Dudley Zoological Gardens Dudley Zoological Gardens in 2015

Asiaticlion2015 said:
P.s: When I was outside the Orangutan Indoor viewing area a lot of people were telling ther children "look at the monkey" when it is quite clearly an ape. We're raising our children to be idiots. Does this bother anyone else.
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When I hear this I scream "it's an ape!" in my head but never know how to say it without sounding like know-all.
 
This is one bit of taxonomic confusion where the less informed are more correct.

Apes are more closely related to old world monkeys than they are to new world monkeys, so if a capuchin is a monkey, so is an orang utan.
 
Asiaticlion2015 said:
P.s: When I was outside the Orangutan Indoor viewing area a lot of people were telling ther children "look at the monkey" when it is quite clearly an ape. We're raising our children to be idiots. Does this bother anyone else.
Click to expand...

Respectfully I think this is a little harsh. I know this particular mistake is a bugbear of anyone with an interest in zoology, but it doesn't make either party (parent or child) an idiot. Some people are just less knowledgeable on some subjects than others. The level of education may be higher on ZooChat than some other places, but I'm sure you can find other specialist forums where they complain about 'simple' mistakes that most of us would make. It's just horses for courses IMO.
It also represents an opportunity for zoos to demonstrate their educational worth. In an ideal world, after a visit to Dudley a family would know the difference.

PS Welcome to the forum :)
 
Asiaticlion2015 said:
P.s: When I was outside the Orangutan Indoor viewing area a lot of people were telling ther children "look at the monkey" when it is quite clearly an ape. We're raising our children to be idiots. Does this bother anyone else.
Click to expand...

Sometimes it makes me despair - like when I heard a couple of teenagers referring to the Malayan tapir at Chester as a giant panda :rolleyes: Sometimes it makes me smile - like when I heard a lady at Dudley encouraging her grandson to 'come and see the flamencoes' - I never realised those lovely pink birds by the entrance could dance :D
 
FunkyGibbon said:
Respectfully I think this is a little harsh. I know this particular mistake is a bugbear of anyone with an interest in zoology, but it doesn't make either party (parent or child) an idiot. Some people are just less knowledgeable on some subjects than others. The level of education may be higher on ZooChat than some other places, but I'm sure you can find other specialist forums where they complain about 'simple' mistakes that most of us would make. It's just horses for courses IMO.
It also represents an opportunity for zoos to demonstrate their educational worth. In an ideal world, after a visit to Dudley a family would know the difference.

PS Welcome to the forum :)
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I've got to say that is a very fair point and I apologise for calling people idiots and instead of complaing we as zoologists should educate people. I'd also like to say lamna you have taught me somthing.

Plus I forgot to mention Fergie the bay camel is looking very good. Does anyone else think the zoo will have to extend the camel exhibit?
 
lamna said:
This is one bit of taxonomic confusion where the less informed are more correct.

Apes are more closely related to old world monkeys than they are to new world monkeys, so if a capuchin is a monkey, so is an oang utan.
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I don't believe your statemen is quite right, it maybe that old world monkeys are more closely related to apes than they are to new world monkeys but that just means you could argue that it would be more correct to class a guenon as an ape rather than a monkey but apes are still distinct from the cercopithecidae. Calling an orang a monkey is wrong.
 
Apes are distinct yes, but calling new world primates monkeys while excluding apes, which are more closely related to old world "original" monkeys isn't right taxonomically.

Taxonomy rubs against linguistics and common usage in strange ways. In a similar way, every tetrapod is more closely related to any bony fish than any bony fish is to a cartilaginous fish. But we still call sharks fish and don't call land animals fish.

So Orangutan are monkeys, and at the same time, fish.
 
I see your point, I'd neglected to consider that the term 'monkey' would have been applied to old world monkeys first so I'll refrain from shouting out 'it's an ape!' I'll shout out 'it's a fish!' Instead.
 
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