Not every career with animals means standing behind a reception desk at a vet clinic or feeding sea lions at a marine park. Some days could have you tracking wildlife through a forest, testing water samples along a coastline, or enforcing conservation law in a state park. Wherever your curiosity points, there is very likely a career, and a good one, built around it.
Careers with animals are also in steady demand. Habitat loss, land development, and natural disasters regularly displace animals from where they live, which keeps conservation, rescue, and animal care work busy year-round.
The path you take to get there often matters as much as the choice itself, and the right program can turn an interest in animals into real, career-ready qualifications. At Unity Environmental University, we offer several animal-focused degree programs built with exactly that kind of preparation in mind.
Jobs that help animals are in no short supply. Due to global changes, land development, and natural disasters animals are often displaced from their owners or habitats. There is much work to do when it comes to conservation, relocation, and animal care.
We’ve put together a list of animal-related jobs, including high-paying jobs working with animals, and the education requirements needed to kickstart each career. Learn about these impactful professions and how they can make a difference.
Degrees That Prepare You for a Career With Animals
Animal science is not one degree so much as a family of them, each built around a different set of animals and a different kind of work. The path that fits a wildlife biologist looks very different from the one that fits a veterinarian or an animal nutritionist, so it helps to know what each program actually covers before you choose. Below are the animal-focused bachelor’s degrees you’ll see referenced throughout this list, along with the kind of career each one tends to lead toward.
- Animal Health and Behavior: This bachelor’s degree covers animal behavior, health, and welfare, and is a common starting point for students headed toward zoo keeping, animal training, and clinical animal care.
- Companion Animal Science: Focused on the animals people keep as pets, this bachelor’s degree covers nutrition, behavior, and shelter or rescue work, a pathway for students interested in small animal veterinary care.
- Agricultural Animal Science: Livestock management, agribusiness, and production animal health sit at the center of this bachelor’s degree, making it a strong fit for students interested in large animal veterinary pathways.
- Equine Animal Science: Built specifically around horses, this program covers care, training, and equine health, offering a good path for students interested in specialty care in equine veterinary science.
- Wildlife Conservation: An applied path for students who want to manage and conserve wild populations and habitats directly.
- Marine Biology and Sustainable Aquaculture: Ocean life, from individual species to broader marine ecosystems, is the focus of this degree.
What to Look for in a College for an Animal Related Degree
Once you know which specialty fits, the program itself deserves just as much scrutiny. Two schools can list the same major on paper and still prepare you very differently for the career you actually want, so it pays to look past the degree title. A few questions are worth working through before you commit to any one program:
- Program focus. Confirm the track matches the career you want. Two “animal science” programs can point in very different directions.
- Field and applied experience. Look for coursework that goes beyond lectures, giving you real projects and applied fieldwork to work through.
- Accreditation and outcomes. Check that the program is accredited, and ask what roles recent graduates moved into after finishing.
- Faculty with current field experience. Instructors who are still working in the field bring a different kind of knowledge than those who left practice years ago.
- Fit with your schedule. If you’re working or raising a family while you study, confirm the program is structured around that reality rather than a traditional two-semester calendar.
- Cost and transfer credit policies. Ask how prior coursework transfers in and whether tuition stays locked for the length of your program.
High-Paying Careers With Animals You Can Pursue
Salary is often the deciding factor once the enthusiasm for animals is already there, and it varies more than you might expect depending on the role and the training behind it. Knowing what a career actually involves day-to-day, alongside what it pays, makes it easier to picture yourself in it. The figures below come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), so you’re working from real numbers rather than guesswork as you weigh your options.
Veterinarian
Veterinarians diagnose, treat, and often perform surgery on animals ranging from household pets to farm and exotic species, and some specialize in wildlife care or research into diseases that affect animals and, in some cases, public health. If this path appeals to you, the route runs through a bachelor’s degree, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program, and a state licensing exam before you can practice.
Veterinarians earned a median annual wage of $130,100 in 2025, with employment projected to grow 9% through 2035, much faster than average. A Companion, Agricultural, or Equine Animal Science degree is a common starting point if you’re planning to apply to veterinary school.
Wildlife Biologist
Wildlife biologists spend much of their time in the field, observing how animals behave, interact with each other, and respond to human activity, then bring that data back to a lab or office to analyze and report on it. It’s a good fit if you want fieldwork at the center of your career, whether that means tracking migration patterns or monitoring an endangered species’ recovery.
Wildlife biologists earned a median annual wage of $76,780 in 2025, with 4% employment growth projected through 2035. A Wildlife Conservation degree is a strong fit if this is the direction you want to head.
Zoologist
Zoologists take a broader view of animals and their behavior than wildlife biologists, though within that broader scope, many zoologists focus on a particular species, ecosystem, or research question, such as how climate change affects migration or feeding patterns. Depending on your focus, you might end up working in a zoo, a research lab, a museum, or in the field full time.
Zoologists fall under the same Bureau of Labor Statistics category as wildlife biologists, earning a median annual wage of $76,780 as of May 2025. An Animal Health and Behavior or Wildlife Conservation degree can lead into this kind of role just as well.
Animal Nutritionist
Animal nutritionists design the diets and feeding plans that keep animals healthy, whether that means livestock rations, pet food formulations, or specialized diets for animals recovering from illness or injury. The role blends field assessment with lab and desk work analyzing nutritional data, so you’ll want to be comfortable moving between both.
Most positions call for a bachelor’s degree with a strong emphasis in animal science. The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups this work under its Animal Scientists category, which reported a median annual wage of $70,140. A Companion Animal Science or Agricultural Animal Science degree can prepare you for it, depending on whether you’re drawn to companion animals or livestock.
Conservation Scientist
Conservation scientists and officers protect wildlife habitats and natural resources, which can mean sampling soil and water for contamination, monitoring land use, or enforcing hunting and fishing regulations as a game warden. If you want your research to translate directly into protected land and healthier ecosystems, this is where that plays out.
Conservation scientists earned a median annual wage of $73,920 as of 2025, with 4% employment growth projected through 2035. A Wildlife Conservation degree is the most direct path into the field.
Marine Biologist
Marine biologists study fish, marine mammals, and other ocean life, often splitting their time between fieldwork on research vessels or reefs and lab work analyzing samples and data on shore. You might focus on a single species for years, or spend your career studying broader questions about how ocean ecosystems are changing.
Marine biology roles fall within the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ broader category of zoologists and wildlife biologists, with a median annual wage of $76,780 as of May 2025. A Marine Biology and Sustainable Aquaculture degree is built specifically for this path.
Animal Care Specialist
Animal care specialists work directly with animals day-to-day, training, feeding, and monitoring their health in settings ranging from zoos and kennels to shelters and research facilities. It’s a role where you’re on your feet and working closely with animals most of the day, and entry-level positions typically only require a high school diploma.
A bachelor’s degree, though, opens the door to specialist and supervisory positions with more responsibility and better pay. Animal caretakers earned a median annual wage of $35,530 as of 2025, with employment projected to grow 11% through 2035, much faster than average, but that’s just the entry point. With a degree and experience, this path can lead to director-level roles like zoo director, humane society executive director, or wildlife sanctuary director. BLS tracks these under broader categories: general and operations managers earned a median annual wage of $101,280 in 2023, agricultural managers earned $83,770, and natural sciences managers earned $157,740. An Animal Health and Behavior or Companion Animal Science degree can prepare you to move from entry-level care into a specialist or director-level role.
Build a Career With Animals at Unity Environmental University
Whichever direction pulls you, from a veterinary clinic to a wildlife refuge to a research vessel, the interests that brought you this far are a good guide to the degree that fits. Career and curiosity tend to grow together, so the best next step is usually the one that lets you keep exploring both.
At Unity, our animal-focused programs are built by people who have worked in the field themselves, and they’re structured around remote learning designed for students who are already working or managing other responsibilities. We’re ranked in the Top 1% in the U.S. for social mobility, reflecting Unity’s focus on affordable, accessible tuition and a quality education that leads to higher-paying careers.
Request information about our animal science degree programs, and we will help you match a program to your goals and your life.
