10 Animals With Real Jobs Who Earn Their Keep, and a Llama Hired as a Security Guard

In July 2022, a small herd of European bison was released into West Blean and Thornden Woods near Canterbury, Kent, in a project run by two local wildlife charities. The woods had been prepared by the UK’s first-ever bison rangers.

The bison have a job description, too: they fell trees by rubbing against them, which opens up space and light and leaves deadwood for other plants and animals. They seem to like the work. By October 2024, the herd had grown to eight: the three founding females and a bull, plus four calves born in the woods.

The Save the Elephants charity tested a gentle way to keep elephants out of farm fields: beehives hung on a wire along the edge of a farm. When an elephant pushes the wire, the hives swing, the bees come out, and the elephant usually turns back.

The idea grew from research that began in 2006 in Kenya, and by 2020 beehive fences were used in 19 countries in Africa and Asia. The bees also pollinate the crops and make honey the farmers can sell.

In July 2025, the Arcadia Fire Department in California brought in about 400 goats and sheep to graze the dry hillsides around Wilderness Park. They worked around the clock from July 15 and finished at Santa Anita Canyon Road on Aug. 6, after clearing 21 acres of dense vegetation.

The herd got into steep spots full of withered grass and weeds that are hard for crews and machines to reach, and the animals’ hooves broke up hardened soil. A grant from the California Fire Foundation covered more than half the cost of the department’s first-ever grazing job.

California’s Department of Food and Agriculture lists llamas, donkeys and dogs as the animals most often used to guard sheep and goats from coyotes and dogs. A guard llama needs minimal training, eats the same pasture as the flock and can work for 10 to 15 years.

Llamas instinctively dislike canines. When one shows up, a guard llama goes on alert, sounds an alarm call, walks toward the intruder or moves between it and the sheep. Donkeys can do the job too, but the department recommends one donkey per flock, smaller flocks of under 300 sheep and 4 to 6 weeks to bond.

Solar farms need the grass under their panels kept short, and more of them are hiring sheep instead of mowers. The first U.S. Solar Grazing Census, by the American Solar Grazing Association and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, counted about 113,050 sheep grazing roughly 129,000 acres at more than 500 solar sites as of October 2024.

It’s a fair trade. The sheep keep the vegetation down, and in return they get shade from the panels on hot days and fresh grass all season.

Bear, an Australian koolie, was trained on the scent of live koalas’ fur. When he finds one, he drops to the ground at the base of the tree, and his reward is his favorite thing in life, a ball. Working with the International Fund for Animal Welfare and a university team, he helped find more than 100 koalas.

Bear retired in March 2026 after about a decade on the job. In May, a nationwide casting call went out for his successor: energetic, obsessed with fetching balls and with absolutely zero interest in chasing wildlife.

An oyster is a living water filter: under certain conditions, a single one can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, NOAA says. New York Harbor was once full of oyster reefs, and the Billion Oyster Project is putting them back.

By the end of 2025, the project had reintroduced more than 180 million live oysters at restoration sites around the harbor. It grows them on 3.2 million pounds of shells collected from city restaurants, and more than 40,000 New York students have helped. The goal is right there in the name.

Since 1994, the Cheetah Conservation Fund has bred Anatolian shepherds and Kangal dogs, big Turkish guarding breeds with a loud bark, and placed them with farmers in Namibia. The dogs grow up with goats and sheep, bond with the herd and usually just bark to warn predators away.

A study of 25 years of farmer surveys counted 634 dogs placed between 1994 and 2018, and the dogs reduced livestock losses for 91% of the farmers. Fewer losses also make it easier for farmers and cheetahs to share the land.

Australia’s native dung beetles grew up on the small, dry droppings of kangaroos and other marsupials, and they had no interest in cow pats. So, on cattle farms, the pats sat on the grass and bred clouds of bush flies.

Between 1965 and 1985, the national science agency CSIRO brought in more than 50 dung beetle species from overseas. Of those, 43 were released and 23 became established. The beetles bury the dung, which feeds the soil and leaves the flies with nowhere to breed.

In March 2025, the National Trust released beavers into Little Sea Lake at Studland, Dorset, under the first license of its kind from Natural England. Beavers were hunted out of mainland Britain in the 16th century.

One year later, one pair had settled in and built a 35-meter dam. It slowed a small stream into a deep pond, their tree cutting let light into the woods, and trail cameras have already caught an otter fishing there and a barn owl hunting.