One animal wrangler believes there won't be a need for his professional within 20 years due to advances in technology.
Eddie Drew has been supplying creatures great and small for films and TV shows for 20 years.
He was speaking to the 'Ask Me Anything' series on Lunchtime Live, which sees people come into studio and answer your questions every Friday.
Eddie said he has had a large and varying career.
"The first film I did was Braveheart, I was working for somebody," he said.
"It was a long day, one of our sheep that we were wrangling had got away so I decided instead of trying to drag it I put it up on my shoulders.
"Mel Gibson decided, 'This looks great on camera' so I spent the whole day with this full-grown sheep straddled over my shoulders take after take after take.
"It was a nightmare, so it was a learning curve that day."
On the kinds of animals he's worked with, Eddie said they have come in all shapes and sizes.
"Everything from cockroaches to rats, mice, snakes, parrots, sheep, wild boar, lemurs, monkeys," he said.
"We'd 2,000 [cockroaches] out in the beginning of the year, a film called Sand and Stones with Nicholas Cage, and we used to have to bring them everyday on set with us.
"We had to acclimatise a van with special heat and stuff; they used about 300 of them.
"They all went back to a source down in Cork where they're used for reptiles for a food source."
Eddie Drew and Soot with Lunchtime Live host Mairead Ronan. Image: NewstalkEddie said there are some animals that surprisingly make great pets.
"I sell birds for the last 25 years, anything ranging from budgies to parrots," he said.
"Guinea pigs, rabbits, pet rats - rats make brilliant pets, they're so clean [and] so intelligent.
"I would keep a lot of brown rats for film sets.
"I did Vikings: Valhalla for 10 years, there was always rats.
"We'd Penny Dreadful, we'd 150 rats on Penny Dreadful".
'A bond with the animals'
One listener asked Eddie what was the most difficult animal he'd ever worked with.
"Rats probably, in the volume of rats," he said.
"On the day we had a green screen where they wanted to superimpose something, we'd 150 rats.
"I knew all along they would never scurry across a road - which it was meant to portray - what happened was they just kept piling up and all sitting on top of each other.
"That was a bit of a challenge - but the rest of the animals, it's all down TLC and building up a respect and a bond with the animals."
How did it all start?
Another listener asked Eddie how it got into his line of work.
"In 1986 in Hurricane Charlie I started working with two old ladies out in Kilmacanogue, who were making a natural yogurt with 40 goats and seven or eight Kerry cows - all handmade," he said.
"The Miss Bakers, they were way ahead of their time, they were organic and homeopathic.
"I started working with them on a 9 to 5, I was only in my early 20s and I thought, 'Let me out of here'.
"They still had a horse-drawn pulling hay and stuff... then the next year I stayed a bit longer.
"They had ducks, they'd a pet monkey and sadly they passed away about seven or eight years after that.
"I was a lucky guy, I inherited the farm in Kilmacanogue of 40 acres.
"The worst part was I had to sell half to pay the inheritance tax because I wasn't related.
"I carried on the yogurt, but it was hard to compete with the big guys."
Eddie said that was the start of his love of animals.
Another listener asked whether Eddie if he believes computer-generated animals could replace real ones in films.
"Probably I'd say in 15, 18 years times there won't be a need for Eddie Drew or any animal wranglers," he said.
"CGI has got so good - it's a shame, but unfortunately that's the way it's going," he added.
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