621212 external_news 1556805057 1556805349 On a perfect spring day at the zoo, it’s busy on the boardwalk over the zoo’s giraffe enclosure, with parents and children jammed together at giraffe-neck level as they feed the animals delicious leaves and twigs, bought for $2 a pop. So Fatima Ramis, a University of North Florida grad student, picks her way through some underbrush to a shady spot beneath the boardwalk. That’s the quieter place where she’s spent long hours observing the giraffes at ground level as they come up to feed what the zoo visitors offer. Terry Maple, a zoo consultant, was director of Zoo Atlanta for 18 years and is a professor emeritus in the Georgia Tech School of Psychology. He said zoos in recent decades have tried hard to transform into places where animals can live in more natural settings. That’s a benefit to the animals and also a benefit to the increasing research that’s taking place in zoos. “It’s like a field station for wild animals,” Maple said.

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