Wild World of Animals teaches respect, empathy, for all life
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Tyson the lion enjoys a pat from Grant Kemmerer, founder and owner of Wild World of Animals in Bentleyville, who said the lion tolerates him for only a few minutes now that he’s full-grown. “I’ve been around him since he was very young, and he and I were buddies, loves me to death. When he hits five years, there’s just a hormonal change, testosterone that in the wild primes him for a fight that’s going to come,” Kemmerer said. “When he hits five, he wants to kill me. In the wild, all that aggression would be only towards another male lion, but because he’s been around humans ... that’s the way it shakes out.”
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
To critics of keeping animals in captivity, Grant Kemmerer explains that tigers roam hours each day searching for food in the wild. “It’s not because they want to go on long nature walks. It’s because they’re an apex predator who at 500 pounds eats 5% of their body weight,” Kemmerer said. His tigers, including Gus, pictured here, live on average longer lives than wild ones.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Amy the sloth soaks in the sunshine with Grant Kemmerer at Wild World of Animals in Bentleyville. Sloths are excellent swimmers, Kemmerer said, and the only animal that could die of starvation on a full stomach.
Grant Kemmerer begins every show, whether at an elementary school, a private birthday party or on sprawling fairgrounds, with a thesis.
“Every animal is important: Big, small, cute, ugly. They all have jobs that they perform as a function of nature,” said Kemmerer, who founded Wild World of Animals more than 30 years ago. “It’s a lifetime of learning for me that I’m trying to explain to other people. At the end of the day, for me, it’s about the animals and just trying to increase the odds in their favor; if they do have an encounter with a human, that the human will act appropriately, so it’s not going to be at the animal’s expense.”
Kemmerer and his wife, Jamie Kemmerer, live in Bentleyville with about 200 exotic creatures, including alligators, kangaroos and falcons, and travel locally and nationally performing “edu-tainment” programs that teach audiences the importance of every animal.
Programs run between 45 and 50 minutes, are age-appropriate and allow people to see firsthand animals that exist, for many, only on TV, in movies or at zoos.
“We bring 13 animals, so it’s constantly moving; you’re looking at something new and different. We start with the lesser animals, the arthropods, and then we move into amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, which from a biological standpoint is kind of how life progressed on earth. We’re not covering every animal group, but there’s a nice representation. Along the way, we learn things like what’s the difference between a frog and a toad,” Kemmerer said. “We want it to be fun and engaging and laugh and everything, but at the end of the day, it’s about, hopefully, learning about animals.”
Most Americans have a general idea of animal life: lions are King of the Cats, scorpions sting and sloths move slowly. But the intricacies of animals and how they interact amongst themselves and with others remains a mystery to many, doing a disservice to humans and animals alike.
“People assume. That’s a giraffe. It’s a lion. I know everything about nature. Well, there are a lot of things out there. I’ve been doing this over 30 years, and I still learn,” Kemmerer said, reaching into a cage and procuring a reptile.
It looks like a snake, but it isn’t.
“Here is a legless lizard,” Kemmerer proclaimed. “It has a tail that can break away and then regenerate. Not all lizards can do that; snakes, never, but we love animals like that because it kind of makes you think. I love animals that have a lot of myths and misconceptions about them. We have an animal, the largest prehistorical tail animal in the world. When people see it, they’re like, ‘Uh, what is that thing?’ They have no idea. And that’s cool because it’s great to have animals that people immediately recognize, but stuff that makes you go, I don’t know what that is and makes you think, might make people look a little bit more at nature.”
That’s the thing about nature: it’s amazing and worth thinking about.
“There’s no hard, steadfast rule. There’s always going to be some animal that breaks the mold: fish that walk up on land, birds that don’t fly, mammals that lay eggs,” Kemmerer said. “If you study the insect world, it’s fascinating; it’s like otherworldly. I’m amazed.”
Kemmerer has always been amazed by the animal kingdom. Growing up in Tampa, Fla., marine life was his first love, he said, but as Kemmerer grew, his interests expanded to reptiles, particularly those with bites that kill.
“Venoms are so complex, so biologically complex and, we’re learning, so potentially helpful,” he said, blue eyes wide. “It’s pretty fascinating that that substance that an animal produces from its own body can have that kind of power.”
Kemmerer knows firsthand the power of a snake’s venom; years ago, he was bit by a pet while refilling the creature’s water.
“I was bitten by a cobra and flatlined. I lost my speech, my eyesight. They thought I was going to lose my leg. The venom actually dissolves your tissues – there was a hole in my leg, not immediately, but down the road and you could look through that hole and see the bones on my knee, my muscles,” said Kemmerer, who miraculously walks well and has full sight and speech.
“Sometimes people are like, what happened to that snake? I’m like, he lived his whole life. Died of natural causes. I’m not going to kill the snake. A lot of people are like, I ought to chop that snake’s head off. It’s like, no. I’ve been injured by a lot of stuff. When you work with these animals, you’re going to get injured.”
Some criticize Kemmerer for keeping exotic animals in captivity, as what many consider pets, but that’s not how self-taught and trained Kemmerer views things (he went to school for business at Florida International University but spent his free time learning about wildlife through books, tutelage and hands-on experience under experts). At least 40% of his animals are rescues, and he, his wife and staff work tirelessly every day of the year to ensure the lions, tigers and bears and other animals are living their best lives.
“In no way, shape or form do I look at them as a pet. I laugh at that notion. I have dogs and cats, domestic dogs and cats; those are pets. This is a very potentially dangerous animal,” Kemmerer said. “Some people think that an animal in a captive setting across the board is cruel. They don’t really, in my opinion, understand the realities of what nature is. I’ve been in the wild. The wild is not easy. The wild is not fun. The wild is tough every single day. If you get injured or sick, you’re done in the wild. There is no one that is going to take care of you. Every one of these animals under our care, we control everything, who it lives with, what it eats, how often it eats, how much it eats, who it gets to interact with. That said, having been in the wild, most animals don’t make it. ‘Only the strong survive’ is true. When we have animals in an enclosure, it’s not so much enclosing them. It’s keeping the world out.”
Half of all wild tiger cubs live to two years old, with an average lifespan of 10-15 years. Kemmerer’s tigers typically live well into their 20s.
Along with rescuing and lovingly tending to wild animals and educating the general public on the true nature of the beasts, Wild World of Animals provides animals for media, including Animal Planet, the Irwins and the Kratt brothers, Netflix and other streaming services, movies and commercials. Through a friend, Kemmerer was introduced to Jack Hanna and has provided animals for late-night TV, including The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The Kemmerers also offer folks the chance to get up close – but not too close! – and personal with their wild animals on private tours, which take between an hour and a half and two hours and must be scheduled in advance.
“We started doing private tours here because of COVID. Nothing that we typically do was going on, so we started doing private tours, and that actually was great because then people can actually see animals that we don’t use (in shows). There’s a usefulness for them,” Kemmerer said. “When people come, it’s their private zoo. At a typical zoo, the tiger’s asleep; if he’s asleep behind something, you don’t even see him. When we’re going around, we go up, and it’s like, if Gus (the tiger) isn’t already standing there, he comes right over. It’s kind of cool when our animals come over to see us.”
Kemmerer’s mission, if it hasn’t been made clear, is to demystify wildlife, to break down walls between people and creatures by educating the public and sharing the wonderfully wild world of animals.
“Probably the thing that makes us most happy is when people go, your animals look healthy and happy. We spend a tremendous amount of time on it. Knowing that these animals are extremely well cared for and live a happy, long life, I think, is something to be very proud of,” Kemmerer said, watching his lion, Tyson, lounge in the grass. “And I think productive life, in that we use them to teach people. At the end of the day, it’s about empathy, having empathy for other living things.”
For more information on Wild World of Animals, to book or reserve a private tour, visit wildworldofanimals.org.