Difference in communication by zoos on newborn animals

[Yunha]

Hi everyone,

Lately I've been thinking about the different stance some zoos take on announcing their newest arrivals.
Some of the local zoos I like to visit, sometimes offer a little surprise when I visit: a newborn animal that hasn't made the social media feed. Today, I wandered around my favourite zoo and found some newborns that didn't even have signing near their enclosure.

On the other hand a big European zoo I visited once and follow on social media has huge announcements of évery newborn in the zoo, including the petting zoo animals.

Does anyone know or care to speculate why this different approaches exist?

 

[Yunha]

I can see why zoos might not share newborn news:
The zoo I was at today experienced a bit of an embarrassing moment a few years ago by hyping everyone up for an elephant calf to be born, and it turned out to be a phantom pregnancy at the last minute. So that may be a reason why they don't highlight their youngsters that much anymore.
However, no signing or note at all feels a bit inappropriate for something that could really put an extra moment of enjoying in your zoo visit.

However, the group based animals that have several young every year, might lead to some awkward questions about surplus animals: perhaps a part of zoo life a zoo is not willing to highlight so much.

Also, if the youngster is a bit sickly and might not survive, I understand not wanting to communicate a birth at that point.

The reasons to communicate are a bit more obvious in my opinion: celebrating a breeding succes of an endangered species, pointing visitors on to something cute going on and therefore selling more tickets. (I just read something about Moo Deng's huge birthday celebration. ).

 

[ZooNews2024]

A breeding success is useless in itself - for anything other than media consumption.
It is not really noteworthy until the young one(s) are reared. It is not until then that you know that your management, feeding and care of the adults has worked - only THEN it can be counted as a success; though the real test is when those youngsters grow up and produce and rear babies of their own. THEN you really have something to shout about.
This is why most reputable zoos wait to announce the good news.

 

[EliasNys]

A zoo that almost never announces it's breeding successes is Prague. They list all the animals in a log, which is viewable only in czech, but even large species are almost never announced.

On the other hand, Pairi Daiza announces only the "cute births". So the birth of rare but to the general public uninteresting animals is almost never announced, but petting zoo animals are announced and polls are even announced to name the animal.

In my opinion, this is largely due to how a zoo views it's animals: as a population that is managed, like Prague, or as individuals like PD.

 

[NMM]

Another reason for not announcing a birth or delaying the announcement, is to let the young and parents settle before the attention that inevitably comes with the announcement.

It also is not uncommon for part of an exhibit to be closed off when there are young. A section might be screened off or viewing of the indoor quarters might be temporarily closed. That might happen with or without, before or after an announcement.

 

[merlin]

A zoo that almost never announces it's breeding successes is Prague. They list all the animals in a log, which is viewable only in czech, but even large species are almost never announced.

In fact, Prague does announce births, but usually only those they themselves find valuable enough - Brazilian mergansers, gorillas, Przewalski's horse, etc. The value may depend on the fact if the animal born is rare (Brazilian merganser) or simply iconic (gorilla). And sometimes it's for PR, for example when a wisent is born and the zoo asks it's visitors to choose the calf's name.
Sometimes the announcement is not made on the official zoo socials, but on the director's profiles.

 

[Mickey]

In my opinion, this is largely due to how a zoo views it's animals: as a population that is managed, like Prague, or as individuals like PD.

So individual that their reptiles have each a personal prison badge.

 

[Zoofan15]

In Australia/New Zealand, the majority of births are announced. The exceptions are when the birth is anticipated to be one of many. For example a zoo won’t announce the birth of each squirrel monkey, but will later announce that they had eight young born that year. Ditto for open range zoos and giraffe calves.

10-15 years ago, it was commonplace in Australia/New Zealand for the announcement of the birth to be delayed until the young were on display (e.g 8-12 weeks for felids). Not only did this ensure there was a reasonable chance of the offspring surviving to adulthood; but avoided people flocking to the zoo with an expectation of seeing something that was still off display in a den somewhere.

Within the last five years in New Zealand/Australia, there’s been a surge of zoos announcing big cat births days after the cubs were born; as well as great ape pregnancies. My theory is the continuing rise of social media means the zoo is engaging with a wider audience - many of which aren’t even in geographic proximity to visit the zoo, but are interested in following such events nonetheless. Most zoos have social media engagement KPI’s and it helps promote the zoo to a wider audience.