I've heard them called flamingos.
Things people do that irritate you when you go to the zoo? #2
- Thread starter birdsandbats
- Start date
I went to the San Francisco Zoo on the 31st and I heart at least 3 inaccurate taxonomic statements:
- I heard an older man said the greater kudu were deer. Then a little boy, likely his grandson, "corrected" by telling him, "Actually they're Nubian ibex."
- I heard someone called François’ langurs lemurs.
- And surprise, surprise, I heard someone call the chimps monkeys.
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Ignorant people don't like being corrected by....anybody.
You do have to be careful in today's hairtrigger climate, but I wouldn't worry about correcting people gently at the zoo.
You do have to be careful in today's hairtrigger climate, but I wouldn't worry about correcting people gently at the zoo.
Also, these cases weren't actually at a zoo but rather at my school, but they're still irritating:
- Some classmates told me sharks are dinosaurs.
- One person argued that manta rays were mammals.
- One girl told me that she thought two-horned rhinos were fictional.
I had a teacher once who told us that sharks aren't fish, penguins could be mammals, and that moose weren't deer and I was stupid for thinking that. He was the biology/field biology/marine biology/environmental science teacher at that school. Good times...
~Thylo
~Thylo
I also had a professor once who asked if anyone knew what the other kind of monotreme other than the Platypus was. I confidently answered echidna, to which he responded "what's an echidna? No, the answer is the spiny anteater" and then he put up a Wikipedia photo for an echidna. I am told that the exact same conversation nearly word for word took place between him and my brother exactly one year later.
~Thylo
Well technically you're both right...
pterosaur as dinosaur isn't all that bad. Not like watching Outbreak and
seeing white faced capuchins come from Africa!
seeing white faced capuchins come from Africa!
Blasphemy!
In Night at the Museum (a very funny movie, by the way) a Tufted Capuchin and a Common Boa are both found in the Hall of African Mammals.
Something similar happened to my friend who is studying the same degree as I am. They had a class called "Welfare of zoo animals" and their teacher mistaken flamingo/pelican and rhino/hippo... our university never ceases to amaze me.
That always bugged me as a kid. It also bugged me that they put an ostrich in the Hall of African Mammals.
As a side note, it also really annoyed me when I finally visited the AMNH properly and realized that it looks absolutely nothing like what it does in the movie (same with the Smithsonian).
~Thylo
Kakapo
Well-Known Member
Kinda the contrary for me, tough I never visited it (maybe I will soon!), but what bugged me always is that in the movie appears a place that looks absolutely nothing like a Natural History Museum (where most of its content is unrelated with natural history...)
Howso? Prehistoric animals, various taxidermy specimens, and human history exhibits are all present at the museum.
~Thylo
Kakapo
Well-Known Member
The movie basically highlights just human history, with only very few hints of natural history (a tyrannosaur and a monkey, almost nothing more). While a number of natural history museums that I've visited have one or various sections about human history (that I almost always skip in my visit), most of the museums visited only have natural history things (for that they're called natural history museums), or only a minor component of human history, much less in proportion than shown in the movie.
Most "natural history" museums I have visited have an equal mix of both.
Ah, annoying zoological visitors.
One time when I was a young lungfish fry, I was at the Adventure Aquarium, wandering around from the Caribbean exhibit to the main tank (Ocean Realm, an open ocean tank). Anyway, I'm walking down the hall from that one exhibit to the next, a sound approaches behind me. A rumbling, like a herd of wildebeest running from a dust storm. I didn't even have time to look around, I just jumped to the side of the hall where they have these faux stairs for resting (not sure if they're still there). Anyway, I get a glimpse at the perpetrator (or should I say perpetrators) A young adult camp group wearing piss yellow shirts stampeding down the hall, not even walking like human beings towards Ocean Realm. I thought I had just evaded death that day.
Good aquarium tho 10/10 would aquarium again.
One time when I was a young lungfish fry, I was at the Adventure Aquarium, wandering around from the Caribbean exhibit to the main tank (Ocean Realm, an open ocean tank). Anyway, I'm walking down the hall from that one exhibit to the next, a sound approaches behind me. A rumbling, like a herd of wildebeest running from a dust storm. I didn't even have time to look around, I just jumped to the side of the hall where they have these faux stairs for resting (not sure if they're still there). Anyway, I get a glimpse at the perpetrator (or should I say perpetrators) A young adult camp group wearing piss yellow shirts stampeding down the hall, not even walking like human beings towards Ocean Realm. I thought I had just evaded death that day.
Good aquarium tho 10/10 would aquarium again.
I'm used to (but still immensely annoyed by) people making noises at the animals to get their attention, but the animals have heard it all before so they rarely if ever react. Yesterday was the first instance I've seen of someone using their phone to play the species' vocalisations at them, in this case the African Hunting Dogs. The man with the phone tried for ages, but thankfully the dogs paid him no attention and he went away. I'm just hoping this isn't the start of a worrying new trend...