Joan Procter Socks

Joan Beauchamp Procter was fascinated by animals–especially reptiles and amphibians–from a young age. Her curiosity led her to a job at the Natural History Museum in London, where, despite not having a college education, she began engaging in academic zoology. As Curator of Reptiles for the London Zoo, she came up with a revolutionary idea that’s still very much in practice in zoos around the world today: modeling the animals’ zoo habitats after the animals’ natural habitats in the wild. This may not seem like a big deal, but it gives us happier and healthier animals in captivity and helps improve our understanding of them.