Dozens of people at the San Francisco Benchling Inc. software company were connected to a video call with a special guest when the meeting quickly left the script.
Benchling paid for Sweet Farm, a 20-acre animal sanctuary, to spice up the virtual gathering with an animal video feed, including Paco, a 5-foot, 9-inch rescue llama. When the sanctuary’s co-founder, Nate Salpeter, got up too quickly, a surprised Paco retaliated by spraying him in the face with his mouth full of spit.
“It caught everyone off guard, especially Nate,” said Yujia Zhao, an account executive at Benchling. The call burst into laughter.
“They have a wide variety of splashes,” said Salpeter. “It smelled a lot of hay.”
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Repetitive virtual meetings over the past year have undermined morale in many workplaces. Therefore, companies are hiring four-legged guests – sheep, goats, turtles, llamas, bearded dragons and more – to return the smile of tired employees. Hosting video calls with animals has become a lucrative source of revenue for many farms, sanctuaries or zoos.
Animals don’t always play together. Chickens squawk at the guests, goats nibble on their fingers, cows gallop. Thus, farmers became experts in pampering their talent. They found themselves washing wool, banning troublemakers, blackmailing them with treats and scratches on their bellies – anything to keep animals happy and performing at their best.
Quilley Nelson, the hedgehog, from Tiny Tails to You, takes a shower.
Photograph:
Tiny Tails for you
“We bath the hedgehogs, which is really cute,” said Chelsea Phillips, founder of Tiny Tails to You. “We have baby shampoo, which is good for them to use, but you also want to follow this up with a spray of olive oil because they can dry very easily ”.
Tiny Tails, a virtual zoo in Austin, Texas, offers a complete tour – hedgehogs, chinchillas, rabbits, chickens, turtles and more, all competing for attention – with hangouts starting at $ 65 and up. It was a way to increase revenue when visits stopped last spring.
One of Tiny Tails’ most mischievous animals is Jeffrey, the gecko, who, if held too close to the laptop during calls, jumps onto the screen. “He’s a little bit unpredictable,” said Mrs. Phillips. Now, they keep Jeffrey from two years away so he’s not tempted to blow up the technology.
Nate Salpeter leads a Goat2Meeting call with Piggie Smalls and Piggie Sue.
Photograph:
Sweet Farm
Stephanie Prevost, director of operations at Vendr Inc., which helps companies buy and renew software, brought her three children into social work with Tiny Tails.
Things got chaotic when the turtle Knuckles Tortellini, 13, appeared. “This is so silly, but the turtle in the end was pooping on the table, and the adults and children were laughing so hard,” said Ms. Prevost. People still joke about it on Slack.
In response, Ms. Phillips said that they now feed the animals well in advance to avoid unwanted accidents.
Mr. T, also known as Knuckles Tortellini, a red-footed turtle from Tiny Tails to You.
Photograph:
Liz Moskowitz
Alison Johnson at Bowbridge Alpacas Scotland in North-East Fife, UK, is constantly chasing his flock. Trained optics, Ms. Johnson won her first alpacas in 2015. She charges £ 39 ($ 55) for a 30-minute tour and an adoption package.
Six-year-old Balthazar, a Huacaya alpaca with a windswept edge, is the most mischievous member of the herd and tends to influence others. On a call to Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., he continued to move away from the camera. Soon the alpacas were chasing each other across the paddock. Mrs. Johnson had to run to the edge of the field to reach them.
“When she turned, they had moved away,” said Kirsi Swinton, executive assistant at HPE.
“This is keeping me fit and healthy,” said Mme. Johnson.
Alpacas from Bowbridge Alpacas Scotland on a video call.
Photograph:
Kirsi Swinton
Fazenda Doce do Sr. Salitre has over 150 rescued animals, including pigs, turkeys, cows, chickens, sheep, horses and goats. Today, a ten-minute “Goat-2-Meeting” – a pun on LogMeIn Inc.’s GoToMeeting conference software – with unlimited guests costs $ 100, helping to raise money for Sweet Farm and a collection of other sanctuaries of animals. Sweet Farm made more than 8,000 calls.
In a zoom with Mel Venner from Instinct Performance, the goat Elizabeth was more interested in her lunch.
Photograph:
Jem Bartholomew
Goats cannot always be expected to behave. Farmer Dot McCarthy used many of them from his herd of about 40 forts in Zoom calls to raise more than £ 50,000 ($ 70,000) for his Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Lancashire, England. The money allowed him to hire five new part-time employees. Now it plans to invest in sustainable technology, such as solar panels and electric vehicles.
People can invite goats to video calls – £ 5 for five minutes – and even create personalized messages for goats to eat using edible paper and ink (£ 10).
Several times, the goats pushed her out of the way and chewed the paper snack before entering Zoom. “So, if we’re late for a call, that’s why, because we had to rewrite the note,” McCarthy said. It doesn’t get any easier when the cameras are recording. The farm uses a smartphone, and the goats are constantly nibbling on its biodegradable box. “I think it’s some kind of plant-based material,” she said.
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