Becoming a wildlife veterinarian and photographer

Unlike most veterinarians who have a goal of becoming a veterinarian set by a young age, the opportunity fell on the lap of Carl Palazzolo, DVM, MBA. His original plan was to go to Michigan State University for architecture. However, Palazzolo shared that transcript and drawings ended up getting lost, and he was told he could apply for the program the following year but needed to pick up a different major in the meantime. This led him to ask others what their major was, and after multiple people said 'prevet,' Palazzolo decided to check it out and the rest is history.

On his return episode to the Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, Palazzolo takes listeners and our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, on his journey through his career as a veterinarian and wildlife photographer. Palazzolo also dives into his teaching, emphasizing that love and patience is important for wildlife photography—maybe even more important than the equipment.

Below is a partial transcript

Carl Palazzolo, DVM, MBA: So in Africa, we've been pretty much almost all throughout East Africa, some of the hot spots, of course, with the Serengeti, and the best time to go there is you go to a place called Lake Ndutu in Tanzania, sometime around February, that's when the wildebeest are born by the 100,000s, the calfs, and that brings out the big cats and the cheetahs. You get to watch them right there. Another good spot in East Africa is see[ing] the gorillas in Rwanda. You can get very, very close to them. The guys are outstanding guides, they talk to the male gorilla, silverback. They're not aggressive animals, they just look that way. But you have to time it right he's got his troop, [and] he's got his females and cubs.

We actually saw 2 day old twin cubs right in front of us, right? It was literally 10 feet away. Now, the problem with this is several fold. One is it's expensive because the government there knows they got its thing, and they're really endangered, so they're trying to protect them very well, but you want to get close. In an occasion, a baby gorilla comes up next to you, you can spread a disease to them, and one of them did die—confirmed by UC Davis....So it's really, a really great trip, but it's hard to stay away because they're so curious and so cool... yeah, everyone should go there once in life.