Things people do that irritate you when you go to the zoo? #2

Great Argus said:
Roughly 90% of the public will not read a sign even if they're standing next to it. They're far more likely however to ask someone that's working with the animal or presumed to be coming from working with the animal. Or they'll just pin it to the closest thing they know.
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I always presumed that they ignored the signs plainly because they took pride in themselves to thought they were perfectly well read without surveying the signs, and they come not knowing anything, expecting themselves to know everything.
Huh, that's ironic.
Note that this isn't one and all, but this could be a contributing factor.
 
CheeseChameleon1945 said:
I always presumed that they ignored the signs plainly because they took pride in themselves to thought they were perfectly well read without surveying the signs, and they come not knowing anything, expecting themselves to know everything.
Huh, that's ironic.
Note that this isn't one and all, but this could be a contributing factor.
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This is one of the biggest reasons they don't read the signs, for sure. I've seen this many many times where somebody's pretending to be a know it all and as you overhear them they're actually quite wrong. :p
 
Bisonfan said:
i hate it when people don't know what kind of animal it is especially when there is a sign that has the name, eg. once someone thought an Indian rhinoceros was a hippopotamus.
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Indian Rhino and Hippo is nowhere near as bad of a mistake as some I've heard. Think about it, both are heavy-bodied, similar colored mammals with a similar enough look to them, and Indian Rhinos do like to swim, something a lot of people don't associate Rhinos with. Furthermore, Indian Rhinos don't exactly look perfectly like the African Rhinos people are used to seeing. And anyways, I've heard people say much more bizarre mos-identifications, like calling a sulcata tortoise a kitty, calling an emu a big duck, calling a red panda a lemur, calling a sloth bear an anteater, calling a leopard a tiger, calling kangaroos dogs, calling a lemur a fox, and many more, equally bizarre misidentifications. Your rhino/hippo example at least has an understandable line of reasoning as to how they came to their conclusion.
 
I've heard this happen many times. . . . . . .

Pictures this: Minnesota zoo- Your around 2 feet away from the sign in the Jungle that talks about Gibbons Not being monkeys. . .

Full-grown (I'd say 30-40-ish year old) woman-

"Look kids, It's the Monkeys! Yep, there monkeys! You can always tell because they Swing in the Trees. Look at them go!"
2xxg4s.jpg


(Or she said something along the Lines of that)
 
CheeseChameleon1945 said:
I've heard this happen many times. . . . . . .

Pictures this: Minnesota zoo- Your around 2 feet away from the sign in the Jungle that talks about Gibbons Not being monkeys. . .

Full-grown (I'd say 30-40-ish year old) woman-

"Look kids, It's the Monkeys! Yep, there monkeys! You can always tell because they Swing in the Trees. Look at them go!"
2xxg4s.jpg


(Or she said something along the Lines of that)
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Of course, gibbons are, strictly speaking, monkeys in cladistic terms. Apes such as them are more closely related to Old World monkeys than New World monkeys are.
 
Fair enough, didn't know that. Anyways I doubt that the Woman also knew anything about what you stated above so my point still stands.
(They- are still classified as Old world apes-Hominoidea though, right?)
 
Neil chace said:
Indian Rhino and Hippo is nowhere near as bad of a mistake as some I've heard. Think about it, both are heavy-bodied, similar colored mammals with a similar enough look to them, and Indian Rhinos do like to swim, something a lot of people don't associate Rhinos with. Furthermore, Indian Rhinos don't exactly look perfectly like the African Rhinos people are used to seeing. And anyways, I've heard people say much more bizarre mos-identifications, like calling a sulcata tortoise a kitty, calling an emu a big duck, calling a red panda a lemur, calling a sloth bear an anteater, calling a leopard a tiger, calling kangaroos dogs, calling a lemur a fox, and many more, equally bizarre misidentifications. Your rhino/hippo example at least has an understandable line of reasoning as to how they came to their conclusion.
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I feel like this could be an entire thread.
CheeseChameleon1945 said:
I've heard this happen many times. . . . . . .

Pictures this: Minnesota zoo- Your around 2 feet away from the sign in the Jungle that talks about Gibbons Not being monkeys. . .

Full-grown (I'd say 30-40-ish year old) woman-

"Look kids, It's the Monkeys! Yep, there monkeys! You can always tell because they Swing in the Trees. Look at them go!"
2xxg4s.jpg


(Or she said something along the Lines of that)
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Basically the exact same thing happened to me at the Nashville Zoo this summer, except it was a little girl who was 7-10 years old, still very silly.
 
ok sure people dont read the sign. But ask yourself, when you walk into an aquarium with tank as big as Georgia's, do you read all the sign there? Is the sign really sufficient? or how about a huge walk through aviary? How about in an art museum? Do you understand all the things written in the sign? People dont read sign not because they're ignorant, but because they aren't interested in absolutely everything. Also people want to enjoy themself in zoos not reading boring facts, and thats understandable.
 
aardvark250 said:
ok sure people dont read the sign. But ask yourself, when you walk into an aquarium with tank as big as Georgia's, do you read all the sign there? Is the sign really sufficient? or how about a huge walk through aviary? How about in an art museum? Do you understand all the things written in the sign? People dont read sign not because they're ignorant, but because they aren't interested in absolutely everything. Also people want to enjoy themself in zoos not reading boring facts, and thats understandable.
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yes but i was thinking more like a single specie exhibit.
 
aardvark250 said:
But ask yourself, when you walk into an aquarium with tank as big as Georgia's, do you read all the sign there? Is the sign really sufficient?
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No, and that's a particularly good case where people often skip the signs entirely. Most often not everything is signed anyways. Aquariums usually only have a third to half of their species signed at best, simply because they have so many. And because the average person doesn't care about what species all the tiny fish and weird invertebrates are.

aardvark250 said:
or how about a huge walk through aviary?
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That's where you take photos of the signs and figure things out later if need be. That's what I did for Owens and Scripps in San Diego, quick look to figure out what I should be looking for, and then photograph it for later reference. :p
 
aardvark250 said:
ok sure people dont read the sign. But ask yourself, when you walk into an aquarium with tank as big as Georgia's, do you read all the sign there? Is the sign really sufficient? or how about a huge walk through aviary? How about in an art museum? Do you understand all the things written in the sign? People dont read sign not because they're ignorant, but because they aren't interested in absolutely everything. Also people want to enjoy themself in zoos not reading boring facts, and thats understandable.
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That's a great argument, I totally understand. However my example was more regarding ignorance and dismissal of information, the Gibbon signage isn't exactly a walk through aviary or a giant Fish tank at Georgia or Monterey bay, This was basically you having a sign dangled in front of your face that says, Mud is a liquid not a solid, and you observing the Mud and saying, Mhm, That-That I say is a solid Buckaroo, No argument to that.
Okay maybe a silly example but that's where I was trying to get at, But man, I didn't think about your argument. Nice stuff.
 
CheeseChameleon1945 said:
That's a great argument, I totally understand. However my example was more regarding ignorance and dismissal of information, the Gibbon signage isn't exactly a walk through aviary or a giant Fish tank at Georgia or Monterey bay, This was basically you having a sign dangled in front of your face that says, Mud is a liquid not a solid, and you observing the Mud and saying, Mhm, That-That I say is a solid Buckaroo, No argument to that.
Okay maybe a silly example but that's where I was trying to get at, But man, I didn't think about your argument. Nice stuff.
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People don't know gibbons aren't monkeys. We're taught from infants that swinging things in trees are monkeys, which should be considered a synonym for primate. Unless someone's really into animals, they don't learn that the latter isn't true, or that gibbons only fit into that and not the former. Signs rarely specify that they aren't monkeys.

Mud *is* usually considered a solid, or a non-Newtonian fluid, unless it's extremely watery. Mud is never considered a regular liquid.
 
TinoPup said:
We're taught from infants that swinging things in trees are monkeys, which should be considered a synonym for primate.
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My kids aren’t. They know the difference between a Siamang and a monkey; they know that African wild dogs could rip a child to pieces in seconds; and they know a Grant’s zebra is not a horsey. :D
 
Zoofan15 said:
My kids aren’t. They know the difference between a Siamang and a monkey; they know that African wild dogs could rip a child to pieces in seconds; and they know a Grant’s zebra is not a horsey. :D
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The sentence after what you quoted begins with "Unless someone's really into animals"
 
TinoPup said:
The sentence after what you quoted begins with "Unless someone's really into animals"
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None of them are overly into animals, yet they still know more than what your generalisation of the human population implied they should. Thanks to YouTube and online media, kids are far more aware of the natural world than previous generations.
 
Zoofan15 said:
None of them are overly into animals, yet they still know more than what your generalisation of the human population implied they should. Thanks to YouTube and online media, kids are far more aware of the natural world than previous generations.
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Because they have a parent who cares about animals. Is that not obvious?
 
TinoPup said:
Because they have a parent who cares about animals. Is that not obvious?
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Not to you as you said, “People don't know gibbons aren't monkeys. We're taught from infants that swinging things in trees are monkeys, which should be considered a synonym for primate.”

There’s thousands across the world that are taught correct terms from infants.
 
Zoofan15 said:
My kids aren’t. They know the difference between a Siamang and a monkey; they know that African wild dogs could rip a child to pieces in seconds; and they know a Grant’s zebra is not a horsey. :D
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Sorry to break to truth but a huge majority of children and adults don't know what's a Siamang(sEe-A-mANg), or how they are gibbons and not monkeys.
 
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