Minnesota Zoo Super Scooper

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Here’s the Inside Scoop

The Minnesota Zoo aims to be a leader in the conservation of animals and their habitats worldwide, including locally. One of the greatest threats to Minnesota's freshwater mussels, turtles, and fish is dog waste left on the ground. When it rains or snows, bacteria from dog waste flow through storm drains into our lakes and rivers, polluting the water and harming vital habitats.

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Zoo Do

Science

Zoo Doo

The Minnesota Zoo is responsible for providing healthy habitats for the animals and plants we care for. That means we constantly clean up animal waste. Every day, more than 40 Zookeepers each devote an average of 4 hours of their day cleaning—that’s more than 58,000 hours a year scooping poop, washing, scrubbing, and sanitizing!

We are super scoopers, and you can be too!
You can doo your part by picking up dog waste in outdoor spaces at home, especially before weather events like rain or snow. This helps protect local wildlife and avoid a sloppy situation after the storm!

I WILL SCOOP BEFORE RAIN OR SNOW!

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By taking the pledge and providing your contact information, you consent to receiving electronic and paper communications from the Minnesota Zoo regarding the Super Scooper program. Thank you for participating!

Dooing Good is as easy as 1,2,3!

1. Check the weather forecast.
2. If rain or snow is on the way, scoop the poop!
3. Place dog waste in a plastic bag, tie it shut, and put in a closed trash can.

To get you started, we’ll mail you a kit containing poop bags made from post-consumer recycled plastic, Super Scooper stickers, and…

The Scoop on Poop

• One dog can produce more than 250 pounds of poop per year and each pound of dog waste can contain more than 10 billion harmful bacteria. That’s a lot of waste and pollution!

• Many of our animals at the Zoo produce far more poop than dogs. On the Northern Trail, each Prezwalski’s horse in our herd produces 15 to 20 pounds of manure per day. The cows at the Wells Fargo Family Farm produce 70 to 75 pounds daily! Other animals keep it smaller and simple to scoop up. On the Tropics Trail, the Linne’s two-toed sloth climbs down from the tree branches to poop and pee only once a week.

All the Words for Waste

Zookeepers have a big vocabulary for the poop they scoop:

• Manure is what hoofstock like camels, caribou, and moose produce.
• What scat is that? It’s the poop of carnivores like coyote and wolves.
• Watch your step on your way to the Wells Fargo Family Farm! The Clydesdale draft horses can leave behind road apples as they pull a wagon.
• Call them cow pies or patties—that’s what the Farm’s cows drop in the barn and pasture.
• Goats and sheep produce dark, round droppings that look like coffee beans, pebbles, or marbles.
• Plus, pellets, droppings, dung, feces, guano and stool—so many synonyms for poop!

Pooping is a Healthy Habit

By scooping the poop, Zookeepers also collect valuable information. Poop is a tool to evaluate the health and well-being of animals—and it’s readily available in every animal’s habitat.

On a regular basis, Zookeepers gather poop samples for veterinarians. They test for healthy digestion, measure reproductive and stress hormones, and diagnose disease. When your dog goes to the veterinary clinic for their yearly physical, we bet your vet asks for a fecal sample, too!

The Science of Scat

We join with other AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums in collecting fecal samples and submitting them to research labs. By contributing to science, we will better understand and care for the animals at the Zoo and support wildlife conservation throughout the world.

For example, the Minnesota Zoo’s wolverines contribute to conservation with their scat. Keepers collect and send fecal samples from a pregnant female to researchers with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Our samples are tested against ones collected in the Montana mountains, which helps scientists determine if and how many wolverines are breeding in the wild. This data can indicate if populations are stable, increasing, or decreasing—and whether more efforts are needed for wolverines to survive and thrive.