Can’t get enough of raptor trainer Chris Pratt? Neither can the people who actually train animals for a living.
Whether you were one of the hundreds of thousands of people who saw “Jurassic World” this weekend or you just caught a glimpse of the movie’s trailer, you probably already know that Pratt plays a park employee, Owen Grady, who trains a pack of velociraptors. Which leads, of course, to this now iconic moment:
Now, real life zoo keepers are reenacting Pratt’s trademark holding pattern with the actual creatures they work with every day:
The meme first went viral with the above picture from a Tumblr user named Talia, who says that “My bestie is a zoo keeper, and she told me that because of Jurassic World it has become a craze in the keeper community (!) to re-enact Chris Pratt,” she wrote, adding, “You guys, this is the best.”
Other zoo keepers have started using the hashtag #JurassicZooKeeper to show off their raptor(?) leading skills. Like Nicole Leslie here, for example:
Or Jon Ovens from the Longleat Safari Park in the UK:
Then there’s the Lion County Safari in Florida:
We are recreating Chris Pratt’s raptor control from #JurassicWorld – with our Southern White Rhinos! pic.twitter.com/ntnm1UsibJ
— Lion Country Safari (@LionCountry) June 17, 2015
And Mike Owyang of the Sacramento Zoo, (he appears to have created the #JurassicZooKeeper hashtag a few days ago), facing off against the deadliest creatures of all:
Let’s hope this becomes a full-on cultural phenomenon in the zoo community (zoomunity?) and that the animals get progressively cuter. Do we know any wildlife parks with a kitten exhibit?
