Toronto Zoo Toronto Zoo - Profit over animal health?

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tiffanyanddave

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
For years now, Toronto Zoo has been strong about their "no straws" policy in the restaurants, snack bars and for bringing in your own drinks. I was appalled to see them selling those new polar bear and penguin drink containers with the straws this past week. There were children all throughout the entire zoo with these drink containers and there were signs posted everywhere about purchasing them. At $9.99 a piece and thousands being sold, Toronto Zoo is certainly making a hell of a lot of money over something that is supposedly a risk for their animals that they've argued for so long now.

Profit over animal health? What do you think?

EDIT: Just in case anybody asks, Yes, the straws do come out very easily. When I first saw these cups a week ago I assumed that they were designed in such a way that there would be a larger piece of plastic on the inside to prevent the straws from coming out or even permanently attached. But that is not the case.
 
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Very true, and the vets/keepers rarely see eye to eye with management and marketing.

Personally, I don't have an opinion one way or the other about straws. I think that parents need to ensure that their kids' garbage goes in the garbage and so on. I just get frustrated when people set certain rules and then look the other way when profit is involved, especially when it involves the health of the animals.
 
Just about every major zoo in America has straws with their souvenir cups, but the straws are the thick, long and plastic. Are those the ones that Toronto Zoo now has? If so, then that is par for the course these days.
 
I find it upsetting that management and marketing can't see why keepers and vets don't like straws, one would think all of the zoo departments are in it for one thing, conservation and animal health, but it seems profit is more important, kinda sucks.
 
@ tiffanyanddave I agree with what you say, your garbage should end up in the garbage not on the ground no matter where you are!
 
I completely agree!

Another issue that has me baffled is the open exhibit for the penguins. My understanding is that we lost the penguins last time because of pennies being thrown into the exhibit and the penguins eating them - so why have it open and risk the penguins health ... again? And of course some visitors have been thoughtless idiots! I was told by a keeper that visitors are throwing in all kinds of things, including batteries! Batteries ... seriously people!

I was told the original plans for the exhibit had it closed but cutbacks resulted in it being open. I don't how the keepers are going to do it, but I hope they have better success of fishing out the dangerous items from the water before the penguins ingest it.
 
From what I know the penguins originally where moved from being on exhibit with seals into the pavilion but then were dying from a type of fungus within the pavilion.

I also know that the plans for the exhibit where never to have it closed in, the reason for that is to immerse visitors into the atmosphere so the "goal" of the exhibit was set to that. That is what the paperwork said anyways...
 
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