General Zoo Misconceptions

Toddy said:
Yeah, but they sometimes they are not even looking at one male, one female and one young :confused:[/QUOT
Yes that's what I meant. I've heard it pronounced about an all female group and an all male group for instance. I've had children and worked with them and they learn what you tell them. You can tell them that a train's a train rather than a choo choo, and that an orangutan is an orangutan rather than a monkey ...........
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Some others

Hornbills - Toucans
Toucans, Birds Of Paradise or any colourful bird - Parrots
Meerkat - Racoon
Okapi - Sick Zebra
Komodo Dragon - Crocodiles
Porcupines - Hedhehogs

some of them are easy mistakes too make like the porcupine one but seriously calling a komodo a crocodile??
 
When we opened the Australian exhibit at our zoo many years ago it was quite popular. After working for over 3 weeks without a day off, I finally managed to get a whole day off. When I came back after that day, I heard a visitor raving over the fact that it was about time that the zoo had lions on display and call ed her whole family over to look at our pride of.....dingoes!
On another note, why is it that whenever you approach an exhibit with ANY sort of container you mist be going to feed the animals--even if the container is a bucket full of ****??
 
Chlidonias said:
I"Do they need surgery to get the egg out?" (I was so tempted to say that yes, once every generation a kiwi is born with surgical skills and it runs all round NZ performing operations).

Love It! I work with public all the time and I get a great deal of enjoyment our of thinking up these sorts or responses.
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Part of the problem with ignorance is that having anything to so with animals, except for a couple of exceptions, is considered a bit suspect by the majoprity oe people. The exceptions are farmers (an most people don't think about where their piece of beef has come from), pets, especially dogs and cats, and horses (mostly for racing).
Just think of that very derogatory title, twitchers, for people who enjoy watching wild birds. Mention that you enjoy going to a zoo (and without children) and what sort of look do you get. Say that you keep birds in aviaries, rather than just an odd budgie, and people will regard you as somewhat strange. Show any real knowledge about animals and you are regarded as somewhat a nerd. Even children who are knowledgable about animals are teased (I'm sure that Hornbill has suffered from that somwehat).

This leads to a strange dictonomy in our attitude about animals. Most people only know what they have absorbed thropugh their childhood (eg through ABC books, docos that they were forced to watch at school etc) and never build on that. The only real exposure is through movies such as the recent spate of penguin movies, where the animals are so anthromorphised it isn't funny. They anthromorphise animals because that is all that know. It becomes even worse when people bring God into it.

I know people who are so petrified of animals that they will run away from a chicken ( and no not a rooster on the warpath). This is because they are so citified that they have had no contact at all with animals.

This then leads to the problem with animal rights people who have no real knowledge of the cute and furry, of what animals need or the importance of species, ecosystems over individual animals. An article in the latest Bulletin magazine highlights this when Cohen, a former enviromental minister writes about confronting an animal lib. over kangaroo shooting. The animal lib. didn't even know that there were more than 5 species in the macrapod family. That the big five (red, two greys, wallaroo and euro) each number in their millions etc. He was just worried about something cute and furry being killed.

People who are generally ighnorant about animals then swallow the animal libs arguements whole and don't bother to research the facts. Most stupid people aren't really stupid, they are just lazy and arrogent.
 
jay said:
Just think of that very derogatory title, twitchers, for people who enjoy watching wild birds.
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hehe, I'm a birder and I'm used to people thinking I'm strange. When I'm overseas the tourism people think I'm particularly odd because I don't want to go where the usual tourists go and I'm not interested in bus tours or things like that. Instead I want to go into the swamps and forests in out-of-the-way places. In southern Thailand I was given an armed police escort to go birding in a peat swamp forest due to terrorist activity in the area.

Just a few weeks ago I was looking for waders at a saltworks here in NZ and met a reporter from a local paper doing an article on the area. We got talking and I explained what I was doing there. The article came out last Saturday and I was made out to sound like a complete loon! The most amusing bit was where my "partner was waiting in the car. With a good book", the implication being that what I was doing was some sort of aberration that she was forced to put up with.
 
Rookeyper said:
On another note, why is it that whenever you approach an exhibit with ANY sort of container you mist be going to feed the animals--even if the container is a bucket full of ****??
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Visitor conversation at this point;

"Here comes the keeper/man/lady- he's going to feed 'im. Look, he knows the keeper.. (keeper strokes animal) Look at that, would you believe it Ahhh, Wow, isn't that amazing....";)
 
grantsmb said:
Visitor conversation at this point;

"Here comes the keeper/man/lady- he's going to feed 'im. Look, he knows the keeper.. (keeper strokes animal) Look at that, would you believe it Ahhh, Wow, isn't that amazing....";)
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I sometimes wonder whether zoo visitors are given scripts at the entrance!
 
though it is great, i have talked to keepers and say ya never to it for the money, cause its not that great, so when a zoo visitor says u have an amazing job, it really sinks home that you do!
 
On one visit to Paignton Zoo I stood by the peccary enclosure and someone came up to me and asked if I knew where the rattlesnakes were. I replied that there were none kept at the zoo and they muttered something about the sign saying they were in this field. I went to look at the label which contained lots of information, amongst which was a line saying peccaries sometimes killed rattlesnakes.
 
Chlidonias said:
Just a few weeks ago I was looking for waders at a saltworks here in NZ and met a reporter from a local paper doing an article on the area. We got talking and I explained what I was doing there. The article came out last Saturday and I was made out to sound like a complete loon!
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Many American birders spend days looking for complete loons :D

Alan
 
In Shaldon zoo the Pygmy marmosets are mixed with a Golden headed lion tamarin. Of course, to certain people the Tamarin is the dad and the Pygmy marmosets are the babies, even though there are different signs with pictures of each species on.
And the "tapir is a panda" thing... How the hell...?!
 
yea asley, wtf with the tapir, people really are silly, i mean i can understand a pig, but a panda- pandas are bears! (well to the average zoo goer, despite debate on whether racoon, or bear etc) people do suprise me!
 
If people have little kids with them I dont blame them for the mum, dad and babies with animals. I have hundreds of deer and sheep and my kids have always been around them being on a farm and to a 3 year old everything is either a mummy, daddy or baby. If I can't get my kids out of this habit I dont think anyone can.
 
seamuschimp said:
once i saw a small child look at a chimpanzee and say "look at that bear!"
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How small? It's kind of cruel laughing at the mistakes of infants.

It is worse, (and just as common) when you get an adult telling a child something that is completely wrong, and asserting it as the truth. Often they're just little lies (usually something like, 'if I drop you in that crocodile pool they'll gobble you down..') but you get some real whoppers. No wonder kids know nothing.
 
Last time I visited San Diego Zoo , I went to the Kiwi house , and stood near the back and listened to some of the comments that were made ;

The best one was " I dont see no kiwi here , but therer are a couple of stupid looking birds with long beaks runnung around in there "
 
I was at Melbourne Zoo yesterday next to the clouded leopard cage (the inhabitants of which were hiding). A lady looks at the sign which says CLOUDED leopard with a picture of a clouded leopard, and says to the rest of her family "there's a koala in here somewhere but I can't see it!"
 
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