A Psychologist Goes To The Zoo: An Interview with Terry L. Maple

Scientific American:

I first became aware of Dr. Terry L. Maple when I read his article in the latest issue of The Observer, the magazine of the Association for Psychological Science. Maple is former president and CEO of the Zoo Atlanta as well as the Palm Beach Zoo, and is currently a professor in the departments of psychology and integrative biology at the Harriett Wilkes Honors College at the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University.

Dr. Maple became the Director of the Atlanta Zoo in 1984 at the request of then-Mayor Andrew Young. As Maple recounts in The Observer, the zoo had become a “national disgrace,” following the mysterious death of an elephant uncovered in a shallow grave in North Carolina. “Twinkles” the elephant became the poster pachyderm for zoo mismanagement, and it was then that Young turned to Maple. As a postdoc at UC Davis and young professor at Emory, Maple had created a line of research that blended developmental and environmental psychology that grew directly out of his early research on social deprivation in rhesus monkeys.

Read the whole story: Scientific American