What do zoos need to improve for visitors?

Neil chace said:
I've been to a small number of zoos in the US with both English and Spanish signage, and I agree that it's certainly a great, inclusive step that should be taken in diverse areas. Mystic Aquarium stuck out as being especially good with having bilingual signs.
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I only remember seeing it at Queens (not to say other zoos I’ve been to in the Is don’t have them, I just remembered Queens) and I thought it was pretty neat.


Jurek7 said:
In Europe this is quite common in zoos near country borders and in touristic places.
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Ah but here’s the thing. I brought up large diasporas because when I went around Europe last year, I never saw any signs or maps in Turkish in any of the zoos I have visited. Now I can guess why this probably isn’t considered essential or not worth investing into, such as that animal nomen culture isn’t well developed in Turkey* which would make translations much more difficult. But I argue that zoos in European cities with a big Turkish population should at least try to acknowledge them and try to engage with them.

*I checked a few “basic” animals on two different Turkish-English dictionaries and Wikipedia before checking the dictionary of the Turkish Language Association only for them to not recognize the words.
 
PossumRoach said:
I brought up large diasporas because when I went around Europe last year, I never saw any signs or maps in Turkish in any of the zoos I have visited.
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Turkish and different Arab diasporas in Europe don´t visit zoos as frequently as locals. They rather prefer family outing with barbeque somewhere in nature - this was result of some German survey I have read maybe 15 years ago.

For similar reason you probably wont find signage in Roma (gypsy) languages in any European zoo - this minority is wastly underrepresented in zoo crowd compared to their share in total population.
 
When we went to Krefeld Zoo (Germany), I did think it was "odd" to find the names in Japanese on the signs.
Not being from Germany myself, I don't know how big the Japanese population is over there, but I guess it just stood out.

Zie-Zoo (Netherlands) have names in Polish on the signs.
 
Jana said:
Turkish and different Arab diasporas in Europe don´t visit zoos as frequently as locals. They rather prefer family outing with barbeque somewhere in nature - this was result of some German survey I have read maybe 15 years ago.
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As a Turk myself I am not surprised to hear that Turks are still uninterested towards animals even when they live in countries that are a treasure trove of zoos compared to the “memleket”. I also understand that most individuals from the newer generation of Turks might know their host language unlike their ancestors who may be more insular. But on my visits last year I did hear Turkish dialogue on many of the larger zoos I visited. So there may or may not have been changes in the last 15 years. If education is one of the goals of a modern zoo then I argue that the zoo should do its best to acknowledge local communities and reach out to them rather than not trying at all. But then again I understand that zoos do have bigger fish to fry so I understand why they wouldn’t invest in signs with other languages.
 
Jana said:
Turkish and different Arab diasporas in Europe don´t visit zoos as frequently as locals. They rather prefer family outing with barbeque somewhere in nature - this was result of some German survey I have read maybe 15 years ago.

For similar reason you probably wont find signage in Roma (gypsy) languages in any European zoo - this minority is wastly underrepresented in zoo crowd compared to their share in total population.
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To add to these correct observations: I'm not sure @PossumRoach whether you are aware of the political conflict potential of such actions. Many locals already have problems with foreign lettering on shops in their countries and see this as a sign of ethnic and political alienation.
"Funny" enough, it's the very same situation in Turkey:
Police in Turkiye rip down signs with Arabic script on them
Maybe Turkish zoos should install signs in Arabian or Kurdish to reach out to those communities?
 
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PossumRoach said:
As a Turk myself I am not surprised to hear that Turks are still uninterested towards animals
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It's not just zoos; Turks (as well as Arabs, Subsaharan Africans, Afghans, Pakistani etc) in Europe are remarkably absent from institutions like museums, art galleries, libraries, theaters etc. Or sports except for football, wrestling and certain martial arts. Said institutions and sport associations are reaching out, but the results haven't been all too remarkable.
 
Batto said:
It's not just zoos; Turks (as well as Arabs, Subsaharan Africans, Afghans, Pakistani etc) in Europe are remarkably absent from institutions like museums, art galleries, libraries, theaters etc. Or sports except for football, wrestling and certain martial arts. Said institutions and sport associations are reaching out, but the results haven't been all too remarkable.
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Might this be because they seem to be white enclaves that, when they try to reach out, do it in what might look like a post colonial way?
 
Batto said:
It's not just zoos; Turks (as well as Arabs, Subsaharan Africans, Afghans, Pakistani etc) in Europe are remarkably absent from institutions like museums, art galleries, libraries, theaters etc. Or sports except for football, wrestling and certain martial arts. Said institutions and sport associations are reaching out, but the results haven't been all too remarkable.
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I am aware that Turks in Europe (along with the other groups you mentioned) were insular but I never knew that Europeans were trying to reach out to them.
 
One example of opposite development.

Prague zoo signs nowadays operate in only 2 languages - Czech and English. However it used to be different. Species names on signs used to be in 5 (6?) languages in early 1990s - Czech, English, German, Italian and Russian, and maybe French (i´m unsure on the last one now). Italian was dropped very soon, German was dropped around 15 years ago, and Russian survived till circa 7 years ago. (if somebody has better memory and can correct me on the timeline, feel free to do so).

Over time, composition of zoo crowd changed a lot, but counter-intuitively to development of zoo signage. In early 1990s we had close to zero immigrants (iron curtain yay) while foreign tourists were counted in thousands. To hear anything other than Czech/Slovak in the zoo used to be super rare. Today, 1/3 of Prague residents are first generation immigrants and the city gets 7 mio foreign tourists annualy. Most numerous single group of tourists are Germans. Among legal immigrants dominate western Ukrainians (they predate recent refugee vawe) that are usually bilingual Ukr-Rus and second biggest group are Russians proper. The current zoo signage thus doesnt support either of those 3 large and important visitor groups.
 
Probably unsurprisingly, bilingual signage appears to be almost completely non existent in the UK with all signage here being only in English. The only place I can think of with bilingual signage is Welsh Mountain Zoo which of course has Welsh signage.
 
I'm living in the Midwestern US - an area with very, very few people who don't speak English, and as such I almost never see zoos have signs in any other language. Henry Vilas is the only zoo in the Midwest I've visited with any signs in other languages - some animal signage in Spanish and some interpretative signage in Ho-Chunk.

Given the high Hmong population in Minnesota and Wisconsin I've always been surprised I've never seen zoo signage in that language - certainly Hmong signage is not uncommon here outside of a zoo setting.

The most variety of languages I've ever seen in a zoo was DAK. While there was no signage in any language other than English or Spanish, maps were offered in nearly a dozen different languages.
 
birdsandbats said:
I'm living in the Midwestern US - an area with very, very few people who don't speak English, and as such I almost never see zoos have signs in any other language. Henry Vilas is the only zoo in the Midwest I've visited with any signs in other languages - some animal signage in Spanish and some interpretative signage in Ho-Chunk.

Given the high Hmong population in Minnesota and Wisconsin I've always been surprised I've never seen zoo signage in that language - certainly Hmong signage is not uncommon here outside of a zoo setting.

The most variety of languages I've ever seen in a zoo was DAK. While there was no signage in any language other than English or Spanish, maps were offered in nearly a dozen different languages.
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A little amendment to this, I do now recall that Cincinnati has some Spanish interpretative signage in the P&G Discovery Center. This is a very out-of-the way part of the zoo that most visitors skip over (there's only one animal species there), and the Spanish is more for theming reasons that accessibility ones.
 
FBBird said:
Might this be because they seem to be white enclaves that, when they try to reach out, do it in what might look like a post colonial way?
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Given that Austria or Switzerland never had colonies in said countries (and Germany only had few African colonies for only a limited time), I don't think that this is a valid explaination, or rather, excuse. And a oversimplified "white" vs. "non-white" scenario based on American identity politics concepts does not do justice to the complexity and history of ethnic conflicts in Europe.
At the risk of being censored by an over-zealous moderator, I suspect that the observed differences are due to the different value placed on knowledge, knowledge transfer and learning in different cultural contexts and ethnic groups.
 
Jurek7 said:
But zoos often avoid it - it can make a sensation if the animal falls ill, is exported or dies, and (in their mind) it distracts from the conservation message. But it would help raising funds for a new exhibit for named, known animals.
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The example of "Marius" or "Harambe" illustrate how naming an individual specimen in a zoo can backfire. The more information you share publicly, the more the anti-zoo lobby and associated media outlets can use against you. Furthermore, keeping everything up to date is time-consuming - and breeds a kind of expectation among certain visitors that can be quite stressful for the zoo staff.
Nevertheless, most of our specimens at WdG have names based on their individual personality - which helps to make visitors appreciate them more as individuals.
 
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