Most veterinarians deal with cats and dogs, maybe an occasional pet rabbit or horse.
However, some students at Virginia Tech are treating sloths, otters, porcupines, stingrays, sharks and fish, joining a professor as he treats animals at SeaQuest Lynchburg.
Stephen Smith, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology, specializes in wildlife and exotic animal medicine, aquatic medicine and fish health.
“This is the pinnacle of my career here at the college,” Smith said, “doing something like this with exotic animals and learning both from the staff here and also learning from the animals themselves.
“Usually when people bring in a dog or cat, we can talk to them about the environment that they have at home,” Smith said. “But here it’s a little different, because we’ve got a different environment for every individual animal we have here. Our aviaries are much different than our aquatic aquariums, which are much different than our habitat for the sloth, or the capybaras or the wallabies. They’re all so totally different. And it gives our students a little bit of experience with the exotic world of veterinary medicine, rather than the domestic animals.”
Smith serves as the principal veterinarian for Seaquest.
“He’s here monthly and I can call him at any point in time during the day if I have an issue with any animals,” said Alicia DeMay, who supervises the care of animals at SeaQuest. “He comes in and we go around, we talk about every single animal that’s here. We can go over issues, behavioral issues, medical issues, anything like that. It’s nice to have somebody that you can bounce things off of and have the right answer.”
The opportunity has given Smith’s veterinary students a learning lab joining him for monthly visits or as part of a three-week externship.
“It gives them a little bit of hands-on experience here,” said Smith. “But more importantly, it gives them experience on what it’s like to be involved with a zoo or an aquarium where you don’t actually have a client bringing an animal in, but you’re looking at the biosecurity, the nutrition and the environment of the animal.”
The students learn a lot from the SeaQuest staff but also bring a fresh perspective in the care of the animals.
“There are students here all year round, so we are pretty familiar with them, and it’s fantastic to have them here,” said DeMay. “They’ve got lots of questions. They sometimes think of things that we don’t think of because we’re so familiar with the animals here.”
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Crystal Graham
