To continue celebrating women in natural history with the Biodiversity Heritage Library, we’re concluding Women’s History Month highlighting Helen Martini. At a time when there was little formal training in caring for zoo animals, Helen Martini used her own intuition, research, and experience to help successfully raise dozens of Bronx Zoo baby animals–at first in her own apartment and eventually in the Bronx Zoo’s first animal nursery, which she began. She never published any technical writings on her work, instead sharing her experiences in a memoir called “My Zoo Family.” Here she is caring for three jaguar cubs and a tiger cub in this 1940s photo.

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