Naturalist Michelle Nussey’s passion is storytelling and animals. Originally from Australia, she now lives in Los Angeles (but don’t hold that against her). She worked at Melbourne Zoo for over 6 years researching, writing and speaking about animals from all over the world. Sometimes visitors accidentally dropped sunglasses into the orangutan enclosure.

When she wasn’t racing across the zoo to see an orangutan wearing sunglasses upside down (true story - it was awesome), she fed meerkats, held ball pythons and explained that the seals were trained to have their teeth brushed because all they ate was fish and squid. Michelle lead group tours, conducted close up animal encounters and engaged transient audiences while interpreting live animals’ behavior, training, conservation and care. As part of the Zoo’s conservation efforts, she was lucky enough to help release captive-born Eastern Barred Bandicoots into the wild to successfully increase numbers.

Outside of the zoo, Michelle has volunteered in Thailand at Elephantstay, a non profit program that involves living with, caring for and learning about retired Asian elephants. She wrote, produced and performed a live solo show called Gorilla, lovely Gorilla at Melbourne Fringe Festival based on real life animal stories from her lifetime experience. And if you can’t get enough, she can also be heard as the resident zoo expert on podcast Grain of Truth.