full-body snowsuit. But as a research assistant for the nutrition laboratory, I wear a snowsuit year-round — even in the summer when an average day in D.C. is 93 degrees and humid. That’s because I spend a lot of time in a -20 degree Fahrenheit walk-in freezer located in the Zoo’s science building.

A nutrition lab research assistant at the Zoo wearing a full-body snowsuit stands in the freezer where animal milk samples are stored. The shelves are stacked with cardboard boxes and she holds a small box filled with tubes of milk samples.

I love animals and have always cared about conservation. While pursuing a degree in biology and environmental studies, I was fortunate enough to intern at the Zoo’s nutrition lab. I studied One Health — the concept that human, animal and environmental health are all interconnected — and found my passion in zoo nutrition. Today, I’m a full-time scientist at the Zoo, where I spend a lot of time in a not-so-ordinary freezer.

This freezer is home to the largest milk repository in the world, with samples from 183 species dating back to the 1980s. I’m sometimes in the freezer for up to four hours a day, so the snowsuit is a requirement (I make sure to pack wool socks, too).

We store milk from armadillos, bats, lions, seals, elephants and pandas — just to name a few. Samples are shipped here from all over the world and kept cool with dry ice during long journeys. We have milk from California, Europe, and (of course) from right here in Washington, D.C.