I haven't seen the new Pigmy Hippo setup for myself yet, but everything I'd looked at on this site seemed very encouraging until this. Why can't ZSL marketing/PR just leave some things alone at London? People want to look at animals and their enclosures, not a line of teeshirts.
As I mentioned elsewhere, hopefully in time it will start to look scruffy, even if they renew the T shirts a few times and (one hopes) eventually will quietly be disposed of. It is a very strange cosmetic addition for an animal display. I can't see it has any worthwhile place here.
Binder Park Zoo, in the state of Michigan in the U.S., has had laundry flapping in the breeze outside its main restaurant for the past 15 years. I attached a link below that shows the laundry, but it is up relatively high and is not near any animal habitats. At Binder Park the entire African zone is themed as a rustic area within fictitious "Zuri National Park" and it is a terrific complex, but at London it seems as if the shirts are directly over the hippo exhibit and offer up tacky slogans that are clearly unnecessary.
As I mentioned elsewhere, hopefully in time it will start to look scruffy, even if they renew the T shirts a few times and (one hopes) eventually will quietly be disposed of. It is a very strange cosmetic addition for an animal display. I can't see it has any worthwhile place here.
No doubt the creative staff at ZSL were looking for a way to inform their visitors of the conservation reasearch they support, gathering info in the field on this very poorly-known and critically endangered species, and opted not to simply put up an obligatory sign to be ignored by 99% of the guests. I'm sure more people will look at this than a sign, but it does seem--shall we say--a bit distracting from an otherwise reasonable attempt to create an attractive exhibit.
