Things people do that irritate you when you go to the zoo?

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Batto said:
Visitor in front of the enclosure, with utter conviction: "This [insert live animal specimen] isn't real!"

Today, I had my first of this kind of visitor at the "Welt der Gifte", though I've encountered them at other institutes. While I was calmly explaining that no, the snake was very much alive and that it makes no sense (at least to me) to display an artificial animal in a well-furbished tank, the European horned viper snapped at her behind the glass.

That'll do snake; that'll do.
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Ha! That'll teach her!
Yeah, most of these comments are adressed at reptiles, amphibians and insects, though any animal that stays still enough becomes a suspect. Worse yet is the conspiracists who say they're all animatronics...
 
JigerofLemuria said:
Worse yet is the conspiracists who say they're all animatronics...
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fierce-creatures-panda.jpg
 
blospz said:
I saw something today that infuriated me beyond belief, but I was just too shocked and outraged to say or do anything. At the Buffalo Zoo, the tamandua was sleeping on a tree limb that touch the mesh around the enclosure. In other words, he was like 6 feet away from me and I was actually curious if someone to reach out and touch him. But I knew better and didn't want to attempt it. Well, I found out the answer. The poor tamandua was sleeping and an Amish family walked up and stared at him. One of the girls took the tree branch, that you have to stand under to get up close, and reached it out to touch the tamandua. I was irritated by this, but told myself I wouldn't say anything unless she kept doing or I saw physical harm to the tamandua. But then her brother decided to reach out his arm and poke the tamandua a few times in the stomach with his Gatorade bottle. I was completely shocked. Inside me I heard a voice saying, "Tell him, EXCUSE ME DON'T POKE THE ANIMAL! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" But no words came out. Just an icy glare that his sister noticed as she looked over at me. I honestly think if he did this one more time I would have completely lost it. I just feel ashamed I didn't do or say anything. I stayed in the area until they left to supervise their every move. The tamandua, who sat up when provoked, eventually laid back down and went back to sleep. Do tamanduas spray when startled? I know they can give off an odor, but don't know all the facts on their anatomy. I was really hoping that would have happened to backfire on these idiots, but no such luck. What would you all do in a situation like this?
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My biggest surprise with this is that you saw Amish people visiting the zoo and one had a plastic drink bottle.
 
Not reading signs. My zoo, Brookfield, has amazing signs on every exhibit with engaging graphics and conservation messages in addition to information about the animals in each enclosure, and it seems like very few read them at all.

Yesterday I was in the Australia house, viewing the echidnas. I was there for ten minutes and at least that many kids asked what they were and the adults all said either porcupines or hedgehogs. One adult wondered where they lived... in the *Australia House* exhibit. :(
 
Batto said:
Visitor in front of the enclosure, with utter conviction: "This [insert live animal specimen] isn't real!"

Today, I had my first of this kind of visitor at the "Welt der Gifte", though I've encountered them at other institutes. While I was calmly explaining that no, the snake was very much alive and that it makes no sense (at least to me) to display an artificial animal in a well-furbished tank, the European horned viper snapped at her behind the glass.

That'll do snake; that'll do.
Click to expand...

I think this is a form of milestone for any zoo to have so congrats on that.
In seriousness I think this does highlight a beneficial aspect to having a tour guide instead of visitors freely walking around- misconceptions can be cleared up easily and these kinds of mistakes can be fixed.
 
People who insist reptiles aren't "real animals", or say birds and reptiles are a waste of time when they can see "bigger stuff". If you go to a zoo to only see "bigger stuff", what's the point? That means you end up ignoring over half of the collection.
 
Shellheart said:
People who insist reptiles aren't "real animals", or say birds and reptiles are a waste of time when they can see "bigger stuff". If you go to a zoo to only see "bigger stuff", what's the point? That means you end up ignoring over half of the collection.
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Yeah, I read up a few bad reviews of small urban zoos, like London Zoo and the Menagerie des Plantes based on that argument. Bunch of dumbasses...
 
Sheather said:
I go to the zoo predominately to see the small mammal and bird collections. Big ABC stock isall well and good but the smaller animals tend to be much more active.
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And usually more interesting! ;)
Again, I have nothing against large animals, I'm a huge fans of big cats, hyenas, tapirs, rhinos and crocodilians, for example, but at the same time, you usually get more variety with smaller critters, and lots of them are quite obscure and unusual. Very few people know what a potto, a northern Luzon cloud rat, a kinkajou, a mouse bird or a tuatara are, for example.
 
Around a month ago when I was at the San Diego Safari Park, I witnessed something that I thought I'd never see. I was in the Nairobi Lagoon section and was admiring a pair of Egyptian Geese. Then, a little boy walks up behind one of the geese and kicks it! Luckily for the goose, the boy just grazed its leg and the goose jumped back out of reach.
 
TZDugong said:
Around a month ago when I was at the San Diego Safari Park, I witnessed something that I thought I'd never see. I was in the Nairobi Lagoon section and was admiring a pair of Egyptian Geese. Then, a little boy walks up behind one of the geese and kicks it! Luckily for the goose, the boy just grazed its leg and the goose jumped back out of reach.
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Vile. I really can’t stand appallingly behaved children and their pathetically useless parents.
 
beccasunbear said:
I highly doubt that - by the age of 4 or 5, children should already know the basic difference between the right and wrong, unless they have been very poorly brought up.
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You're damn right about that! We can't let kids get away with blue murder, as it often happens. Heck, if my kids did that, they'd be super-grounded!
 
I hate it when someone is in a walk-through butterfly house and they pick up a butterfly by the wings. :mad:
 
On Sunday I saw two things that annoyed me when I was at Chester.

Someone attempting to feed a tangerine to a camel. And people using iPads to take photos.

I find it hilarious how the general public complained about having big animals in city zoos and now they complain there is nothing to see.
 
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