General Zoology Questions 9/5

9/8/13

     Hey everyone! So this is my first official blog post!  The purpose of this post is to ask just some general questions I have about my field of choice (zoology), then use a book (a real book) to try to answer as many of them as possible.  Below is the list of 10 questions that I have:

      1.) What exactly is zoology?
      2.) Why is zoology studied?
      3.) How is zoology studied?
      4.) What is the minimum degree necessary to be a zoologist?
      5.) What is the zoology job market like?
      6.) What types of places and parts of the country are zoology jobs located?
      7.) What types of jobs do zoologists do?
      8.) What is the starting and average salary of zoologists?
      9.) What types of animals do zoologists study?
    10.) Can zoology be combined with environmental and animal conservation work?

      So to help answer these questions I went to our MSU library and found a book called Zoology, by Malcolm S. Gordon, George A. Bartholomew, John D. O'Conner, and Everett C. Olson.  After my journey to the library to find this book, along with looking through all of the other ones there, I found that books really are not that helpful of a source of research.  To start with, actually looking for and finding a book is a fairly time consuming process, especially if you do not have an exact book you are looking for and the library is as big as this one.  Along with that, after looking through the book, I found that it really only answered a few of my questions.  Unlike the internet, books are a bit limited in being able to answer exact questions like I have formulated above.  I cannot just type my question into google and get an answer.  Almost all of the books I looked at were more of instructional and informational pieces about zoology topics, where as I was looking for something that was more about the actual career and opportunities of the field.  Below are the answers I was able to find with the book I chose:

     1.) What exactly is zoology?

• Zoology is the study of the animal world in all its variety.  Zoologists try to understand how animals function and interact with the world around them. 

     2.) Why is zoology studied?

• There are many reasons why it is studied.  A few may be: It is personally satisfying, It can sometimes lead to high paying jobs depending on what profession you choose within zoology, it is socially useful, it is important part of our cultural education and society, and it is an important part of understanding one's own self and the world around us.  

      3.) How is zoology studied?

• the current study of zoology is broken up into 3 categories: Description of patterns, studies of mechanisms producing those patterns, and studies of the controls operating upon the mechanisms.  So basically zoologists observe, describe, analyze, and try to synthesize patterns, mechanisms, and controls in the animal world.

      As you can see, I was not able to answer very many of my questions with a book.  I think that for questions like mine, the internet or personal interviews may be a better source to get my information from.  Hopefully I will be able to get the rest of these questions answered with these resources so that I can get a good sense of what the field of zoology is all about and share it with all those that may be interested!

Work Cited:

   Gordon, Malcolm S., George A. Bartholomew, John D. O'Conner, and Everett C. Olson.Zoology.   

   New York: Macmillan, 1976. Print.