In the storied and traditional field of wildlife care, we often find ourselves overly dependent on our own collective experience. By exploring the nuance of tradition and experience in husbandry we look to rewrite the recipes for the innovations we all seek. Traditional care programs are heavily input based, thrusting our consciousness into that space and devaluing outcomes as decision points. Animals in managed care experience their world according to the inputs chosen for them, such as habitat design, feeding regimens, enrichment, and conspecifics, further depreciating the value of responding to the environment in which they live. The aim of this presentation is to challenge the notion that our experience as caretakers is paramount, and that the experience of the wildlife we care for is subsequent to that.