41 Smart Tricks Used To Weight Animals By Animal Care Workers

If you ever tried weighing your own pet, you probably know what a huge struggle it can be. They’re constantly wiggling around and trying to escape while you only want to know how chunky your fur child is. Well, you’re not alone and animal care workers around the world can certainly feel your pain – especially since they often have to weigh animals that much bigger than your pets. This, however, has prompted them to come up with some pretty clever tricks to make their jobs a little easier.

Animal care workers are sharing pictures of all the funny and clever ways they weigh animals, and it doesn’t get any more adorable than this. Check them out in the gallery below!

1#

Image source: Kangaroo Island Koala and Wildlife Rescue Centre

2#

Image source: erinruberry

Emily Greenhalgh, a marine biologist and science communicator who worked at the New England Aquarium in Boston and posted a picture of a baby penguin being weighed. Emily explained what the procedure of weighing wild animals looks like.

“As you can imagine, keeping a wild animal still enough to get an accurate weight reading can be a bit of a challenge.” Emily further explained: “Plastic tubs and containers are clutch. The penguin chicks are placed gently in a plastic tub (the kind you would store flour or cereal in) and then the tub is placed on the scale to get an accurate measurement.”

Meanwhile, other animals (like the sea lions and harbor seals) “are trained to hop up onto the scale as part of their enrichment activities, which makes things a bit easier,” said Emily.

3#

Image source: reddit.com

4#

Image source: amivitale

It really depends on the individual animal how often they get a checkup and how they get weighed.

For example, “The Aquarium’s 550-lb green sea turtle, Myrtle, gets a full workup twice a year, including weight measurements, ultrasounds, and blood-draws.” Meanwhile, “Much like a human, the Aquarium’s giant anacondas get a checkup annually.”

However, the baby animals like the rockhopper and African penguins that are born at the Aquarium get a checkup and a weigh-in much more frequently.