The parallels between the animal kingdom and the world of their captors resound throughout the series and are emphasised in the episode titles. In the first, 'Survival of the Fittest', all keepers must reapply for their old positions as management seek to purge a third of the workforce and transform the remainder into (in the words of Development Director Andrew Forbes) "man managers as opposed to animal managers." As he boasts of the entrepreneurial skill of his daughter, selling pine cones from the age of two, Forbes seems a different species to the keepers, whose decades of experience-based knowledge will never show up on a balance sheet. "With animals you haven't got to prove anything", says one keeper, "they either accept you or they don't." Dineen shows a similar, and admirable, lack of bias as she welcomes these strange creatures onto The Ark.