Specializing in animals: Danbury man fulfills childhood dream of becoming zoo vet

Sloths live out their lives dallying upside down from the branches of trees. If you are a veterinarian called upon to take a sloth’s pulse, or check its large teeth and sharp, crescent-moon claws, you let it hang around your office.

“It’s not upside down for her. It’s normal,” said Dr. Paul Calle, putting his stethoscope to the belly of Frankie, a 13-year-old sloth who has lived out her life, slowly and contentedly, at the Bronx Zoo. “It would be stressful for her to be right side up, like a dog.”

Calle, 50, of Danbury, is the director of zoological health — the chief vet — for the Wildlife Conservation Society and its five New York facilities: the Bronx Zoo, the Central Park Zoo, the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn, the Queens Zoo and the New York Aquarium.

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Tagged as: Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, New York Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo, Queens Zoo, Sloths, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Wildlife Conservation Society, Zoos