Zoology

Zoology
What is Zoology?
In its broadest sense, zoology is the study of animals and a zoologist is a scientist who studies animals and their environment or habitats. Animals, in this context, are any living organisms that are not plants, fungi, viruses or bacteria (the study of these organisms is the realm of the botanists and microbiologists). Animals include creatures like the marine sponges(which don’t look much like animals), jellyfish, worms, rock lobsters, snails, insects, fishes, frogs, birds and mammals.
Types of Zoologists
The field of Zoology has many different disciplines such as cell biology, physiology, marine biology, behaviour, and ecology, to name but a few. Zoologists can also study animals at the level of the cell, organ systems, whole animals, animal communitiesor whole ecosystems. Zoologists can consequently be divided and classified on the basis of their area of specialty. An anatomist, for example, studies the body organization of animals, an ethologist studies animal behaviour, a physiologist studies how animals work and ecologists study how animals interact with their environment and other animals in it. Zoologists can also be divided on the basis ofthe animal groups on which they work; entomologists study insects and herpetologists, ornithologists and mammalogists work on snakes and amphibians, birds, and mammals, respectively.
Some zoologists work in "pure" fields whereas others work in "applied" fields. Pure, basic or fundamental science can be interpreted as "science for its own sake" and is concerned with increasing our knowledge ofhow living things work. It provides the foundation for applied science. Applied science, as its name suggests, involves applying scientific knowledge to specific problems. For example, a zoologist (who may be a mammalogist) may study a population of mice in the wild in order to understand how population numbers of mice fluctuate and what environmental factors are responsible for these fluctuations.This is pure research. He/she (or another zoologist) may then apply this knowledge to control populations of mice that are causing an economic problem because they are eating stored grain. This is applied science. Many studies that fall into the applied sciences have major implications for man and the environment.
Careers and Job Opportunities for Zoologists
Because zoology is a very broadarea of scientific study, careers can be defined in several different ways. For example, one person might specialize in fish (an ichthyologist) whereas another may specialize in mammals (a mammalogist). Yet another might concentrate on the development of the early stages of life in both fish and mammals (an embryologist or developmental biologist). Thus there are many different ways in whichspecialists can be defined. Here, we have tried to indicate the more general categories of careers for which employment may be available in South Africa. There is no special importance attached to the classification used; it simply reflects zoology in the country at present and how jobs are described by the wide variety of agencies, institutions and companies engaged in zoological research and employingzoologists. Among others, these include the National and Provincial nature conservation agencies, the South African Bureau of Standards, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Medical Research Council (MRC), museums, universities, colleges, technicians, zoological gardens, fisheries institutes, the Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism, Agriculture and Health, localauthorities, game farms, firms of ecological consultants, pharmaceutical companies and many other private and state agencies.
Job opportunities
The demand for zoologists varies widely. For example, in most parts of South Africa there are more posts than there are biology teachers so that one will almost certainly be able to get a teaching job, although this may not always be in the most...