General Zoo Misconceptions

believe it or not I had an adult walk into the penguin exhibit and very excitedly say 'oh polar bears! i have never seen polar bears before!'
 
Maguari said:
Had a day of old favourites at Twycross yesterday - lots of people thinking the dhole were 'foxes' (and plenty of comments to the effect of 'I can see them in my garden'), lots of people assuiming if they only saw one animal straight away then there was only one and how mean that was (couldn't just be hiding, eh?) and lots of people being confused by the aardwolf. And there's a huge sign giving some nice basic chunks of aardwolf info on the side of the house, but somehow it always gets ignored.
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After a visit to Twycross I was showing my uninterested friend pictures of the dholes whilst explaining that they were wild dogs, he replied that I'd wasted my money to look at foxes which are pretty common in Birmingham. After a further 15 minutes of heated "discussion" (meaning argument) I gave up and let him think they were red foxes! Making it worse he was 31 at the time........... :rolleyes:
 
Heard an interesting one at Omaha today, near the sable antelope exhibit.

One said they were elk, the other corrected her though

mountain goats :(
 
KCZooFan said:
Heard an interesting one at Omaha today, near the sable antelope exhibit.

One said they were elk, the other corrected her though

mountain goats :(
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Chester had a bachelor group of sable antelope at one time, I was watching them and a group of visitors came up and asked if I knew what they were. sable antelope I informed them, and someone replied 'why are they disabled?'
 
After seeing our new Bamboo Shark egg in the exhibit, with the embryo moving around inside, a visitor asked me if Sharks are asexual.
 
Ok so.. this didn't happen at a zoo, but i do come across this a lot and really ticks me off.

I was looking up info on whale sharks trying to figure out how they breed and live and that we don't know much. i came across a post on some random ocean animal form were a whale activist was protesting the holding of whale sharks in captivity...... Yep... a whale activist that passionately argued and had no clue a whale shark was a shark. They are only held in GA aq and a couple of aqs over seas.

Came across the same problem on SHARK week at work. I had a guy at work argue with me at lunch that they where whales and he had seen it on discovery channel that week, shark week. ::sighs and drops head head forward giving up::
 
I was at Newquay zoo recently, I was by the Carpathian lynx and a group of teens came up and started arguing as to what the lynx were..'look cheetahs!'...'nooo they're leopards you idiot, cheetahs have stripes'...'maybe they're lions'...I was too stunned to say anything so I left them to it.
 
Rereading some of these posts I remember how much fun I had with a little 5 or 6 year old that happen to turn up at the Okapi exhibit at Lowry Park Zoo in tampa, FL. So, this little girl runs up and hops on the gazebo wall in the center of the exhibit next to me and im pretty sure she called it a bongo. So i told her she was close and that it was an okapi. That kids eyes went so huge. She told me she had seen one on Deiago, i think that a Nickelodeon show with the kid from Dora the Explorer. " yes! yes! thats DEFINATLY an OKAPI!" Suddenly this little kid was spewing correct facts on okapis like how they are related to giraffes and me and this little girl were going back and forth on facts. It's red oil coat and all. I was so happy just to talk to this little charming girl i was oblivious to her fokes eyeing me because i dress a bit goth punkish and occasionally wear a fake tail, my mom had told me about it later. LOL, but she was so enthusiastic! So i guess maybe with this green movement/ trend lately main stream media will start educating people on the environment they are trying to damage less and the animals we share it with. It was just a feel good moment that there is hope out there.
 
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DejaVuKatz said:
Rereading some of these posts I remember how much fun I had with a little 5 or 6 year old that happen to turn up at the Okapi exhibit at Lowry Park Zoo in tampa, FL. So, this little girl runs up and hops on the gazebo wall in the center of the exhibit next to me and im pretty sure she called it a bongo. So i told her she was close and that it was an okapi. That kids eyes went so huge. She told me she had seen one on Deiago, i think that a Nickelodeon show with the kid from Dora the Explorer. " yes! yes! thats DEFINATLY and OKAPI!" Suddenly this little kid was spewing correct facts on okapis like how they are related to giraffes and me and this little girl were going back and forth on facts. It's red oil coat and all. I was so happy just to talk to this little charming girl i was oblivious to her fokes eyeing me because i dress a bit goth punkish and occasionally wear a fake tail, my mom had told me about it later. LOL, but she was so enthusiastic! So i guess maybe with this green movement/ trend lately main stream media will start educating people on the environment they are trying to damage less and the animals we share it with. It was just a feel good moment that there is hope out there.
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Oh man. Stalker/paedo alert. :p

Be careful talking to kids without their parents nearby. You might have the best intentions but might send out the wrong signals. :eek:
 
I wouldn't mind a punkish goth chick wearing a tail talking to me when I was at the zoo.....


(....I think I may have said too much)
 
X.x no i mean... geeze and here u go picking on me... XP she was a smart kid when it came to animals and her parents where there watching me. ...... i give up.. :: buries her head in a hole in the sand like an ostrich which is another misconception.::
 
Tig said:
After seeing our new Bamboo Shark egg in the exhibit, with the embryo moving around inside, a visitor asked me if Sharks are asexual.
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Perhaps not quite as daft as it sounds - asexual reproduction in egg-laying animals is far from unheard of - parthenogenesis (in which a female effectively clones herself to produce a fertile egg) is the principle means of reproduction for many species of stick insect and has been recording in an ever-widening number of reptile species, most infamously Komodo Dragons as well as being recorded in sharks: No Sex Please, We're Female Sharks
 
I have heard of it happening in captive Sharks... but for someone to assume that an egg in a tank with 3-5 Sharks in it was asexually created struck me as being funny :D
 
I fell about laughing today at Paignton while watching the Toucans (or 'Pelicans' as others called them). Someone said 'he's pruning his feathers' :D
 
Tig said:
I have heard of it happening in captive Sharks... but for someone to assume that an egg in a tank with 3-5 Sharks in it was asexually created struck me as being funny :D
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Probably someone showing off they knew the term! :D


(which, of course, is something none of us, and particularly not me, would ever stoop to! :o )
 
Chlidonias said:
I wouldn't mind a punkish goth chick wearing a tail talking to me when I was at the zoo.....


(....I think I may have said too much)
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Like button needed :p

Anyway - to DejaVuKatz, always excellent to hear a good news story like that where the child listens and learns rather than argue and remain ignorant.

I may have mentioned this already (I know I have to some zoochatters, but that may have been in the flesh) but I was photographing the pine martens at Wildwood when a school group approached. 'Oh no,' I thought as they approached, being as loud and exciteable as usual. I hadn't got my shot and thought it would get scared off. Anyway, these kids were coming out with a few, but the only one I recall was 'it's a meerkat.' So, this girl from the class actually bothers to check for herself, and finds it's a pine marten. She then goes on to tell the rest of the class. Later on the pine marten got fed and I got my shots as it FINALLY stayed still to eat :p

Kids always seem so willing to learn - what annoys me most of all is when parents don't encourange it. Such examples being children looking into aviaries only to be pulled away by impatient parents that want to see the elephants :p. I personally look forward to the day that me and AG have kids and we're trying to look at something in the zoo when our little gibbon/rhino hybrid pull on our arms and say 'come on, I wanna go and see the orange-headed ground thrush' :p

Anyway, pointless story over I'll attach the result of the pine marten pic :p
 

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My favourite one I heard recently was in the Tropical house in Cologne Zoo, where infront of the Matschie's tree-kangaroos, some american tourists took one look at them, and started saying:

"What the hell is that?
Its a dog thing aint it?
Well its on a perch so its more like a tree-dog.....
That's it, its a Tree-Bear!!"

Another one was at chesters Rhea and Vicugna paddock:

What are they dad?
*Man looks at sign....
There common rheas
Bloke with him says:
"There not that common, never seen one of them in Crewe!!"


Some stupid people....
 
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