General Zoo Misconceptions

I always hear this when i'm visiting zoos.
For example: When i visited Skansen recently, a little girl watched the armadillo with her mom and her mom said: Is that a beaver??

Yeah, this is true. It's really strange that she can't see the difference between a beaver and an armadillo.
 
Last weekedn I was at the Sydney Aquarium and overheard an american tourist at the platypus enclosure. " the grow up to four feet and are one of the deadliest animals in the world" he says to his wife and children... mate and I laughed at him and walked away
 
actually jarkari, i think that may have been somewhere in the interps there, except about the amles spurs
 
a couple walking past the takin enclosure at Edinburgh zoo one says to the other "what are these" the other replies "oh........warthogs darling" and carry on there way, ah ignorance is bliss!
 
Chessington zoo's polar bears used to have the unfortunate soundtrack of the music from the zoo fairground to accompany their almost constant pacing behaviour, leading to many visitors exclaiming 'look, they're dancing to the music!'.

Sometimes parents obviously just want to lie to their kids to make it easier. On seeing dead rats strewn around a cat enclousure, I have heard parents say 'no sweetheart the mice are just sleeping.'
 
possibly the best Zoobeat thread ever.

My additions;

Why do people always assume that the animal they are looking at is a 'he'? This is particularly funny when a female chimp has on a grade 3 estrus.

I loved the tapir/panda thing, and relate to the one about people assuming you're about to feed the animals when you're walking around with an empty bucket.

Oh, and there's the one about 'the bit in the bird show when condor takes a two dollar coin from a child's hand'. The condor would probably take the whole child.

Oh yes, and the Siamang at Melbourne zoo being mistaken for orangutans and just about every other primate for the ones bright enough to realise that orangs are natural redheads. Perhaps signage would have helped...

Thank you, I'm here all week.
 
Hadley said:
Chessington zoo's polar bears used to have the unfortunate soundtrack of the music from the zoo fairground to accompany their almost constant pacing behaviour, leading to many visitors exclaiming 'look, they're dancing to the music!'.

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Click to expand...

I think that definately wins the title 'sickest' zoo misconception? :(
 
The fact they were called Bonnie and Clyde only egged on the anthropormorphism. I wonder if they are still at Zagreb zoo?
 
our most common one is people watching you fly a bird of prey and then coming over to you and asking if the bird comes back. So tempting to say 'no..each week I go out and get a new set of birds!!'
 
Evidence that zoo visitors are not an informed audience

Hi, I am John Regan and my business helps zoos around the world attract government grants and other outside funds.

In one case a zoo was turned down for a grant on environmental education on the basis that everyone visiting a zoo already knew lots about the natural world. Anyone who has worked in a zoo knows this is nonsense.

So I have started a list of the amazingly ignorant conments overheard at various zoos on my whatcouldzoosbe blog. Be grateful for additions. Here is the link: Accessing a ‘hard to reach’ audience: the unbelievable things visitors say at zoos « The “What Could Zoos Be…?” Forum.
 
If You think confusing a tapir with a Panda is odd, then check out this article:
Tapir

There are a lot of silly, stupid, highly ignorant, insulting, odd and funny things I have heard zoo audience say in zoos-and that will probably never change. Funny enough, the ignorance worldwide is pretty much the same, especially when it comes to animals. Other, more experienced zoo people have already long time ago complained about the public judging knowledge about biology and animals in particular as much less important than knowledge about cars, arts, sports, or the latest trend in fashion and music. Nevertheless, I'm optimistic about the future: I've witnessed kids skipping lions & elephants to run to the naked mole exhibit (Thanks Kim Possible!), I have seen a little girl dragging her mother to go to the okapis and a boy crying because he wasn't able to watch the keas any longer and I have heard youngsters correcting their parents's silly remarks. Whoever had this influence on those kids-thanks!

However, my best story about zoo misconception did not occur in a zoo, though: I happened to run across a private homepage where a very decent fellow had collected all the photos of his "journeys". One of his many adventures took him to Burger's Zoo (a nice Dutch zoo at Arnheim). There he met many exotic creatures, obviously all new to him. At first he seemed to have been eager to read the information signs, as he named most of the animals correctly. However, after a while he seemed to have become bored and skipped the reading altogether; the collared peccary became "some wild boar You will see in European forests", the coyote a wolf, the Desert Bighorn Sheep an ibex and so on and on. The funniest thing, however, was the final photo: it showed a Crowned pigeon in a rainforest exhibit. The description of the photo: "Suddenly, an ESB jumped out of the scrubs and ran into me". Well, I have heard about a lot of things happening in zoos-but I have never heard of someone being run over by an European Stud Book...;)
 
"Bats nest under water"

A lady at Chester Zoo was overheard seriously telling her kids that the bats they could see in the Twilight Zone exhibit nested under water in special pools( he exhbit contains a lagoon which actually houses catfish).

It eventually transpired that she has misunderstood an interpretation sign that referred to "bats breeding pool doing well at Chester Zoo".

I am compiling a list of the bizarrely ignorant things visitors say at zoos on my blog Accessing a ‘hard to reach’ audience: the unbelievable things visitors say at zoos « The “What Could Zoos Be…?” Forum.

This is for a specific reason. Funder have actually turned zoos down for education programme funding on the basis that the zoo public are already very well informed. I need to compile evidence to counteract this
 
Well there's no shortage of evidence in this thread!

I loved reading the linked article from IZN about misidentifications of tapirs - it sounded like the guy had great fun gathering data. What's interesting is that mistaken identity can have so many sources: colouration/patterning, behaviour, size, features (snout, horns etc) and best of all, linguistic (i.e. tapir wallowing in pool looks a bit like a horse in the sea, therefore it must be a seahorse).
 
There was also a bat at Chester zoo roosting in the tunnel where the Blind cave fish are exhibited. I took some great pics and Video. I've also seen the Livingstone's fruit bats. They're HUGE!!!!!
 
Some bloke. Think it was the owner of Dartmoor Zoo, yes thats right.

Tapir = "Pig, Dog, Horse thing".

And, if C.A.P.S is to be believed, during the Jaguar escape he apparently described it (apparently from a staff member) as "the big one with spots on it"

Any one watch mighty boosh ,zooniverse, (Bob Fossil).
 
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i believe Taronga have had another condor chick born recently (sorry to go off thread)
 
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