Co-worker contradicts zookeeper attack report Failure to follow zoo policies blamed says it was a Malayan tapir.
Snowleopard's 2019 Road Trip: Netherlands, Belgium, France & Germany
- Thread starter snowleopard
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So my thoughts were correct...
Might be scarce in continental hotels - though I've encountered them here and there - but they are by no means unusual in people's homes; got a bathroom with a wall mounted fan for this purpose only metres away from me as I write!
Yep, I've definitely seen it a lot more in Germany than elsewhere on the continent - and dog-ownership overall seems a lot more common judging by the number of people with them on the streets.
Which is a mixed blessing when one is afraid of dogs
Andrew Swales
Well-Known Member
Setting aside zoo reviews for a moment, there are some other cultural differences that I'd like to comment on. I've mentioned numerous things over the course of this month-long Euro trek, such as paying for parking everywhere, smokers everywhere, a few comments on demographics, etc. I wouldn't view these 5 items necessarily as positive or negative (except for the smoking), as overall I keep thinking in my head that I generally prefer touring European zoos, but there are some items that keep cropping up time and time again.
- At Tierpark Hagenbeck I happened to stroll past the Lowland Tapir exhibit while a keeper talk was going on. Of course, this being Hagenbeck, the keeper was in there and hand-feeding a very large tapir and slapping it on the back and rump in a casual manner. I know that tons of keepers do go in with tapirs and this happened at a zoo where various keepers spend hours inside the elephant paddock, but at one point many years ago a keeper at the Oklahoma City Zoo lost one of her arms to a tapir! Anyway, there were 3 people standing there smoking with their kids while the man was going on about tapirs and nothing was said. It really was like being at a zoo in some bygone era. The tobacco packages in convenience stores are covered with ghastly-looking photos of people with cancer, or other awful images, and yet people must be strongly addicted to continue the habit. In the UK we are MUCH closer to the US than to Erope on this one.
- Pumping gas in Europe is nice because I pull up and immediately start pumping. In British Columbia, zero gas stations allow you to do that as it's a Provincial law and might even be a Federal law. Customers have to pre-pay for the gas, usually by just swiping their credit card through the machine or else going inside the building. I've only had to do that on a few occasions, with pre-payment just not a thing at most places in Europe. In Canada it is a harsh law because there were people getting gas and then dashing off without paying on a regular occasion. Those damn Moose hunters! Occasional petrol stations locally in the UK have pre-payment card systems which automatically cut off the supply when the pre-paid amount has been reached. These are very rare and most are as you describe for Europe, ie pay after delivery.
- I've continued to get a hotel every single night, always through booking.com and I've had a few for 40 Euros to 50 Euros (which is $60-70 Canadian per night). Of the 25 different hotels that I'll end up staying at on this trip, perhaps only two have had air-conditioning, which I've mentioned in the past. It's a rarity in Europe. In the UK we only usually have two warm days and then it rains again, so investment in air-conditioners Also, ceiling fans in the bathrooms scarcely exist, with only two or three having those. Again, this is simply a cultural difference as in North America just about every bathroom/toilet/lavatory/restroom has a little ceiling fan that turns on with the light or you turn on separately so that when you shower the steam from the water doesn't fog up the mirror. In Europe, if someone goes to the toilet or uses the shower there is no little ceiling fan to take away odours or steam. It's a valuable amenity that is missed in Europe. I thought these were a Building-Regulations requirement in the UK, certainly all of our house bath-rooms have them.
- Dogs in zoos...what is with the freaking dogs in zoos? Name any zoo in the entire United States or Canada, and it would be intriguing to find out if more than 2% allow dogs in zoos. When I was at Duisburg it was like a breeding convention or dog show, with dogs being walked on leashes everywhere, dogs taking dumps on the visitor pathway and then the owner has to pull out a plastic baggie (but does he or she really get all of the poo off the trail?) and it's all rather disgusting. We have had the discussion in this forum before, but in our case at least dogs are banned from the zoo site along with all other non-zoo animals, under an EU Directive Dogs are generally well-behaved in zoos but they are annoying, sometimes bark at the zoo animals and it's obviously a cultural item that is far more prevalent in Germany than it was in either the Netherlands or Belgium. If any of you Europeans have a big American zoo trip then you might see a handful of guide dogs (for the blind) in U.S. zoos and that's it. There will be no one walking a dog with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth.
- The 5th and final item for today's agenda is tattoos. In the UK, much behaviour is let by the media, both social and TV. TV companies have a lot of airtime to fill and cheaply made programmes are very attractive to them. First it was house make-over shows, then garden make-over shows, then BigBrother and all the spin offs. Very cheap TV - as it filmable with a small crew, in a closed setting not far from the studio - and no need to send David Attenborough to New Guinea for months and months on end. The latest in the genre is the tattoo make-over show; and this feeds through to the behaviour of its viewers. Presumably its popularity will wane, as it always has - even if its legacy is a little more permanent, and might not age too well... I like tattoos and have tattoos myself, but they are not visible and if I didn't say anything no one reading this would ever know. My gut feeling is that most zoo nerds, for whatever reason, do not have multiple tattoos. However, tattoos are a MAJOR thing in Germany, with an endless stream of people walking past me with entire sleeves with tattoos, lots of piercings, etc., and this is not confined to young, 'goth' folks. Older, middle-aged people around my age (I'm 43) have loads of visible tattoos on all different body parts, including their necks and hands. I tried to look up some statistics via Google, but from anecdotal evidence tattoos are a huge hit in Germany and I feel that there are likely millions upon millions of Germans with non-visible tattoos on top of what I see walking around zoos. It's a huge cultural thing in Germany to have tattoos and in some cases loads of them all over one's body. Intriguing!
The best thread on here at the moment...!
(Moderator note - see quoted text for further remarks)
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I've very slightly edited your post @Andrew Swales to make it clearer you have made remarks within the quoted text and weren't merely making a single remark on the thread as a whole 
as the quote is long enough this wasn't visible immediately.
as the quote is long enough this wasn't visible immediately.
Indeed; that would make sense - can't actually recall the last time I was in a private bathroom without one!
sooty mangabey
Well-Known Member
This gives a rather appalling image of how and when you read ZooChat - it is an image I am now trying to expunge from my brain!
Sat in my living room, back facing the wall, bathroom on other side of said wall!
Andrew Swales
Well-Known Member
Thank you TLDI've very slightly edited your post @Andrew Swales to make it clearer you have made remarks within the quoted text and weren't merely making a single remark on the thread as a whole
sooty mangabey
Well-Known Member
Congratulations on joining the “which one is better, Blijdorp or Burgers” banter
If we're talking which Dutch zoo, overall, is better - can we not throw Artis init the mix? I'd definitely take it over Blijdorp, and possibly over Arnhem....
This is undoubtedly true. But a big group of active larger-than-average rodents can be a great exhibit - it's just a pity that not enough zoos make the effort required.
Not so long ago, the only people who one might expect to have tattoos were sailors or convicts. Now, it's rare to find a professional footballer who is not fully inked up. The area where this crosses over into more ZC-related discussion, though, is in reptile keeping: it sees to be de rigueur for private reptile keepers to look not unlike a Championship centre back, with arms wholly covered.
Sat in my living room, back facing the wall, bathroom on other side of said wall!
Thank goodness for that!
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FunkyGibbon
Well-Known Member
I remember quite vividly the talk given by the keeper in the Xenartha House at Dortmund; a man man with so many piercings he was more armoured than the armadillo he was discussing!
As I've mentioned elsewhere on ZooChat, Artis (Amsterdam) is definitely my personal favourite Dutch zoo. (I'm not claiming it is objectively the best but it's certainly the one I most enjoy visiting.)
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Well, given that kind of omniscience, you'll surely find a way to make more zoos keep rare rodents.^^
It depends a bit on the reptiles: while I'm a rare exception of the rule for venomous snake keepers my age or younger to not sport any tattoos at all, this is more often the case among chelonia keepers, in particular tortoises.
sooty mangabey
Well-Known Member
I think you have slipped into talking about @sooty mangabey and not myself now
I'd argue that Antwerp is very much a zoo in which one could spend two (or more!) days without getting in any way bored. This isn't simply a matter of its size, or its quality, or the nature of its collection, or the nature of its exhibits, or the way in which the place is viewed, or its overall ambience - but, rather, a combination of all of these. Antwerp is a perfect coming together of these factors: although small in acreage, it is large in collection (unlike, say, Bristol); it is a zoo of the utmost quality (unlike, say, De Paay!); it has a lot of smaller species, or species that require patience to be viewed (unlike, say, the Yorkshire Wildlife Park); it has lots of houses, in which there are multiple displays (unlike, say, the average safari park); it invites random pottering, rather than demanding that a certain route be followed (unlike, say, Gelsenkirchen); and it has a fantastic ambience, with beautiful gardens, carefully looked-after grounds and the sense that even if this were just a park, without any animals, it would be a lovely place to be (unlike, say, London). There aren't many European zoos that hit all of these marks: Berlin, obviously, Amsterdam, maybe Cologne, maybe Basle. Frankfurt. Prague. Pilsen. Walsrode, of course. Then there are a number that hit several of the marks, if not all: Zurich, Wroclaw, even Hamerton or Warsaw or any other zoo that can happily eat up long stretches of time. I suppose it's the opposite of a Sealife Centre, or Valencia Bioparc, or Hannover....
I reckon that overall Artis is my second-favourite after Burgers, even if I think Blijdorp perhaps edges it out into third place where quality is concerned
much like yourself, I do have a strong soft spot for old city centre collections!A pretty good summary of precisely why I like Antwerp so much myself, I reckon
Did it really sound that arrogantly? That really wasn't my intention
I know that I still have much to learn, and I am so far not in a position to persuade curators around Europe to go the rodent way. But the basics of this issue (very well described by you) aren't really hard to understand, even for the general public, even less when you see it every day in work.
Add Wilhelma (Stuttgart) and Schonbrunn (Vienna) to this list and that's all my very favourite European zoos.
No worries - we're good!Did it really sound that arrogantly? That really wasn't my intention
As for dogs and hygiene: when it comes to potential infectious disease transfer in Germany, the pampered pet dogs are the least of your problems; it's rather your fellow humans you should worry about...
ANyhuis
Well-Known Member
My wife and I have been trying to help a young lady who has been in and out of prison constantly for the past 8 years. She's also very addicted to cigarettes (among other things). Whenever she is incarcerated, she is forcibly cold turkey taken off all of her addictions. But what drives my wife and I absolutely crazy is that within an hour of being released from prison, she always wants to smoke a cigarette right away! We just want to hit our heads against a wall!!!!! She's been freed from her nicotine addiction, and she is anxious to restart it. There are commercials on TV, featuring a longtime Hollywood actor (Ray Liotta), for a drug to help you break that addiction, and she so willingly goes back to it! Crazy!
I can no longer take you, nor Tim May, seriously
As much as I enjoy Artis and it’s quirky history, and as much that has been done on many of Artis’s eyesores in the last decade, the gap between the Blijdorp/Burgers duo and Artis is still colossal imo. Way too many eyesores remain; the Kerbert terraces, the mandrill junkyard, the asian black bear exhibit, the macaque UFO...